Getting Warmer with Kal Penn

Kal Penn investigates our toxic relationship with plastic and why we recycle so little of it. In New Jersey, he meets Tom Szaky, whose company TerraCycle promises it can recycle things like cigarette butts and dirty diapers. But does it really?

Storms, earthquakes, flooding. More extreme weather is putting pressure on aging infrastructure in big cities, where 68% of the world’s population is expected to live by 2050. In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores how cities can adapt, and why obvious infrastructure solutions are often so costly (and slow). In New York City, Penn investigates both “gray” and “green” infrastructure initiatives to save the city from the next big Superstorm Sandy. Is the answer a giant wall around the city’s coast? Or are there other, “greener” alternatives? Penn meets the creators behind the Living Breakwaters Project, a storm barrier off the coast of Staten Island populated by filter feeding oysters. In a guest segment, climate storyteller Alice Aedy explores how urban population growth and weather extremes have spurred climate adaptation projects in the Global South.

Can crypto mining become sustainable, or will it always be a giant energy suck? Kal Penn meets a “crypto cowboy” in Texas who claims Bitcoin mining can stabilize the state’s delicate grid while using up surplus energy.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores some of the more drastic Plan Bs aimed at fighting global warming or protecting populations from climate extremes. These include supercharging the oceans’ ability to soak up CO2 and even managed retreat.

Kal Penn explores how the western US can cope with a decades-old megadrought and whether recycled wastewater is a solution to the world’s limited water supplies.

Demand for air conditioning may triple by 2050. In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores whether there’s a sustainable way to cool a warming world, and the “cold chains” that keep food unspoiled.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn travels to Nevada to visit the company building America’s first closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles, while examining the industry’s reliance on the carbon-intensive kind.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn breaks down what you need to know about the methane, the surprising places it’s leaking from and why fixing methane leaks is one of the quickest and cheapest ways to slow global warming. Penn heads to West Texas to meet the founder of a fossil fuel company who realized fixing leaks was also a huge financial opportunity. Global oil and gas operations emit giant amounts of methane every day, most of it during routine flares or venting. Penn meets Ryan Keys, co-founder of Triple Crown Resources, to find out how his company says it eliminated most of its leaks and made money in the process. In a guest segment, climate storyteller Jack Harries explores solutions to farming’s methane problem. With beef production alone accounting for 40% of global methane emissions, how do we reinvent mass farming practices?

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn visits the Empire State Building to find out how the iconic skyscraper eliminated a large amount of its carbon emissions and earned its owners millions in energy savings in the process.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores the palm oil industry, how industrial agriculture damages the environment and the ways food could be grown more sustainably.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores the successes and challenges of climate activism. We visit a community reliant on fossil fuels as they choose between a lucrative new oil proposal and a transition toward renewables.

In this episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores the problems inherent to the carbon offset market, how companies claim them when they shouldn’t and why tree planting isn’t always a good strategy.