In this episode, Sristi Kamal, our Northwest Representative in Oregon, provides testimony in support of House Bill 2548, which proposes a study to fund building crossings and safe passage structures

In this episode, Sristi Kamal, our Northwest Representative in Oregon, provides testimony in support of House Bill 2548, which proposes a study to fund building crossings and safe passage structures for wildlife on Oregon highways. Video Transcript: Hi! My name is Sristi Kamal, and I'm the Senior Representative for Defenders of Wildlife in Oregon. Advocating for better wildlife policies does not stop even when we are working remotely. So today I will testify at the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources at the Oregon State Legislature. Chair Witt: Next - I'd like to call please upon Sristi Kamal, Dr. Kamal from Defenders of Wildlife. Sristi are you out there? Sristi: Yes I am. Thank you. Chair Witt: Welcome to our committee. Sristi: Thank you so much Chair Witt. Today I'm here to testify in support of House Bill 2548. The economic impact of wildlife collisions is the most obvious impact because the loss is undeniable, whether it is loss of life of the animal, property damage, harm and injury to humans, the mental trauma, and the cost of repairing and fixing it all. Washington, our neighboring state, estimated that on a 12.5 mile stretch of highway in their state wildlife collision costs 2.5 million dollars or $6,500 per collision annually and it's not going to be vastly different in Oregon. The other impact - though more challenging to economically quantify - is a loss of the individual animal and the ripple effect it causes on the population of a species and their ecosystem. Direct relationship between the health of a population of a species and its ability to move, to find new food sources, find mates, and find their way to keep their genetic gene pool healthy, All this is to say - that such a study is imperative to finding solutions that will prevent economic and ecological losses at such a scale. We believe such a study will show that the benefits from building passages and crossings and other structures will far outweigh the initial investment cost. Thank you for this opportunity. Chair Witt: Thank you so much for all of your contributions to - to conservation. Sristi: Thank you so much Rep. Witt. Chair Witt: You're very welcome. Sristi: Now, habitat connectivity is a big issue in wildlife conservation as wildlife need to have the ability to move, and expand in order to find better food sources, new homes and mates in order to keep their genetic pool diverse. So I'm advocating in support of this policy and I hope you remain engaged in the Oregon Legislative session and advocate for better wildlife policies as well.

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As we gear up for reintroduction of carbon-fee-and-dividend legislation in the new Congress, we heard from economist Dr. Noah Kaufman, lead author of the 2019 Columbia University assessment of the

As we gear up for reintroduction of carbon-fee-and-dividend legislation in the new Congress, we heard from economist Dr. Noah Kaufman, lead author of the 2019 Columbia University assessment of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The study confirmed the effectiveness of the bill from both an environmental and economic perspective. Dr. Kaufman is Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia, leading research focused on climate change policies. He also teaches a course on Energy Decarbonization. During the Obama administration, he served as the Deputy Associate Director of Energy & Climate Change at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

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How concentrated solar power could fuel the future Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo Learn skills from the world's top minds at Big Think Edge:

How concentrated solar power could fuel the future Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo Learn skills from the world's top minds at Big Think Edge: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What if we could not only harness the power of the sun, but actually use it to run the entire planet? Concentrated solar power (CSP) has the potential to do just that — using arrays of revolving mirrors called heliostats, light is reflected into a massive receiver. Thanks to recent advancements in technology, the cost to replicate these Sunlight Refineries™ is dropping. Soon solar energy will be cleaner and cheaper than using fossil fuels, which could mean adoption on a global scale. Heliogen, a company founded by Bill Gross and backed by Bill Gates, wants to eliminate all uses of fossil fuels. Using cameras, AI, and machine learning, they are working to make these CSP systems smarter and much more efficient. This episode is from Hard Reset, a Freethink original series about rebuilding the world from scratch and reimagining everything from first principles. Catch more Hard Reset episodes on their channel: https://www.freethink.com/shows/hard-reset ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: NARRATOR: This might look like a death ray, but it's not. It's actually... One enormous, very accurate magnifying glass. NARRATOR: This magnifying glass has a technical name, a sunlight refinery. To use it, find somewhere really sunny, plop down a bunch of mirrors, bounce the sunlight into a single spot and you can melt just about anything. Okay, so it is kind of death ray-ish. Why do this? Because manufacturing steel or cement requires a lot of heat and making something super hot has historically meant burning dinosaurs. STEVE SCHELL: You look at the massive carbon footprint that is associated with these industrial applications and it can't be ignored. NARRATOR: Twenty percent of global carbon emissions to be precise. And because this technology is so good, it might just change the entire energy industry. And prevent World War III in the process. This is "Hard Reset," a series about rebuilding our world from scratch. Just east of Six Flags and north of LA is a place called Lancaster, which is very flat, very hot and a perfect place to test a takeover of the world's energy supply. [dramatic music] Yeah, that sounded more Bond villain-y than I thought it would. Anyway, these are called heliostats and the reason this solar refinery works so well is that under these mirrors and shot glasses are pretty simple motors that they can control remotely. And this allows the mirrors to change angles throughout the day, depending on where the sun is. How do they know where the sun is? Interns. No, AI, of course. BILL GROSS: You need to take each of thousands of mirrors and point them very, very precisely, accurate to about 1/10 or 1/20 of a degree. NARRATOR: That's Bill Gross, genius visionary and founder of over 150 companies. Also super nice guy. GROSS: Thank you, I really appreciate it. NARRATOR: At the top of the tower, high-resolution cameras monitor the position of the mirrors below. SCHELL: You can actually see the two at the top are the easiest to pick out 'cause they're on booms above the receiver. NARRATOR: So Heliogen gets all those mirrors to reflect sunlight into that big target at the top. SCHELL: So what we've got just above us is the solar receiver. So you can see that's what we saw from ground level. That's where that concentrated sunlight is focused when the field is operating. NARRATOR: The cameras know if the mirrors are bouncing into the sun because those cameras are assessing the quality of the sky's blue. Let's break that down with Steve, who has cool tattoos. SCHELL: This is my robot battle armor and what I have here is a jungle on an alien planet with robots tending the garden. NARRATOR: And is in charge of the technology stuff here. SCHELL: What these cameras see is the reflection of the sky close to the sun. Close to the sun, the sky appears very bright from the scattered sunlight coming through it and the further away from the sun you look, the darker or less bright that patch of sky appears to be. NARRATOR: So the cameras look at the color blue and the AI uses that information to assess the distance from the sun, deduce the orientation of the mirror and therefore, where the beam is going. SCHELL: So every few seconds, we get a measurement of where that beam is going and we can command the heliostat to make small corrections to optimize its tracking. In this industry, that is a complete game changer 'cause now we don't rely on the hardware to be so precise, we have software to make it precise. So it really changes everything about how that plant... To read the full transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/concentrated-solar-power

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Production of animal protein is producing vast amounts of climate-eating gases. But a new generation of companies are creating innovative food products that mimic meat and have much smaller

Production of animal protein is producing vast amounts of climate-eating gases. But a new generation of companies are creating innovative food products that mimic meat and have much smaller environmental impacts. Some of this mock meat is derived from plants with ingredients designed to replicate the taste and pleasure of chomping into a beef hamburger. Others are growing meat cells that come from a laboratory and not a cow. Bill Gates, Cargill, Tyson and other big name investors are dabbling in so-called clean meat. Emerging technologies are already offering people new food choices at restaurants and grocery stores. Will those options wean enough people from burgers and chicken wings to go mainstream? Will that transition help reduce carbon pollution that is destabilizing the climate? Production of animal protein is producing vast amounts of climate-eating gases. But a new generation of companies are creating innovative food products that mimic meat and have much smaller environmental impacts. Some of this mock meat is derived from plants with ingredients designed to replicate the taste and pleasure of chomping into a beef hamburger. Others are growing meat cells that come from a laboratory and not a cow. Bill Gates, Cargill, Tyson and other big name investors are dabbling in so-called clean meat. Emerging technologies are already offering people new food choices at restaurants and grocery stores. Will those options wean enough people from burgers and chicken wings to go mainstream? Will that transition help reduce carbon pollution that is destabilizing the climate? #letstalkclimate https://climateone.org/ https://climateone.org/events/christiana-figueres-conversation-mindfulness-and-climate Making tuna without a fish? 1:25 Why meat tastes like meat 10:25 New frontier beyond Farm To Table 14:28 The fate of the world? 23:35 Lightening Round! 24:28

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