50 Shades of Green: A Climate Group Podcast

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Oct 2026

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50 Shades of Green is the official podcast of Climate Group, the global nonprofit mobilizing business and government to accelerate climate action. Each episode, we sit down with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers from our international network, corporate sustainability officers, policymakers, clean energy pioneers, and frontline advocates, to explore what real climate progress looks like across industries, governments, and communities. Whether you're a sustainability professional navigating net zero commitments, a policymaker shaping climate legislation, or simply someone who wants to understand what's actually being done about climate change, this is your inside track on the conversations that matter. Accessible, honest, and grounded in action - because the climate crisis is too urgent for jargon and too complex for simple answers. Subscribe now and join a global community working toward a world of net zero, nature recovery, and fair energy for all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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October 16, 202642 min

The Resilient Future is Here

In this episode of 50 Shades of Green, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran dive into resilient building as extreme weather intensifies and communities face the hard questions of rebuilding after disaster. Katie speaks with Ken Calligar, CEO and founder of RSG-3D, about their structural panel system designed for noncombustible, disaster-resistant construction that has shipped to 20 countries. Ken argues that conventional U.S. wood-frame building has long relied on the wrong technology, creating complex, code-minimum assemblies vulnerable to fire, wind, flood, hail, and seismic events. He makes the case for resilience as a first principle: if a home can shake apart, burn, or blow away, little has been accomplished. The RSG-3D system focuses on the building envelope—walls and roof—creating a strong environmental separator that keeps threats out while delivering architectural freedom, including curved and organic forms, rather than concrete bunkers. The conversation covers real-world performance: Habitat for Humanity homes that survived Hurricane Andrew intact, a Northern California house that was the sole survivor of the 2015 Valley Fire, and schools in Mexico that withstood major earthquakes. Ken highlights that first costs are comparable to wood-frame construction, while total cost of ownership is dramatically lower through roughly 50–60% energy savings, near-elimination of maintenance issues, and a new partnership with Marsh for appropriately risk-priced insurance. With zero disaster damage across 35 years, the system challenges the notion that resilience is only for the wealthy. The hosts and Ken also address the practical realities of post-disaster rebuilding—such as in California wildfire zones where many homes are being reconstructed in the same vulnerable way—and the broader economic and social costs of inaction, including insurance market instability and community displacement. Ken’s closing message is direct: resilient construction is available, immediately cost-effective, and will pay dividends for generations. At some point, building inferiorly will no longer be a viable choice. Listeners will leave with a clearer picture of why the building envelope matters, how smarter construction can protect both people and finances, and why “you can’t afford not to” may be the most important idea in the built environment today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 8, 202623 min

Exclusive from Climate Week NYC: Energizing Energy Innovation

Adam Lake returns from Mexico City Climate Week and sits down with Katie Lanegran to unpack what sticks after the stage lights go off. Fresh from a panel with leaders of Climate Weeks in Mexico City and Toronto, Adam argues that these gatherings only matter if cities share lessons and build something larger than any single calendar week. Mexico City’s second-year event, held at a children’s museum with a strong youth focus, is flagged for a full episode soon. The centerpiece is a Climate Week NYC conversation with Doreen Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA, recorded at The Hub Live. Climate Week has grown to about 1,500 events, up 50 percent from last year’s record. Harris explains NYSERDA’s role as New York’s energy agency, created in 1975 during the energy crisis: statewide energy planning, policy, and roughly $3 billion a year in programs, including about $100 million for innovation. She points to a thriving ecosystem from Brooklyn’s New Lab to upstate incubators, universities, and accelerators that turn research into companies as well as cleaner power. Community partnership is the through-line. NYSERDA’s 13 regional clean energy hubs work through trusted local organizations, and a dedicated siting team helps host communities plan solar, wind, and batteries. Harris ties clean energy to health: the Champlain-Hudson Power Express, nicknamed “Chippy,” (CHPE) is already improving air quality in Astoria’s “asthma alley,” and building decarbonization can cut indoor pollution from gas appliances. She prefers plain language—reducing pollution—over jargon. On housing, she notes Governor Hochul’s statewide building push and alignment with the mayor’s office, with a warning that speed only works if projects are built with communities, not around them. Back in the studio, Adam and Katie connect those points to multi-family buildings, where heat pumps, induction cooking, better windows, and insulation can cut costs and emissions for hundreds of families at once. They also mark CHPE as newly energized hydro power from Quebec, a project Adam remembers being announced on a Climate Week stage and now delivering real electrons and cleaner air. The episode closes on the Climate Week movement itself: NYC as the Super Bowl or Burning Man of the circuit, smaller city weeks as places where relationships form faster, and the real work living in the months between the celebrations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 5, 202617 min

Special Episode: Introducing Mexico Climate Week

50 Shades of Green comes to you with a special episode from Mexico City where they are about to launch Mexico Climate Week. Adam Lake speaks with Erica Valencia to find out what is in store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 1, 202644 min

Live Episode: Content that Clicks

One week after Climate Week, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran drop their second live episode, recorded on stage with three sharp voices reshaping how climate stories actually reach people: comedian and content creator Evan Lazarus, veteran journalist-turned-independent producer Tracy Wolf (WereWHOLF Media, formerly of CBS and ABC News climate units), and activist-consultant Jerome Foster, a former Biden environmental justice advisor. The conversation starts with Evan’s viral TikTok theory that the escalating chaos on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City might be linked to the evaporating Great Salt Lake releasing heavy metals into the air. The clip is funny, specific, and unexpectedly serious. It reached a PhD student who began researching the psychological effects of those emissions. That moment becomes the episode’s thesis: climate content that clicks often doesn’t look like climate content at all. It sneaks in through reality TV, restaurant recaps, comedy, and the platforms people already scroll. Tracy describes leaving shrinking network newsrooms that treat climate as “service journalism” they can cut when ad dollars tighten. She argues the old 6 p.m. news model no longer owns the conversation; audiences now control what they watch, when they watch it, and who they trust. Independent creators can sometimes move the needle faster and cheaper than a $20,000 network package that airs once. Jerome focuses on turning awareness into action. Most people already know the crisis exists. The job is making them feel they belong in the story—small, concrete next steps (vote, plant, show up, follow the money) instead of another lecture. Authenticity consistently beats polished messaging. Entertainment is not a betrayal of the science; it is often the only way exhausted audiences stay in the room. The panel covers the death of the press-release-to-journalist pipeline, the ethics of brand deals versus audience-funded work, why newsrooms keep slashing climate desks, and the messy personal paths that brought each of them here—middle-school Earth Day light-offs, python hunts in the Everglades, Friday school strikes that grew into policy wins. A rapid-fire round bans words like “ambition” and “net zero,” debates hope versus urgency, and lands on the same practical advice: be concise, stop pretending every story is good news, and let people hear a real voice. The episode is both a dispatch from the front lines of climate communications and a how-to for anyone trying to make the issue land with people who are not already living and breathing it. Content that clicks does not shout “climate.” It meets people where they already are and gives them a reason to stay. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 24, 202647 min

Climate Week NYC LIVE!

50 Shades of Green returns with host Adam Lake on how we talk about climate when the science is complex and the politics are noisy. Guests: Bernadette Woods-Placky of the Talking Climate Collaborative; Hannah Safford of the Federation of American Scientists; and Emma Stewart of Climate Spring. Bernadette, a meteorologist who spent years at Climate Central with TV weathercasters, treats weather as a shared language. Storms ignore party lines. Heat and extremes already reshape daily life. Her US-Canada landscape assessment maps who talks to whom and where the barriers sit. Rules: know your audience, meet people where they are, connect on shared values, simplify without dumbing down, tell stories, and assume most people care. Focus on the 90 percent, not the shouting 10 percent of Yale’s Six Americas. Hannah works where science meets policy. Evidence matters, but so does lived experience. She cares less whether a title says climate or affordability than about substance: what people feel day to day, why, and what they can do. Stories must fit the listener—solar in Arizona, wind in New England. Briefs and social posts look different; both are science-grounded storytelling. Emma, a scientist and former Netflix sustainability chief, calls herself a reformed scold. Emotion is not the enemy of data. Film, TV, sport and games are what people discuss at the table. About 90 percent of audiences want climate action on screen, yet almost none of it appears. Climate Spring funds writers to close that gap with stories of justice, journey and world-building, not dystopia. Hearts open first; brains follow.You need not hide the word climate. Start from people’s lives. Trust in institutions has fallen; connection to trusted people has not. Weave science into culture so complicated subjects become human ones. A practical masterclass in communication from three people who do it for a living. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 17, 202641 min

Climate Week NYC: Is the US stepping up or stepping down?

In the final episode of 50 Shades of Green before Climate Week NYC, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran sit down with Angela Barranco, Executive Director of Climate Group North America, to cut through the noise about U.S. climate leadership.Is Climate Week NYC subdued this year? Has the United States checked out? Angela’s answer is blunt: patently false—and more complicated than the headlines suggest. While federal funding has slowed, companies, states, and cities are moving because the bottom line demands it. Insurance costs are rising, supply chains are at risk, and climate impacts are hitting workforces now. Texas, often cast as hostile to climate action, is the country’s top producer of clean energy and actively competes for investment. Action has not stopped; the language has simply broadened. Conversations once labeled “climate” now center on housing, health, food, energy bills, and the cost of living—the issues that shape everyday life.Angela unpacks the political calendar that will shape the mood on the ground: midterm elections in November that could flip Congress, upcoming gubernatorial races in California and New York, and the possibility of new federal leadership. She explains the real power of the Speaker of the House and highlights New York City’s new mayor, who is putting affordability, clean air, and energy efficiency at the center of the city’s agenda and helping launch the week with a housing-focused event. The hosts and Angela also look at Climate Week itself. Last year broke records. This year will be bigger still, with events across all five boroughs. Their practical advice: wear comfortable shoes, drink water, treat it as a marathon, “event surf” by talking to people, and get out of Midtown. Highlights include American Innovation Abundance Day at the Hub, live tapings of 50 Shades of Green, and a surprising mix of serious panels and joyful programming—whale watches, hockey, recycling tours, comedy nights, free Central Park bike rides, and solar going up on a historic Habitat for Humanity building. This episode is both a reality check and a field guide: the United States is still in the fight, the week will be massive, and the most useful conversations may not even use the word “climate.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 10, 202647 min

Why more beans means less emissions. Really.

Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran welcome Sarah Lake—no relation—founder and CEO of Tilt Collective, a philanthropy initiative working to make the most sustainable and healthy foods the most available and affordable. Recorded as Climate Week NYC approaches, the conversation lands on a topic filling the week’s calendar: food. Tilt Collective’s mission is a “balanced food system”: more whole foods, more plant-rich meals, fewer ultra-processed products and less overconsumption of animal foods. Sarah argues food is nearly a third of climate emissions yet is still sliced into fertilizer, land, and production debates instead of what we actually eat. The payoff is unusually broad—climate, water, public health, pandemic risk, antimicrobial resistance, and healthcare costs tied to diet-related disease. She traces her path from a childhood love of cows and summers on farms to a PhD on cattle supply chains in Colorado, corporate sustainability work, and a team question that reframed everything: instead of only greening beef, why not eat fewer animal products? That led to Tilt, which now re-grants to groups in nearly nine countries so companies and governments can shift menus in ways that are culturally appropriate. The episode is not a lecture on going vegan. Americans eat about six times the recommended amount of red meat; bringing intake toward guidelines would move climate and health at once. Sarah’s personal stake is visceral: at 11, her father needed six-way bypass surgery linked to a 1950s meat-and-potatoes diet—while the hospital’s main restaurant was a McDonald’s. Meat’s cheapness, she says, is policy: subsidies for feed and production make burgers cheaper than Brussels sprouts. Practical levers include blended products (a 60/40 beef-mushroom burger that testers often prefer), school and hospital procurement, chef training, food-service companies, and supermarket promotions that currently push meat. Beans, she notes, are having a moment; quinoa and kale already proved obscure plants can go mainstream. Culture is treated as a constraint and an asset: visit grandma and eat the pork; don’t fight Super Bowl wings head-on; help regions keep traditional beans and modest meat rather than import industrial diets. Tilt is Climate Week NYC’s lead food partner again and hosts Food Day on Wednesday the 23rd, aiming for alignment rather than plant-based vs. regenerative turf wars. Adam and Katie close on family kitchens, equity, and why choice only exists if healthy options are cheap and nearby. Find out more at https://tiltcollective.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 3, 202646 min

Cooling as a Human Right

In this episode of 50 Shades of Green, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran speak with Christine Egan, CEO of CLASP, about energy-efficient appliances — from household ACs and refrigerators to off-grid fans and lights serving 660 million people without electricity.As extreme heat intensifies, Egan makes the case that cooling is becoming a human right, provided it is highly efficient. She outlines how minimum energy performance standards create a market floor while incentives and bulk buying pull products toward best-available technology. A standout success: leveraging the Minamata Convention on mercury to phase out fluorescent lighting in favor of LEDs, avoiding nearly three gigatons of CO2.Recorded ahead of Climate Week NYC, the discussion links kitchen-table energy bills, indoor air quality, and climate policy, showing why smarter appliances matter for health, livelihoods, and the planet. Tune in for a clear-eyed look at one of climate action’s most practical — and overlooked — tools. CLASP has a Find CLASP at New York Climate Week 2026 page to find out more, you can also catch them at the following Climate Week NYC events. Advancing Climate Action through Private Sector Collaboratives (Monday, 21 September, 3:30 - 4:20PM) Win-Win Policies: Unlocking Investment for a Sustainable Future (Tuesday, 22 September, 8:00 - 10:00AM) Powering Prosperity: Equitable Policy Design in the Global South (Wednesday, 23 September, 10:30AM - 12:30PM) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 27, 202650 min

Pulling back the curtain on Climate Week NYC

This week Adam and Katie speak to some of the "mega hosts" who make Climate Week NYC the biggest climate event in the world. From fireside chats with Elmo, to bringing together the future of AI technology under one roof, Solitaire Townsend from Futerra - who run Solutions House - and Peter Gilmer from The Nest Campus talk us through what it is like to run some of the biggest events at Climate Week NYC, and how you can get involved. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 20, 202641 min

Investigating sustainable fashion

Adam and Katie are joined by John Higginson, CEO of Eco Age, moving the needle of sustainable fashion. Eco Age operates on two fronts. They educate consumers on positive, non-guilt-inducing choices. Separately, the organization funds independent investigative journalism into fashion’s supply chains—work traditional fashion media often avoids due to advertising dependence—while generating revenue as a consultancy for brands, material innovators, and organizations pursuing genuine sustainability. The conversation highlights fashion’s outsized footprint: roughly 2% of global GDP yet about 10% of climate emissions, plus water pollution from dyeing and widespread labor abuses, often in developing countries where some of the best progressive work is also happening. Show notes: Find out more at https://eco-age.com/ Check out their Climate Week NYC event at https://www.climateweeknyc.org/event-search/convening-the-next-gen-materials-transition Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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