If you’re planning to deck your house with lights this holiday season, you have a choice to make: stick with incandescent lightbulbs, or go for LEDs. This week on Possibly we break down what each option means for the planet, and your electric bill.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

A while ago, we had an episode about how climate change affects the crops we use for food.. And that got us wondering – how do rising temperatures affect other things we eat, like seafood? And what does that mean for us in Rhode Island?

We had Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly Team look into this. Welcome, Isha and Fatima! 

Isha Chawla: Hi, Megan! 

Fatima Husain: Hello! 

Megan Hall: So Isha, how does climate change affect seafood?

Isha Chawla: To figure out the details, we spoke with Joanna Bernhardt, an ecologist and researcher at Yale University.

Joanna Bernhardt: I study how aquatic ecosystems change as the environment changes, and what those changes mean for human wellbeing.

Fatima Husain: Joanna says that rising temperatures have a big impact on marine life. You know how greenhouse gases trap heat and warm our planet? A lot of that heat is absorbed by the oceans.

Isha Chawla: According to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information, the ocean has absorbed about 90% of the excess heat trapped in our atmosphere so far!

Fatima Husain: And coastal waters in New England are ​​warming faster than almost anywhere else in the world because of how climate change affects the ocean currents nearby. 

Megan Hall: How does that affect marine life?

Isha Chawla: Most fish and crustaceans are cold-blooded, meaning their body temperatures correspond to the temperatures of their environment. So, as waters warm…

Joanna Bernhardt: species are shifting their ranges, often moving towards the poles or deeper in the ocean and lakes.

Fatima Husain: …in search of cooler waters that match their ideal temperatures. 

Isha Chawla: This means that communities that once relied on a particular type of fish may not be able to find it anymore. This affects anyone who catches fish for a living, as well as anyone who eats local seafood. 

Fatima Husain: Which can have a big impact on their diet. Seafood is an important source of protein and nutrients for over 3 billion people. 

Isha Chawla: And it’s not just a slow warming over time – oceans experience temperature spikes too. The heatwaves that swept across the Pacific Northwest and Canada in 2021 killed over a billion marine animals. 

Megan Hall: That’s a lot of fish! 

Isha Chawla: But that’s not all, Megan. The ocean doesn’t just absorb heat — it also absorbs a lot of the carbon dioxide that humans have added to the atmosphere. And more CO2 in the water forms carbonic acid, which eventually makes the ocean more acidic. 

Megan Hall: But the ocean is massive — can a little bit more acid really make a big difference? 

Isha Chawla: Yes! We’ve actually seen a 30% increase in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution.

Fatima Husain: And that acidity is rough on marine life. Especially on animals like lobsters and crabs, because their shells slowly dissolve in acidic water.

Isha Chawla: Which is bad news for us here in Rhode Island. ​​Shellfish make up almost half of the state’s fishing industry! Joanna says we’ll start to notice this change as…

Joanna Bernhardt: the species that are really culturally important, like clams or oysters, become less abundant or more expensive.

Isha Chawla: I mean, can you imagine a Rhode Island without shellfish?

Megan Hall: No way! Does Joanna have any tips on what we can do about this?

Isha Chawla: Well, this problem will only get better if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So, doing things like driving an electric car, eating less red meat, and heating your home with renewable energy are a few things you can do.

Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Today, we’re going to talk about eating. How will climate change affect our food? 

Megan Hall: Here to tell us more are Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hello!

Fatima Husain: Hi, Megan!

Megan Hall: So Isha, how do rising temperatures affect the plants we grow for food? 

Isha Chawla: To find out more, we spoke with…

David Lobell: David Lobell. I’m a professor at Stanford University.

Isha Chawla: David says, rising temperatures can damage crops.

Fatima Husain: But in some cases, giving plants more water will prevent that damage. For instance, he’s found that California almonds….

David Lobell: don’t seem to be that affected by heat, as long as they have irrigation.

Megan Hall: So, a little extra water will solve the problem?

Fatima Husain: Not really, because this doesn’t work for all types of plants. Also, rising temperatures affect water availability, either by changing the amount of rain we get or by contributing to more droughts.

Isha Chawla: And California already has a water shortage issue!

Fatima Husain: On top of that, this solution won’t work for farmers who don’t have irrigation systems and rely on rainfall for the success of their crops. 

Isha Chawla: But Megan, there’s another problem here.

Megan Hall: What is it?

Isha Chawla: David says there’s evidence that climate change also affects the quality of some of the foods we eat.

Megan Hall: In what way?

Fatima Husain: Higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the air, which cause global warming, also change the chemistry of the crops we eat.

David Lobell: In most studies, what you see is— as you increase the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the concentration of micronutrients, like zinc and iron, becomes a little more diluted in the crops.

Megan Hall: Wait, So, the foods are actually less nutritious?

Isha Chawla: Exactly. And as carbon dioxide levels increase, this problem only gets worse.

Fatima Husain: If our CO2 levels climb to where experts think they’ll be in 2050, some studies predict that crops like wheat, corn and rice will have around 10% less zinc, 5% less iron, and 8% less protein. 

Megan Hall: How worried should I be about this?

Isha Chawla: Well, if you’re lucky enough to live in a place where you have a lot of food options and enough money to buy them, you’ll get your nutrients in other ways. 

Fatima Husain: But almost a fifth of people worldwide already have a zinc deficiency, and so decreasing  these kinds of nutrients in crops can have serious consequences, especially for child development. 

Isha Chawla: In wealthier countries like the US, there are lots of safety nets to protect the food system, like storage and access to irrigation. But that doesn’t make the US entirely immune to this either. 

Fatima Husain: Climate change will still affect how much food farmers can grow, which will impact our economy, food prices, and ultimately, nutrition. 

David Lobell: Any time food in general becomes more expensive, what you see is that people tend to shift towards less nutritious diets. 

Megan Hall: What can we do about this? 

Fatima Husain: It all comes back to cutting our greenhouse gas emissions! David recommends advocating for policy changes, and making better decisions about how we power our homes, what kinds of cars we drive, and the types of appliances we use.

Isha Chawla: And if you want to change your diet, eating less meat, and cutting down on food waste are good places to start.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

On our show, we talk a lot about how to reduce our carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions. But some scientists are developing another approach to climate change — techniques to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  

Here to tell us more are Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hi, Megan!

Fatima Husain: Hello! 

Megan Hall: Okay, first things first. Why do we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Shouldn’t we be focused on using renewable energy and driving electric cars?

Isha Chawla: Well, reducing our carbon emissions as much as possible is definitely the first priority. 

Fatima Husain: But there are some sectors, like aviation, or cement and steel production, that are really hard to decarbonize.

Isha Chawla: On top of that, we’ve added and continue to add a LOT of carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. 

Fatima Husain: So it is likely we will need to find a way to take some of it back out to prevent the more extreme effects of climate change.

Megan Hall: But, is that really possible? How do you remove carbon dioxide from the sky? 

Isha Chawla: It is possible, but these carbon removal methods are still in the early stages of development. To get a sense of the ways scientists are trying to do this, we spoke with Dr. Galen McKinley.

Dr. Galen McKinley: I’m Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia University and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

Isha Chawla: She told us there are many different ways to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Some are pretty simple— like growing trees. Although if you have listened to our show before you know even that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Fatima Husain: Other ways can get pretty complicated. But for now, let’s focus on some of the technological solutions in use and in development today.

Isha Chawla: One of the most popular CO2 removal strategies uses chemistry to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. It’s called Direct Air Capture and Storage.

Megan: How does that work? 

Fatima: Basically, it involves pulling air over special solutions that separate out carbon dioxide, and then burying that CO2 deep underground. Galen says—

Dr. Galen McKinley: The challenge is that could require a lot of energy.

Isha Chawla: It’s also very expensive. Some estimates price removing a single ton of CO2 at $200!

Megan: How much would it cost to make a dent in this problem?

Fatima: Well, we emit about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere every year. Do you have $8 or so trillion dollars to spare, by chance? 

Megan Hall: Woah, I definitely don’t! Are there any more affordable ways to remove that carbon? 

Isha Chawla: Galen says there’s another technique called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS for short.

Megan Hall: And how does that work? 

Isha Chawla: So, the idea is you grow a bunch of plants, which suck up the carbon in our atmosphere today. And then you burn those plants to create energy, like electricity.

Megan Hall: But doesn’t that just release carbon into the air? 

Fatima Husain: The difference is—

Dr. Galen McKinley: Instead of being burned and re-emitted to the atmosphere,we capture the carbon and put it in the ground. 

Isha Chawla: So this generates energy AND removes CO2 from the air. 

Megan Hall: Wow! That’s interesting! Is this a realistic solution?

Fatima Husain: Not yet. It takes a lot of land to grow plants to make those biofuels and we need that space for other things— like forests and growing food. 

Isha Chawla: Megan, the gist is that none of these carbon removal methods are ready for prime time. But a lot of scientists think we should be researching them much more than we are already.

Fatima Husain: Because we’re going to need every tool we can find to combat the worst effects of climate change. 

Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Megan Hall: On our show, we tell stories to make climate change seem less overwhelming. We know that our episodes are no replacement for massive policy changes, but we hope that they help to shift your perspective or at least make the path forward seem a little clearer. 

Megan Hall: Today, we’re going to talk to an artist who also tries to unpack climate change, but using a very different medium.

Megan Hall: Here to tell us more are Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hello!

Fatima Husain: Hi, Megan!

Megan Hall: So, who are we meeting today? 

Isha Chawla: Let me introduce you to Courtney Mattison. She’s a ceramic sculptor who also has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She says art and science aren’t really all that different. 

Courtney Mattison: I think art and science have a lot in common in terms of having a shared sense of curiosity and a shared sense of trying to figure out the world and explain it.

Fatima Husain: Courtney is particularly interested in coral reefs— those colorful, underwater structures sometimes known as the “rainforests of the ocean.” She says they’re breathtaking…

Courtney Mattison: A lot of people have never been so lucky to go scuba diving on a really healthy coral reef. And so I want to share that with everyone. 

Isha Chawla: So, Courtney creates massive installations that replicate the many shapes and textures that make up a coral reef.

Fatima Husain: In the center of her sculptures, the corals are often rich, complex, and colorful. But then, closer to the edge, those colors fade and turn to white. 

Isha Chawla: Courtney hopes these dramatic objects draw people in to look closer and start thinking…

Courtney Mattison: ….about what it means, what does the white mean, compared to the colorful corals.

Fatima Husain: The white isn’t symbolic — it illustrates something that’s happening to coral reefs around the world. 

Isha Chawla: Rising sea temperatures and increasing levels of acid in the water are bleaching these coral reefs. 

Fatima Husain: More and more often, the bleaching is bad enough that the coral reefs don’t come back…  

Megan Hall: Why should we worry about coral bleaching?

Fatima Husain: Well, about a quarter of the ocean’s fish depend on these reefs for their habitat even though they’re found in just 1% of the ocean.

Isha Chawla: So, these dying reefs lead to fewer fish. That’s bad for the ocean, and for the millions and millions of people who depend on fish for their livelihoods.  

Fatima Husain: Courtney says you can talk about coral bleaching using facts and figures, but she thinks art can be more effective.

Courtney Mattison: Art can impact our emotions and connect us to concepts of the natural environment in ways that are less cerebral than just sort of looking at a graph or reading a textbook. I think a lot of people’s eyes glaze over when they are exposed to that kind of material.

Isha Chawla: Some researchers from Yale University say that most of us learn about climate change using the analytical part of our brain, which learns through logic.

Fatima Husain: But, it’s the experiential part of our brain, which learns through emotions, images, and associations that has the most power over our daily decisions. 

Megan Hall: So, you’re saying that seeing art, like the kind Courtney makes, is more likely to make us want to take action than if we read a scientific report? 

Fatima Husain: That’s the theory. And, researchers say that art does more than that— it might also help us change our minds. 

Isha Chawla: That’s because, when we look at art, we tend to suspend our disbelief. And that might open us up to ideas that we may have otherwise rejected.

Megan Hall: Does the power of this art extend to things you listen to, like podcasts? 

Isha Chawla: I think you can count audio stories in that category too, as long as they’re not too analytical!

Megan Hall: That’s all I needed to hear. Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

Pictured: Our Changing Seas IV (2019). By Courtney Mattison. Glazed stoneware and porcelain. 335 x 518 x 55 cm (132 x 204 x 22 in). Image by the artist.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Megan Hall: Take a look out your window. What color is the ground? It turns out that what you see plays a big role in the speed of climate change. 

Here to explain are Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hello!

Fatima Husain: Hi, Megan!

Megan Hall: So, tell me — what does the color of the ground have to do with climate change?

Isha Chawla: Megan, think about it this way: what would you rather wear on a really hot and sticky summer day — a black t-shirt or a white one?

Megan Hall: White! Black would only make the heat worse.

Isha Chawla: Yes, and that’s because lighter colors, like white, are better at reflecting light. So, they absorb less heat. 

Fatima Husain: Think of the earth like your body on a hot day. If it’s dressed in white, it reflects incoming light and doesn’t heat up as much as if it’s dressed in dark colors. 

Baylor Fox-Kemper: when the sun’s light arrives at the earth, it might be absorbed, or it might be reflected away. 

Isha Chawla: That’s Baylor Fox-Kemper, an oceanographer and professor at Brown University. He says the Earth absorbs more of the sun’s energy in spots where the ground is a darker color.

Fatima Husain: Scientists call how much an object reflects energy its albedo. 

Megan Hall: So, do we want more albedo or less? 

Isha Chawla: In the case of climate change, higher albedo is better! We want the land covered with colors that bounce light away instead of absorbing it. 

Fatima Husain: Places like the North and South Pole and snow-covered mountains have high albedo. That’s because the white snow and ice are better at reflecting light. 

Isha Chawla: But here’s the tricky part — what is climate change doing to those spots?

Megan Hall: Ohhh! Melting the snow and the ice! 

Isha Chawla: Right, and that gives way to reveal much darker colors.

Megan Hall: Which absorbs more heat!

Isha Chawla: Exactly! And Baylor says this creates a positive feedback loop. 

Baylor Fox-Kemper: And I don’t mean positive in terms of good.

Fatima Husain: For instance, let’s say you start with a spot in the Arctic ocean that’s covered in snow and sea ice. Because it’s white, it reflects about 85% of the sunlight that falls on it.  

Isha Chawla: But with global warming, we have almost no ice left in the summer. That white has been replaced by navy blue water that reflects only about 7% of the sunlight.  

Baylor Fox-Kemper: If you make the earth warmer, you reduce the amount of sea ice, and then you absorb more, which makes it warmer, which makes it reduce the sea ice, which makes it warmer still. 

Fatima Husain: And that positive feedback loop amplifies the effects of climate change. 

Megan Hall: Isn’t there some way we could help with this problem? Like, what if we stretched a bunch of white tarps across the ocean? 

Isha Chawla: Actually, at the local scale, cities are beginning to take albedo seriously. New York has painted almost 10 million square feet of rooftops white to try to help cool down its buildings.

Fatima Husain: On a global scale, manipulating our environment in that way used to be dismissed as science fiction. But, as the effects of climate change get worse, scientists are starting to think about it more and more. 

Megan Hall: Sounds like a good idea for another Possibly Episode!

Fatima Husain: I’m up for it if you are, Isha! 

Isha Chawla: Let’s do it! 

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Today, we have a thought experiment on our minds. What would happen if we stopped creating greenhouse gas emissions right now? Would climate change be over?

We had Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team look into this. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hi, Megan!

Fatima Husain: Hello!

Megan Hall: Okay, so theoretically, if we brought all our emissions down to zero today — would global warming just stop?

Isha Chawla: To get to the bottom of that question, we reached out to…

Amanda Lynch, I’m a Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University.

Fatima Husain: And Amanda says to answer this question, you have to understand how emissions affect our climate. 

Isha Chawla: When greenhouse gas emissions go up into the air, they stop heat from escaping, which makes the planet warmer. You can imagine them as an invisible blanket.

Fatima Husain: But, there’s a delay between when that happens and when we actually notice a change in temperature. 

Amanda Lynch: it’s like heating up a cast iron pan, instead of heating up an aluminium pan.

Isha Chawla: You know how cast iron stays cold for a while, even after you’ve turned on the burner? The Earth is like that too. 

Amanda Lynch: And then when you turn the heat off, that cast iron pan stays hot for a lot longer than the aluminum pan. 

Fatima Husain: So basically, the Earth takes a while to warm up, but then it holds onto that heat for a long time. 

Megan Hall: Where is the Earth holding onto all of this heat?

Isha Chawla: Well, mostly in water, and more specifically, in the ocean. Our seas trap over 90% of the heat that we’ve been putting in the atmosphere. 

Amanda Lynch: the deep oceans are vast. And they hold some of that heat for decades and hundreds of years.

Fatima Husain: But those deep oceans are also constantly moving, which means the heat that’s been trapped deep below doesn’t stay there forever. It eventually gets released as the water comes back up to the surface.

Isha Chawla: Which means there’s a lot of heat that’s just sort of hiding in the water. It’s not gone away, it’s just taking its time to come back up again.

Megan Hall: So, this is a complicated way of telling me that we’ll experience the results of climate change LONG after we stop creating greenhouse gas emissions?

Fatima Husain: Yes. There’s so much heat already sort of baked into the Earth that it will take a while to cool off. 

Isha Chawla: And to make things worse, greenhouse gas emissions tend to linger. In the case of carbon dioxide, it can take centuries before it’s eventually removed from the atmosphere.

Megan Hall: Ok, so climate change is here for a while, no matter what we do. But, if we DID get rid of all of our emissions today, how long would it take to see the effects of that change?

Fatima Husain: Amanda says it could take decades. At least until 2050.

Amanda Lynch: there’s certainly climate change that we’ve committed to between now and 2050, that we really, we just have to work out how to cope with. But then what happens after 2050 is still in our hands.

Isha Chawla: Knowing this, Amanda says we have to accomplish two things at the same time — do whatever we can to decrease the emissions that cause climate change AND prepare for the inevitable global warming that is to come.

Amanda Lynch: I don’t want people to feel that if we do make dramatic changes to our emissions regimes, and they don’t see a response, it was a waste of time, and they may as well give up. And so it’s about managing expectations.

Fatima Husain: That means not only doing things like investing in wind and solar power, but also redesigning the ways we live and work to prepare for the inevitable effects of a warmer planet. 

Isha Chawla: Amanda also says we should be working on technologies that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it underground.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Isha and Fatima!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Over the last few months, many of us have turned to digital devices to stay connected. We wondered: how much energy are we using with all of this time online?  

We had Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team look into this. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hi, Megan!

Fatima Husain: Hello!

Megan Hall: So, Isha, now that I’m working remotely, I use video conferencing almost every day… Plus my kids are getting LOTS of screen time. Should I be worried about how much energy we’re using when we’re all on the internet?  

Isha Chawla: To find out, we called Dr. Eric Masanet, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara who studies the environmental impact of new technologies. He says…

Eric Masanet: The IT industry has seen efficiency gains that are faster than really any other sector of the economy.

Fatima Husain: Eric says that despite huge leaps in the amount of information we store and share online, data centers still only make up 1% of the world’s electricity consumption. And they’ve held steady at that percentage since 2010.  

Megan Hall: Wait, how is that possible? How can the percentage stay constant while data centers are still being built around the world?

Isha Chawla: IT companies are constantly reducing their energy use, because when their energy costs go down, their profit margins go up. For example, data centres tend to get really hot, and that’s bad for the servers. But Eric says, IT companies… 

Eric Masanet: figured out ways of cooling the data center with very little energy use.

Megan Hall: How?

Fatima Husain: Mostly just by installing energy-efficient cooling systems. But some companies have taken the next step and built their data centers in cooler places.

Isha Chawla: Companies are also finding ways to pack in more computing power into each server, so they can do more with the same amount of energy.  

Megan Hall: But won’t they eventually run out of ways to be more efficient?

Fatima Husain: Yes, but Eric says there will still be a lot of opportunities to save energy through better software and hardware. 

Isha Chawla: On top of that, he says… 

Eric Masanet: A lot of the big IT companies are making pledges to transition, perhaps even fully, to renewable energy. 

Fatima Husain: A 2018 report found that most of the corporate investments in renewable energy technologies were coming from IT companies.

Megan Hall: That’s good to hear. So, I guess I don’t have to worry about all the time I’m spending on Netflix! 

Isha Chawla: Well, not really— Eric says it’s people like you and me, not data centers, that create the most waste.  

Eric Masanet: Most of the energy usage generally is the end user devices: the routers in your home, PC, your laptop, cell phone, tablet, those consume the most energy.

Megan Hall: So, what should I be doing?

Isha Chawla: So first, make sure you’re buying energy efficient devices. An easy way to do that is to look for an “energy star” certification the next time you’re buying a TV or laptop. 

Fatima Husain: And browsing the web does create carbon emissions. So, don’t leave Netflix streaming while you’re sleeping or away from your laptop.

Isha Chawla: And connect to WiFi whenever you can — when you stream through mobile networks you’re using about four times as much electricity!.

Megan Hall: Wow, I had no idea!

Fatima Husain: But, let’s put this in perspective: You might be spending more time online, but you’re also probably travelling less.

Isha Chawla: Which has led to an overall decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. One study found that emissions in April of this year were down by 17% compared to 2019!

Fatima Husain: So, Megan, we don’t need to cancel our video calls! 

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio. 

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Whether you’re shopping for a t-shirt, bedsheets, or q-tips, you might have noticed that cotton products are more expensive if they’re organic. We wondered, is it worth it to pay the extra price? 

We had Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team look into this. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hi Megan!

Fatima Husain: Hello.

Megan Hall: So, Isha, you live in the center of the organic cotton industry, right?

Isha Chawla: Yes, I live in India, which grows more than half of the world’s organic cotton. 

Megan Hall: So, what makes cotton count as organic?

Isha Chawla: Like any crop, cotton can only be certified organic if it doesn’t use artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or genetically modified seeds

Megan Hall: What’s the argument for NOT growing organic cotton?

Fatima Husain: Well, a lot of organic crops are less productive, or more labor-intensive, than non-organic.

Isha Chawla: Murli Dhar, who heads sustainable agriculture at the World Wildlife Fund, says organic cotton farmers in India can see a drop in production by as much as 30%.

Murli Dhar: When the farmers change the way of farming from conventional to organic then there will be yield drop for at least two to three years.

Isha Chawla: But after the first few years, the amount of crop they can grow per acre begins to rise until the difference between conventional and organic yields is only about 5%. 

Megan Hall: So, it sounds like it’s hard to start growing organic cotton, but if farmers hang in there, they can eventually grow just about as much. 

Isha Chawla: Exactly — and when they do, they can sell organic cotton for a lot more money. 

Megan Hall: Got it. So, what are the environmental benefits of organic cotton? 

Isha Chawla: To answer that, let’s focus on a defining feature of organic farming: fertiliser.

Fatima Husain: Conventional cotton uses artificial fertilizers, which give plants the exact balance of nutrients that they need. 

Isha Chawla: But, these fertilizers aren’t perfect- if farmers use too much, which they often tend to, they can drain out of the soil and enter nearby rivers and streams. 

Fatima Husain: These nutrients can lead to a chain reaction that removes oxygen from the water, which suffocates fish and other marine life.  

Isha Chawla: Plus, these fertilizers are made from fossil fuels — so making and using them creates greenhouse gas emissions.

Megan Hall: How are organic fertilizers different? 

Fatima Husain: Organic fertilizers, like compost or manure, take longer to decompose and release nutrients into the environment. So they are less likely to pollute any water nearby.

Isha Chawla: Also, they’re not made with fossil fuels.

Megan Hall: So, let’s say I’m shopping for a t-shirt- is it worth it to spend more money on one that’s made of organic cotton?

Fatima: Maybe. But here’s something else to consider: 

Isha Chawla: A lot of the emissions associated with cotton are connected not to how it’s grown, but how far it has to travel to get turned into fabric, sewn into something, and then delivered to you. 

Fatima Husain: So that cotton t-shirt, whether organic or conventional, has probably circled the globe before it hits your closet.  

Isha Chawla: That means if you want to buy cotton that has the least amount of impact on the planet, just buy less of it, or get second-hand fabrics. 

Fatima Husain: but if you can afford organic cotton, there is another reason to spend a little extra money. – Buying organic cotton can improve the livelihoods of farmers that take the risk to start growing it.   

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Isha and Fatima! 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio. 

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A lot of our oxygen actually comes from tiny microorganisms in the ocean. The picture above is of stromatolites. They were built up over time by microorganisms called cyanobacteria, which produce oxygen during photosynthesis.

Benjamin wants to know how many trees we need for everyone to have enough oxygen.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Today, our question comes from a student at Sowams Elementary School in Barrington, Rhode Island. He’s curious about trees. 

Benjamin: My name is Benjamin, I’m 8 years old. How many trees does it take to give everyone in the world oxygen?

That’s a great question! We had Isha Chawla and Fatima Husain from our Possibly team look into this. Welcome, Isha and Fatima!

Isha Chawla: Hi, Megan! 

Fatima Husain: Hello!

Megan Hall: So, how many trees does it take to give everyone in the world oxygen?

Isha Chawla: It’s not quite as straightforward as you might think — because trees aren’t actually our main source of oxygen on Earth. 

Megan Hall: So, where does our oxygen really come from then?

Fatima Husain: To figure that out, we spoke with Tim Herbert, a professor of oceanography and environmental science at Brown University.

Isha Chawla: He says, if there were no trees…. 

Tim Herbert: we would have a measurable drop in oxygen, but it would not be big enough that we would have trouble breathing, it would never get that low.

Megan Hall: Really? How does that work?

Fatima Husain: He says that a lot of the oxygen we breathe comes from tiny microorganisms in the ocean — many of which evolved billions of years before we even had land plants! 

Tim Herbert: In the ocean, almost all the plants are so small, you couldn’t see them without a microscope, but they make about half of the oxygen. You don’t have to be big to make oxygen.

Megan Hall: So, how is it possible that these tiny plants create more oxygen than giant redwood trees?

Isha Chawla: Well, first — they’re not really plants — they’re the ancestors of plants. And second, they outnumber trees by a lot. 

Fatima Husain: Before life on Earth began, there was really no oxygen in the atmosphere. In fact, those little microorganisms were responsible for the most significant environmental change in the history of our planet. 

Megan Hall: What happened?

Isha Chawla: Just over two billion years ago, those tiny microorganisms evolved to use water and sunlight to create sugar and oxygen — a type of photosynthesis.

Fatima Husain: And Tim says that oxygen 

Tim Herbert: was a waste product 

Isha Chawla: At first, that oxygen just reacted with other elements in the ocean. But eventually, oxygen production outpaced consumption. 

Megan Hall: Which means there was extra oxygen?

Fatima Husain: Yes, and for at least the last billion or so years, oxygen levels in the air haven’t really changed all that much. 

Isha Chawla: And land plants didn’t even evolve until less than half a billion years ago. 

Fatima Husain: So, thanks to our friends in the oceans, those levels of oxygen that have built up over time are pretty stable, which gives us enough air to breathe!

Megan Hall: So, let’s go back to Benjamin’s question- about how many trees we need to breathe. You’re saying if there were no trees, those tiny ocean critters would create enough oxygen?

Fatima Husain: Exactly: they’re responsible for at least half of the oxygen being produced on Earth today. And trees? They produce a lot less. 

Isha Chawla: But don’t forget, trees do more than just produce oxygen. They absorb carbon dioxide and store it in wood, and that helps slow down climate change.  

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Isha and Fatima! And thanks to Angela Zhang for helping with this episode.

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio. 

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