Sustainable Planet 81g1a

Ever wondered why your grandparents' furniture is still standing while your furniture barely makes it through one move? In the capitalist competition to grow, corporations prioritize profits over durability. Following their episodes on landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider why so much stuff ends up in the waste management stream. Part I begins the story in the 1920s, when lightbulb companies realized they were potentially sitting on a goldmine if they only made a few tweaks, starting the corporate trend of planned obsolescence. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How one lightbulb made us believe we were being duped Why every industry does it, everyone knows they do, but they still get away with it Why no one is spared in the pursuit of obsolescence, even Henry Ford How many varieties of one product do we really need Whether it’s possible to enumerate how many strategies MNCs use to gain an edge How planned obsolescence fits right in with our disposable culture Why profit-driven design beats quality manufacturing almost every day, but some companies have bucked the trend and live to tell about it Recommended Resources About Planned Obsolescence  Practices in the computer industry that widely apply The environmental impact of planned obsolescence Your New $3,000 Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years. This Is Why. Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Ever wondered why your grandparents' furniture is still standing while your furniture barely makes it through one move? In the capitalist competition to grow, corporations prioritize profits over durability. Following their episodes on landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider why so much stuff ends up in the waste management stream. Part I begins the story in the 1920s, when lightbulb companies realized they were potentially sitting on a goldmine if they only made a few tweaks, starting the corporate trend of planned obsolescence. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How one lightbulb made us believe we were being duped Why every industry does it, everyone knows they do, but they still get away with it Why no one is spared in the pursuit of obsolescence, even Henry Ford How many varieties of one product do we really need Whether it’s possible to enumerate how many strategies MNCs use to gain an edge How planned obsolescence fits right in with our disposable culture Why profit-driven design beats quality manufacturing almost every day, but some companies have bucked the trend and live to tell about it Recommended Resources About Planned Obsolescence  Practices in the computer industry that widely apply The environmental impact of planned obsolescence Your New $3,000 Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years. This Is Why. Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Out of sight, out of mind is the way developed countries deal with the mountains of waste produced daily. But what happens after the trash can is emptied at the curb? In Part II of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly dig into the many layers of landfill management and what happens when the site is filled to capacity. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: What invisible environmental threats lurk beneath our feet Why leachate is a dirty word The stark contrast between waste management capabilities in developed and developing countries Just how many protective layers make up a landfill How to power garbage trucks from captured methane emissions What to do with a retired landfill Recommended Resources The anatomy of a landfill Groundwater contamination and management   What to do with a retired landfill Or turn it into a solar farm   Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Out of sight, out of mind is the way developed countries deal with the mountains of waste produced daily. But what happens after the trash can is emptied at the curb? In Part II of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly dig into the many layers of landfill management and what happens when the site is filled to capacity. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: What invisible environmental threats lurk beneath our feet Why leachate is a dirty word The stark contrast between waste management capabilities in developed and developing countries Just how many protective layers make up a landfill How to power garbage trucks from captured methane emissions What to do with a retired landfill Recommended Resources The anatomy of a landfill Groundwater contamination and management   What to do with a retired landfill Or turn it into a solar farm   Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The statistics are shocking: Humans produce over 2 billion tons of waste annually, with a projected 45% increase in municipal waste over the next 25 years. Yet surprisingly, only 13% of urban waste is converted into energy, while 80% of landfill contents could potentially be recycled or composted. In Part 1 of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider the sophisticated management of modern landfills. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: The profitable side of waste management Innovative waste-to-energy technologies Successful municipal initiatives making a difference Cultural differences in waste handling between North America and Europe How landfills can power vehicles Recommended Resources An armchair landfill visit video The EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste requirements The UN’s Municipal Solid Waste report The EPA’s waste data The UNEP’s waste report Criticisms of Waste-to-Energy conversion Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The statistics are shocking: Humans produce over 2 billion tons of waste annually, with a projected 45% increase in municipal waste over the next 25 years. Yet surprisingly, only 13% of urban waste is converted into energy, while 80% of landfill contents could potentially be recycled or composted. In Part 1 of Landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider the sophisticated management of modern landfills. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: The profitable side of waste management Innovative waste-to-energy technologies Successful municipal initiatives making a difference Cultural differences in waste handling between North America and Europe How landfills can power vehicles Recommended Resources An armchair landfill visit video The EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste requirements The UN’s Municipal Solid Waste report The EPA’s waste data The UNEP’s waste report Criticisms of Waste-to-Energy conversion Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Explore where government, corporate, and organization interests clash and align over fish production. And don’t forget the little people: Millions of consumers depend on small-scale fisheries for jobs and food. Wade into Part II of aquaculture with Jorden and Kimberly to consider the challenges of sustainably producing seafood, whether it’s farmed or wild-caught. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why multiple sustainability standards and labels add to the complexities How competition between NGOs hampers presenting a united front How corporations like Cargill and Mowi dominate the aquaculture industry Why small-scale fisheries are integral to the equation How Global South countries attempt to balance economic growth with sustainable aquatic farming Recommended Resources The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide to how and where to find sustainability-sourced seafood  WorldFish Center    The Global Salmon Initiative The Aquaculture Stewardship Council    The FAO’s 2024 Report on the aquaculture industry Global aquaculture production statistics Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Explore where government, corporate, and organization interests clash and align over fish production. And don’t forget the little people: Millions of consumers depend on small-scale fisheries for jobs and food. Wade into Part II of aquaculture with Jorden and Kimberly to consider the challenges of sustainably producing seafood, whether it’s farmed or wild-caught. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why multiple sustainability standards and labels add to the complexities How competition between NGOs hampers presenting a united front How corporations like Cargill and Mowi dominate the aquaculture industry Why small-scale fisheries are integral to the equation How Global South countries attempt to balance economic growth with sustainable aquatic farming Recommended Resources The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide to how and where to find sustainability-sourced seafood  WorldFish Center    The Global Salmon Initiative The Aquaculture Stewardship Council    The FAO’s 2024 Report on the aquaculture industry Global aquaculture production statistics Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Not long after agriculture was domesticated, aquaculture emerged. This multi-billion-dollar industry is expanding to meet growing demand. Dominated by Asian countries, aquaculture production threatens Blue Carbon Zones from Chile to Egypt, Australia to Mexico. In Part I of this episode, Jorden and Kimberly consider how aquaculture is a threat to the planet, but can be the key to sustainable freshwater and saltwater food production.   Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How to save a fishing industry from total collapse Why not all farmed fish is spawned equally How a Japanese university beat the odds on tuna ranching Why the sustainability issues aquaculture faces aren’t far from those for agriculture Why aquaculture might be the best way to promote ocean and freshwater conservation Recommended Resources The FAO’s 2024 Report on the aquaculture industry Global aquaculture production statistics Africa’s aquaculture leader, interestingly, in a 2025 Foreign Service Report by the US Dept. of Agriculture Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Not long after agriculture was domesticated, aquaculture emerged. This multi-billion-dollar industry is expanding to meet growing demand. Dominated by Asian countries, aquaculture production threatens Blue Carbon Zones from Chile to Egypt, Australia to Mexico. In Part I of this episode, Jorden and Kimberly consider how aquaculture is a threat to the planet, but can be the key to sustainable freshwater and saltwater food production.   Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How to save a fishing industry from total collapse Why not all farmed fish is spawned equally How a Japanese university beat the odds on tuna ranching Why the sustainability issues aquaculture faces aren’t far from those for agriculture Why aquaculture might be the best way to promote ocean and freshwater conservation Recommended Resources The FAO’s 2024 Report on the aquaculture industry Global aquaculture production statistics Africa’s aquaculture leader, interestingly, in a 2025 Foreign Service Report by the US Dept. of Agriculture Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The first segment on Mangroves focused on the vital role of mangroves, why they’re often overlooked, and the main contributing factors jeopardizing this ecosystem. In Part II, Jorden and Kimberly discuss who’s working to protect—and in some cases revitalize mangroves, by delving into the challenges that abound in protecting Blue Carbon zones. To succeed, corporate and grassroots sustainability initiatives need to be bolstered by robust intergovernmental standards. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why mangroves should be featured on every NGO’s annual freebie calendar Whether carbon trading is a valuable market instrument or just enables more polluting Why the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has a huge stake in mangrove conservation Indonesia’s realization that 8 million acres of mangroves is worth a lot more alive than deforested Why corporations are investing in mangrove conservation—and it’s not just for a philanthropy tax write-off Which came first: The Blue Man Group or the Blue Carbon Group? Recommended Resources All things carbon trading and mangroves From the Blue Carbon Group to Global Mangrove Alliance to the Mangrove Action Project, plenty of NGOs work to conserve and educate Just how endowed Indonesia is with mangroves and what they’re doing about it Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post    

The first segment on Mangroves focused on the vital role of mangroves, why they’re often overlooked, and the main contributing factors jeopardizing this ecosystem. In Part II, Jorden and Kimberly discuss who’s working to protect—and in some cases revitalize mangroves, by delving into the challenges that abound in protecting Blue Carbon zones. To succeed, corporate and grassroots sustainability initiatives need to be bolstered by robust intergovernmental standards. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why mangroves should be featured on every NGO’s annual freebie calendar Whether carbon trading is a valuable market instrument or just enables more polluting Why the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) has a huge stake in mangrove conservation Indonesia’s realization that 8 million acres of mangroves is worth a lot more alive than deforested Why corporations are investing in mangrove conservation—and it’s not just for a philanthropy tax write-off Which came first: The Blue Man Group or the Blue Carbon Group? Recommended Resources All things carbon trading and mangroves From the Blue Carbon Group to Global Mangrove Alliance to the Mangrove Action Project, plenty of NGOs work to conserve and educate Just how endowed Indonesia is with mangroves and what they’re doing about it Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post    

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of the podcast, Jorden and Kimberly turn their attention to the amazing, yet underappreciated mangroves forests.  Remarkable coastal ecosystems that can capture 5 times more CO2 than rainforests, mangroves provide a powerful defense against climate change and coastal erosion in over 120 countries. Changing up the format, Sustainable Planet will drop weekly, covering topics in two parts. Part I focuses on the vital role of mangroves, why they’re often overlooked, and the main contributing factors jeopardizing this ecosystem. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why rainforests get all the glamour while mangroves do the heavier lifting Just how many amazing attributes this marine ecosystem has What the biggest threats to mangrove conservation are How much more money mangrove conservation reaps than deforestation (to the tune of $80,000 per hectare!) How mangroves affect everyone’s well-being—no matter how long it takes to reach the beach Recommended Resources NOAA’s CoastalBlue Carbon assessment and conservation How mangrove conservation in Acapulco would have mitigated the effects of Hurricane Otis Mangrove deforestation in Southeast Asia For those new to carbon trading, a summary and an entire Sustainable Planet episode on the Cap & Trade System by your favorite podcasters Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post Episode Transcript Kimberly Welcome to our celebratory one -year anniversary episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir and my co -host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. With Earth Day approaching, hopefully sustainability is on more people's minds. Anyone paying attention knows we should save the rainforests. But what about mangroves, an even more vital ecosystem? But Jordan, I bet you've heard about mangroves long before I even suggested this topic.   Jorden I got really excited when you suggested this topic, Kimberly. And I have a little bit of a long and random story into this, so bear with me. But my discovery of mangroves started a long time ago with Bjorn Lumberg and his obsession with the idea of building dikes everywhere to protect from coastal erosion and rising sea levels. It was an easy solution. And I was young enough that I was like, well, it sounds reasonable. Like, why are we not doing this then? And it was the start of a fundamental lesson for me in climate change, which is if somebody is saying there's a super simple, reasonable way to fix this massive problem, then everyone has already looked into it because no one is pas the super simple solutions. And I often think of a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, a false but clear and precise idea always has more power in the world than one which is true and complex. And I think that can be used in so much, but especially here. The funny thing is, as I looked into dykes and found out that they couldn't be built around a lot of small developing islands because of either coastline features or cost, and that they just don't work in a lot of places, it led me to find out that we already had something that worked, mangroves. And a lot of our discussion around that is going to be around we don't need to engineer a new crazy solution. We need to protect and enhance the natural solution that's doing it so well.   Kimberly Yeah, instead of destroying it. The thing is, is it mangroves? This is a topic that I regularly introduced to my classes when I was teaching introduction to international relations, because it's multifaceted, right? It's an environmental issue, but it's got economic implications. It's got human rights implications. It's got environment. Also, it's like, you know, like health implications. Yeah, I was gonna say world health implications and also even security implications, right? So across the board, it hit on all of these international general issues. And I would start out oftentimes the class by using this. And for the longest time, one or two people would raise their hands to say they knew what mangroves were before we started talking about them in class, like almost out of classes of 45 students. As time has gone on I've seen a little bit more like of an increase in the number of people who are familiar with them. But generally speaking, still, it was quite a minority. And so my joke was always, you know, like they're the less sexy thing. When you think about what's going to make the calendar for the environmental cause, is it going to be the, you know, multicolored, awesome looking frogs or birds? Or is it going to be the bland looking, unless you know what you're looking at, mangroves, mangrove forests?   Jorden No, exactly. And I think that even amongst a lot of people I know, you know, other ecosystems such as you mentioned forests already, but even wetlands tend to get a lot more focus and people know about them. And I think it reflects a weird view because, I mean, mangroves are found in 121 of the 195 countries globally. They are pervasive. I mean, their distribution is concentrated, right? I mean, 40 % of all global mangroves are found in just four countries, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Mexico. It's surprising there's dispersion and how most countries have an example of them, but people have no idea about them in their own ecosystems.   Kimberly Well, and it's their tropical and subtropical forests. So a lot of times they're not really in, we don't see them nearly as prevalent in global north countries. It's the global south countries, developing countries, emerging economies, but the continent of Australia has got a lot of mangroves too, right? So you sort of see that, but mostly the attention is just, we hadn't gotten a lot of attention because for example, in the United States, where a lot of the mangroves were, was Florida. And they were all ripped out because people wanted long stretches of sandy beaches. They didn't want mosquitoes, right? All of those things that the reasons why the mangroves are there are all of the problems Florida is having now in of beach erosion and having to try to shore up during tropical storms because they've lost that natural barrier protection. And also just the biodiversity that was just off in the process of this. And so when it comes to these tropical and subtropical forests, another thing that goes along with them is the fact that they also protect the seaweed and the sea grasses and the salty marshes that are in the same brackish areas, which are also really great because these are carbon sinks. These are blue carbon areas. And these are so important. We talk about, everybody hears about. Blue zones for supposedly that these are the healthiest people in the world where these are in fact blue zones, legitimate blue zones. These blue carbons, areas that are carbon sinks that capture and sequester basically and store more CO2 than rainforest do. And that's what really started to get people's attention in my classes was that they had no idea that these trap three to five times more CO2 emissions than rainforest do. They'll reinforce get all the attention.   Jorden And I think this is actually where you see it reflected in the scientific literature over the last 15 years. Mangroves have a lot of attention in the scientific literature because of their recognized importance. It hasn't translated to the broader public. And on the carbon point, I want to put this in context for people. So I was trying to find different comparisons. And I think the best one was in a single square mile of mangroves, they remove and sequester roughly the same emission as 90 ,000 cars. So when we and I want to put this in context for, you know, North American audience. So when you're looking at Florida and the destruction there, this is even finding out. So I was like, oh, there's 800 square miles of mangroves still left in Florida, very dispersed and fractured and being lost. And seeing how much of that is what was there even a decade ago is sad. But let's looking at that 800 square miles that you have the capacity to annually remove and store the equivalent of 72 million cars. which is roughly 25 % of America's total commercial and personal vehicle fleet in what is just remaining. So like the actual carbon impact of these areas is just massive. And I really like 25 % of all personal and commercial and enger vehicles. I don't think that there's very few other natural processes that are in concentrated areas that I can point to that have that level of impact.   Kimberly And that's the thing is that. The rainforests got a lot of attention, and rightly so, because they are also really important. And they were being deforested, cut down at a breakneck speed rate for the hardwoods that they harvest and all of the other. There are an awful lot of renewable resources in rainforests. And as countries were sort of persuaded, and that was why, you know, 1994, that's why the UNEP had its sustainable development. meeting in Rio de Janeiro was to draw attention to that, to say, hey, we need to have more attention because Brazil's rainforest, one of the biggest places with rainforest was just being cut down at really high rate. And that was actually turned around and doing really well for a while. And then when Bolsonaro came in, he reversed everything. But now that Lulu's back in power again, like that's been reversed again. So it's hopeful again.   Jorden It's hopeful, but I think it really drives to how short -term politics can have massive long -term consequences on some of these issues, right?   Kimberly Yes, for certain.   Jorden You mentioned biodiversity. And one of the things that I thought is the coolest about these, and I got really excited when we were going to talk about it, is that just by their nature, like the mangroves themselves represent one of the most interesting forms of biodiversity on the planet because they are all specialized trees and shrubs. So we're saying mangroves, which is a broad definition of an ecosystem on brackish water that has specialized trees and shrubs. In the States, for example, there were four types primarily of trees and shrubs that exist in mangroves. And why they're so cool is they have literally evolved processes to deal with that high saline water. So, you know, some of them filter the salt out before the roots fully absorb the water. Others actually sweat and excrete the excess salt from their bodies and through their leaves. And it's just like such an interesting and unique type of plant life on our planet.   Kimberly Well, and it's really cool too, because for anyone who has seen mangroves, they have really long root systems that come up above the soil or the sand or wherever they're kind of situated. And so they have these really long root systems. And those are really cool because they're protective areas then for fish and other things that swim in the sea. Sea life, I guess we can use that. There's a word for that. So other sea life, right? And also because of the root system, they provide for all, like we said, you know, you mentioned too, the grasses and the marsh, like all of those reeds and so forth that grow along there in that area. Then all of this stuff acts as a filtration system that really keeps the freshwater separate from the seawater. And that's such an important thing. When we look at that, the other thing that is just, I think, so important about, in addition to this, they act as a filtration system. They trap the sediments and heavy metals and pollutants and so forth. And keeping that fresh and salt water separate. The thing that really just amazes me that's so cool is that they, in storing. this carbon like they do it in the sediment and they do it in the like below and so it's there and and it's going to stay there and they are always continuing to suck up more and more and more and unlike in forests where you see like the trees die or there are forest fires and other natural causes or the town whatever in this instance like they just continue to keep storing that and doing that indefinitely unless you start ripping them out. And that's where we lose, not just it has that dually awful environmental repercussion of losing the thing that's actually sucking up the carbon as well as releasing everything that had been stored back into the atmosphere. And so that's bad news.   Jorden A hundred percent. I think it's really key to focus on there for a second that the natural process of how it stores is much more in that root system. So again, there's smaller trees and shrubs. So what we see above ground is normally always in of size, the root network is going to be bigger. But in the mangrove case, in of actual volume, right, a material where in natural more boreal forests or tropical forests. A lot of that carbon, excuse me, is stored in the actual trunks and the actual tree mass above ground. So when those die off and through natural processes release more back and create, I think, more of a fluctuation. Whereas to your point, this is eons that this can be stored in if it maintains a healthy habitat.   Kimberly Yes. And the thing is, is that when you want to create beaches or something, though, or if you're digging up for farming, like is what's going on, especially with Indonesia and Malaysia and other places, Brazil too. For palm oil production, they have to necessarily, in order to monocrop the palm oil trees, the date palm trees, they have to actually then uproot the whole system as well. And that's what's really bad, which is why it's also so much worse and so much more important to protect because the consequences are so much worse because all of that stored carbon is being released in a way that... As you just described, that's not the case if you're just cutting where the tree is storing most of it above ground.   Jorden Exactly. You know, we've hit on you think about what is lost there, right? In the destruction of a mangrove and the carbon, the biodiversity and the entire. So you think about the fishing communities are and we're going to go into this more later. But it's taking that out doesn't just lose one thing. And a lot of these issues, you know, we know are interconnected and we highlight that. But we can point out this is the big aspect of this. And I think mangroves are so interesting because as you said, you told your students. They have such big factors that are like such big benefits across multiple categories. It's not just a loss on one. And so one of the ones going back to my example of how I got into this is the storm barriers and that coastal defense. And I wanted to hit through there's really there's four ways that mangroves really drive coastal defense for, you know, shorelines. And that's across waves. So I found some really interesting stats here because they've broken this out for policymakers. So mangroves reduce wave height from by 13 to 66 percent per 100 meter of mangrove. So one of the things that's going to come out here right away is the depth of those mangroves is really, really important. So, again, 100 meters between 13 and 66 percent height reduction. 1 ,000 meters of mangroves needed for storm surge protection, which reduce between 5 to 50 centimeters of the height of the storm surge per kilometer. So now you're thinking about these damages from climate change on the coastal systems because we're putting them right up against it and taking out these natural barriers. And one of the ones that I think it gets a lot of attention when it happens is tsunamis. And I found it interesting that per 100 meters of mangroves, tsunami flood depth is reduced by 5 to 30 percent. So just massive benefits. And across all of these benefits are done at a far lower cost by protecting these than building out in the places it would work, massive engineered dike systems. And then at the ultimate side, it's the erosion. Those roots we've been talking about allow the sediment to be trapped and stay there. And with the removal of the mangroves, you start losing your coastlines even faster and facing greater acceleration. It's just it's crazy to me. It actually is crazy when you start talking about this. Well,   Kimberly it ties into two things that we've talked about before. One is sand because we talked about sand depletion. Right. And even though. This sort of sand isn't necessarily exactly the same sort of sand we talked about for construction. There is still this aspect of sand demand where there is coastline erosion. And that sand, every community that has beaches is trying to shore that up somehow and try to replace that sand. It's coming from somewhere because this other sand is being washed out, right? And even if they're going off the coast and doing it, I mean, this is way out of my depth, but I mean, I guess an appropriate pun here because you go out to the depths. Then you're uprooting and dredging to bring sand in. You're uprooting the whole ecosystem there, right? And causing lots of more effluents and particle particulates in the water. So there's that. But also the other thing too, is what we talked about in the episode with extreme weather. And we continue to see this. And most recently with the earthquakes in Burma, Myanmar and Thailand, but with lots of flooding that's going on and lots of... hurricanes and extreme weather patterns, that this coastal defense is so important because we see more people flocking to these areas. But now they're going there because they want beaches. And yet that whole natural defense is gone, which could be there and actually really help to decrease the impact. But instead of adding more mangroves in, we end up saying, oh, but I want to be able to walk on the beach and not be bitten by mosquitoes.   Jorden It's the ultimate irony of removing something for a disappearing beach, essentially, that you're going to enjoy for a generation or two before it's wiped out anyways. And to your point, you could have enjoyed your coastline. You could have enjoyed all the benefits if we had just strengthened those protections.   Kimberly Well, and we are the privileged people, right? Because most of the places where these mangroves are and these coastlines are, are developing countries. And they are trying to improve their livelihoods. They're trying to make ends meet. And so unless they have a good incentive to protect and conserve the mangroves, they're going to use those for those resources. And even if they're renewable resources, if they're borrowing into the future and overusing them, they're still going to end up contributing to deforestation of them and depletion of them.   Jorden Exactly. I think it's another great tie back to our sand episode, you know, with the disappearing river in Kerala in India, right, where they were dredging and removing sand for a short term economic gain that was entirely reasonable, but in the long run ended up costing them all more to have water brought in after the destruction of the river and the complete loss of that economic gain. So it is like in a lot of these, especially in developing countries, it's that short term economic pressure, which produces entirely reasonable outcomes. If you think about it from their perspective. but are separated from the long -term costs and consequences.   Kimberly Well, that would be like us, you know, anyone coming, it's always the do as we say, not as we did, right? For the United States, Canada, global North countries, especially ones that were colonizers and going out and exploiting these resources. And the people who are in these places are still doing exactly the same thing, basically. Because they produce cash crops for them, or they produce hardwoods for them, or because they don't have any other ways to make money because they've never owned the means of production. And so then that means that they are still making boats out of the wood. I mean, this is good wood that floats. That's what mangrove trees are. Of course, they're going to be buoyant. And so using those and using them for firewood and stuff, because that's their economic reality.   Jorden No, exactly. And, you know, in a lot of cases, because we extracted so much of the value that they couldn't move up the value chain of economics. Right. And so this gets to one of my favorite area of economics, though, because there's so much work now on trying to quantify the actual ecosystem service benefits to the economy so that we can show, you know, countries and communities. wait, no, here is the money that's generated for your economy from keeping this and that you're not seeing because no one's paying for that service and no one's being charged for it. And so when I looked at the 2022 systemic review of ecosystem service literatures on mangroves, and they had a wide range that ranged from 2 ,700 USD per hectare up to 80 ,000 USD per hectare of mangrove and ecosystem service benefits. That range really depended on the amount of ecosystem services included in the review. I mean, Kimberly, I really only touched on five. Some of these reviews looked at a total of 27 to 32 ecosystem services connected to mangroves. So that's how essential they are. When I was trying to find what's a better one that we could give people to think about as a mental placeholder, the National Institute of Health in America uses an average of 21 ,000 USD per hectare. And that's in line with an average from a number of other studies I looked at. So when we're thinking about this again, 21 and that's an annual ecosystem service benefit. So you think about that for every hectare lost, you have to essentially. And no one's doing it. But you'd have to pay $21 ,000 on average in most places to replace the benefits to water, to land. And in a lot of cases, you can't actually even do it. This is a way of economists of trying to quantify that. But you can't go back in and put in water filtration systems on the coast to do that for the plants, right?   Kimberly Well, and like you just talked about, to try to do it with dams and dykes and stuff. And that's certainly way more expensive. And it's certainly not nearly as environmentally friendly. And also, I mean, these are these externalities that we talk about every single episode that don't get quantified, that don't get included in. And here are the real costs that we're talking about. The World Bank valued it at approximately $50 ,000 for those who don't do hectares. Two and a half acres is a hectare. We're talking about livelihoods that actually through conservation could help the people whose resources were exploited and also promote sustainable development in the process and facilitate this. And so we need to do this because we all, everyone on the planet is at risk. And this was always one of the things that I would always say to my, you know, ask my students. Do you think that this, you know, here we are in the middle of, you know, Kentucky, the tri -state area, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, do you, are you affected by mangroves? And we would talk about this and I would always put it as an exam question then. And invariably, some people would still say, no, I'm not affected by this. And I was like, where were you when we were talking about this? Because how can you have sat through our whole discussion on the myriad ways that, that. Having mangroves, whether they're on your own, you know, in your own backyard or whether they're content in a way that they don't have an impact on your daily life. And they do because we see things like rising sea levels and the impact of that. And so with rising sea levels. We're not only losing mangroves, not only to deforestation, but because of the rising sea level. So they're, they're actually under threat from that. And the sad irony is that their conservation can actually help to stop this. And if we don't stop the, you know, protect the mangroves, then we're going to have more, but the mangroves are going to disappear. And that, that sort of catch 22. And so with rising sea levels, yeah. Okay. So, well, oh, here we are in the middle of the country like you, you know, in the middle of Canada. And why? So what? How are we going to be affected by that? Well, what about migration? You've got climate migration is a real thing. And so if you have people screaming about putting up borders and blocking out immigrants, then here's one more thing that's going to continue to contribute to that factor. Jorden Well, and at a simple level. Even if, you know, the most self -centered person who still believes in climate change, we'll use them as my example here, even for them, right? That I live in the middle of Canada. I live on a hill, you know, with no tornadoes, nothing. I'm good and I have my net zero house. Why do I care? It's the carbon at the end of the day. For every carbon sink that we lose on this planet, humans are going to have to reduce more emissions more rapidly to make up for that. So if you are the most self -centered climate activist in the world, which most aren't, it still dramatically affects what you will have to do in your lifetime to lose these amazing ecosystems.   Kimberly Right. Because right there, we're talking about with climate change, rising temperatures, dropping temperatures, extreme weather. It doesn't matter where you live, you're going to end up being affected by it.   Jorden And so before we dived into the drivers of the risks, I want to do a little level setting for everybody on the state of it, right? Because we've been talking about this just generally. So a couple important things that really helped contextualize this for me is that 20 to 30 % of global mangroves are already lost in the last 50 years. So everything that we're talking about today as totals is off of a 30 % reduction already, excuse me. And then looking forward, another 50 % of those remaining mangroves are at risk of collapse by 2050. And one of the things I struggle with in climate is everybody always talking about 2050 and saying how far away it feels, right? But again, that's really only 24 years away, right? And when we think that COVID already started five years ago,   Kimberly when we think that COVID already started five years ago, that that was the lockdown was five years. Five years ago does not feel like that long ago.   Jorden No, exactly. So these things, these dates that sound far off give a false sense of hope. So again, 50 % at risk by 2050. And diving in, 20 % of all global mangroves are in the critically endangered and endangered categories, like the cusp of actually collapsing. And so I just wanted to, like, that's what we're talking about. This is an ecosystem around the globe threatened, and a lot of it is on the edge as we go through some of these issues. I will in transparency, the only nice thing is that the rate of mangrove loss has halved over the last 30 years. So I think that's one area that humans are. And then to your point of the attention rising, I think that you can really track rising attention to mangroves and their benefits to that reduction in damage.   Kimberly And but so then when you start. Going through all of the whole list here of why they're at risk, in addition to rising sea levels, right? We've got the obvious one, deforestation. None of these are mutually exclusive because you look at that and say, oh, well, it's caused by these various other things. But in and of itself, the mangroves are depleted at three to five times faster than what tropical forests are. And yet they're only 0 .4 % of the overall forest area of the entire world. So we're looking at a minuscule amount of area. And yet it's going at a really high speed, even though it has been, you know, the brakes have been put on. And so, again, you know, that deforestation is that they're no longer there to process the emissions, the mangroves and the plants that the mangroves that protect. But then it releases all that CO2 back in that had been sequestered. So that's hugely problematic. But the deforestation is happening because of tourism. Right. We talked about already with beaches and. marinas and people who want to do water sports and so forth and want to be able to enjoy that without all of the biodiversity that comes along with the mangroves, like the mosquitoes, of course, are always going to be the number one.   Jorden People and mosquitoes. Yes. I mean, I'm from northern Canada originally. Trust me, they can drive you insane, but that's not a reason to cut anything down. And thinking about the impact of there, 62 % of that global loss of mangroves between 2000 and 2016 was driven by land use changes on both the deforestation for growth on one side. but also, as you mentioned, tourism and aquaculture on the other side. And so going back to my coastal defense, kind of talking about that, you know, everybody should think about how we're cutting the width down in two ways, right? The inland pressures on deforestation for wood, for harvesting, for cropland, and then the ocean side pressure. on the mangroves from wanting more tourist opportunities and aquaculture and they do interesting things like again because you need that depth to get those benefits you're either letting more of the ocean surge on to land in the first place or you're reducing its actual ability to stop it before it hits you know important infrastructure on the other side so that's how I started thinking about some of these losses   Kimberly Yeah. And so because of the commercial pressures through like aquaculture, that's a big and growing industry. Shrimp farming. I being in Thailand and seeing the shrimp farming and just areas they were clearing to be able to do that. And tuna ranching is actually a thing, too. And and these are really rough on the environment because they're in such small and it's like livestock, you know, factory farming for fish in these little tiny areas that are really concentrated with a lot of waste and so forth. And then also added to the fact that they're depleting the mangroves that actually could, if they were in place, help to deal with some of these issues caused by aquaculture. So that can be done in a sustainable way. It absolutely can. But because of the front financing and the pressures to produce more at a quicker rate at a lower overhead and race to the bottom, that's less likely to happen. The other big factor, especially because Indonesia has the largest set of mangrove acreage, hectareage, whatever you want to say, in the world is because of palm oil production. And in the 1990s, 2000s, I think it was mid -2000s when the USDA decided, banned trans fatty acids in processed foods. That was when we saw this huge, I forgot exactly when the year was, so don't quote me on that. Like somewhere between the mid -90s and the mid -2000s, right? Like we see this huge shift in demand for palm oil. And because of that, there was just a huge shift in places where it was already coming from. Indonesia and Malaysia are the biggest producers in the world. Now suddenly it's like, oh, we're going to monocrop this. And I flying over Borneo and just seeing whole areas that had been. tropical jungle tropical rainforest area and we're just literally row after row after row of mangrove and the only roads that were there were the roads that were connecting to the different like owned farms basically and so i mean everybody's heard of of that for sure in the orangutans and all of the other wildlife that's been displaced because of that and so so we see this this Increased demand for palm oil. Again, like I'm the average person here. How am I having not just being affected by, but how am I having an impact on what's going on also in the world? In this case, then it's like, well, if you don't want to pay for fairly trade, ethically sourced palm oil, then you're contributing to the factor and you're going to in turn then be affected by the fact that there are fewer mangroves.   Jorden Exactly. And as we mentioned in our Halloween episode, getting into some of the chocolate things, it's actually an area of looking for chocolate that either doesn't use palm oil as an additive or uses ethically sourced. And, you know, it's funny on the aquaculture and shrimping because I think in true sustainable planet fashion, I made a giant asterisk and said and have in all caps, we need to do an episode on this. Right.   Kimberly Right.   Jorden Because it is it is mind boggling. I like that you mentioned that it can be done sustainably and I kind of. I wanted to talk as a second as we're talking about these impacts that are driving the losses, you can actually think about how having mangroves around would actually reduce the impacts of these drivers, right? So tourism, you know, it's a narrow focus on just beaches and marinas because what they actually lose out on from losing the mangroves is coral reef protection and marine life. So if your tourism, if you have a dead beach at the end of the day that has no underwater activity and is lifeless, that's going to dry up your tourism, right? So it's a short -term trade -off when not realizing that actually the longer -term, more sustainable from a financial and actual enjoyment sense involves those mangroves. And similarly in the aquaculture, because one of the big problems is that these shrimp pens are temporary. So they end up cutting down this massive section of mangroves, building temporary pens, over farming it. And then they think, oh, we'll take them down and we do it in a new area. But nothing grows back because of that accumulated bio waste turns the area toxic. And now and again, a more natural, less intensive method that was actually used around the mangroves and use them for their benefit of that toxin filtering can produce a more sustainable system. And that's for each of these. It's like taking them away makes it worse. Right. drives further loss. And it's just sad.   Kimberly Yeah. And when we look at pollution, the biggest waste where this is happening also too, is from the aqua farming and obviously the tourism and the things we've mentioned, but also from industrial waste because industrial waste then is polluting the mangrove areas because the industries are, you know, like they're not, they don't need the beach, whatever, but they're still protected by these mangroves, but that industrial waste is going out and it's also causing these dead zones. And so, That is also contributing to the depletion of the mangroves. And we also have the soil erosion from that deforestation. So we've got lots of dead zones being created from these various activities that happen and either are when the mangroves have been cut down or they could still be standing and they're still being depleted.   Jorden And this is this is something that made me like, you know, we'll get I do have hope for the end of the episode, everyone. But one of the things that made me sad about this is that even though, as I said, the rate of loss is declining, has not hit zero, we're still losing roughly six percent of glow or zero point six, almost a full percent of global mangroves per year. But even as we change that, right, and we and we drive that down. The damage we've already caused and the drivers of climate change are increasing the natural, like up till now, natural loss of mangroves has been the lower factor. But there's worry that as we've reached tipping points and then as we go forward, that even though humans might now try to pull back and desperately try to save them, the natural drivers will continue that loss. And there's this sad climate irony of our, you know, we finally woken up and now we want to save it. I think that in life, we pretend there's always time to fix things. And in certain cases, there might not be.   Kimberly Yeah. And with this, we see the rising global temperatures. We see the increased spread of disease, the decreased availability from nutrition and fishing and the people who are dependent on that in these coastal areas who are typically poorer people to begin with. And we see the people who are fishing have to go out further to get the fish. And that puts them at an added disadvantage to be able to do that. We look at the global implications of deforestation and pollution and displaced persons and degrading habitats and migration due to insecurity. We look at these environmental, economic, health and security implications of the lack of mangrove conservation makes us, you know, really think we hope it's not too late to be able to do this.   Jorden No, exactly. And the concentration really drives the problem here, right? Climate migration in general, depending on what factor you're looking at, can be very dispersed. So like not hot spots, because that's what really drives major problems. But when looking at like sea level rise, loss of mangroves, and then the migration that will be triggered from that, you know, one study put it at about 3 % of the global population by 2100. But when you dive down into that, it's 100 % of the population in a number of countries, right? So like that smaller global number hides the fact that we're talking about mass migration problems out of a concentrated area and then typically into a neighboring region. Which, as we've already seen in the 21st century, drives massive, massive internal issues and stabilization. So some of these times we think about this as a climate issue or we frame it as that. And I often wonder if we leaned more on the national security and the global stability angle, would people get a little bit more concerned and wake up to some of this?   Kimberly And that's why I mentioned that, because climate migration is a real thing within, in place, displaced internally. as well as, right, so we see more crowding of cities and pressure on cities and then mass urbanization. And then we see what that does if you don't have a sustainable city. The other side of that is crossing borders and also battles over resources. And so we see actual civil wars and conflicts within regions and within countries, but across borders for these things. So with that, we're going to try something new with this episode. celebrating our one year anniversary of sustainable planet. And we decided that we're going to break our episode into two parts. So if you enjoyed part one, great. Part two of our mangroves episode will drop next Thursday. So until then, you can let us know how you feel about this, right? This would be the opportune time to do that. Email us at splanetpod at gmail .com. I promise you that one of us will respond to you. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. If you want to see show notes from today, look at the website. I will also give you some additional resources and you can check our data twice. You can read more on my Substack posts and we'd really appreciate if you take time to rate and review our Sustainable Planet podcast that we have for you. Thanks for listening and have a sustainable day and happy Earth Day.

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of the podcast, Jorden and Kimberly turn their attention to the amazing, yet underappreciated mangroves forests.  Remarkable coastal ecosystems that can capture 5 times more CO2 than rainforests, mangroves provide a powerful defense against climate change and coastal erosion in over 120 countries. Changing up the format, Sustainable Planet will drop weekly, covering topics in two parts. Part I focuses on the vital role of mangroves, why they’re often overlooked, and the main contributing factors jeopardizing this ecosystem. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Why rainforests get all the glamour while mangroves do the heavier lifting Just how many amazing attributes this marine ecosystem has What the biggest threats to mangrove conservation are How much more money mangrove conservation reaps than deforestation (to the tune of $80,000 per hectare!) How mangroves affect everyone’s well-being—no matter how long it takes to reach the beach Recommended Resources NOAA’s CoastalBlue Carbon assessment and conservation How mangrove conservation in Acapulco would have mitigated the effects of Hurricane Otis Mangrove deforestation in Southeast Asia For those new to carbon trading, a summary and an entire Sustainable Planet episode on the Cap & Trade System by your favorite podcasters Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post Episode Transcript Kimberly Welcome to our celebratory one -year anniversary episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir and my co -host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. With Earth Day approaching, hopefully sustainability is on more people's minds. Anyone paying attention knows we should save the rainforests. But what about mangroves, an even more vital ecosystem? But Jordan, I bet you've heard about mangroves long before I even suggested this topic.   Jorden I got really excited when you suggested this topic, Kimberly. And I have a little bit of a long and random story into this, so bear with me. But my discovery of mangroves started a long time ago with Bjorn Lumberg and his obsession with the idea of building dikes everywhere to protect from coastal erosion and rising sea levels. It was an easy solution. And I was young enough that I was like, well, it sounds reasonable. Like, why are we not doing this then? And it was the start of a fundamental lesson for me in climate change, which is if somebody is saying there's a super simple, reasonable way to fix this massive problem, then everyone has already looked into it because no one is pas the super simple solutions. And I often think of a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, a false but clear and precise idea always has more power in the world than one which is true and complex. And I think that can be used in so much, but especially here. The funny thing is, as I looked into dykes and found out that they couldn't be built around a lot of small developing islands because of either coastline features or cost, and that they just don't work in a lot of places, it led me to find out that we already had something that worked, mangroves. And a lot of our discussion around that is going to be around we don't need to engineer a new crazy solution. We need to protect and enhance the natural solution that's doing it so well.   Kimberly Yeah, instead of destroying it. The thing is, is it mangroves? This is a topic that I regularly introduced to my classes when I was teaching introduction to international relations, because it's multifaceted, right? It's an environmental issue, but it's got economic implications. It's got human rights implications. It's got environment. Also, it's like, you know, like health implications. Yeah, I was gonna say world health implications and also even security implications, right? So across the board, it hit on all of these international general issues. And I would start out oftentimes the class by using this. And for the longest time, one or two people would raise their hands to say they knew what mangroves were before we started talking about them in class, like almost out of classes of 45 students. As time has gone on I've seen a little bit more like of an increase in the number of people who are familiar with them. But generally speaking, still, it was quite a minority. And so my joke was always, you know, like they're the less sexy thing. When you think about what's going to make the calendar for the environmental cause, is it going to be the, you know, multicolored, awesome looking frogs or birds? Or is it going to be the bland looking, unless you know what you're looking at, mangroves, mangrove forests?   Jorden No, exactly. And I think that even amongst a lot of people I know, you know, other ecosystems such as you mentioned forests already, but even wetlands tend to get a lot more focus and people know about them. And I think it reflects a weird view because, I mean, mangroves are found in 121 of the 195 countries globally. They are pervasive. I mean, their distribution is concentrated, right? I mean, 40 % of all global mangroves are found in just four countries, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Mexico. It's surprising there's dispersion and how most countries have an example of them, but people have no idea about them in their own ecosystems.   Kimberly Well, and it's their tropical and subtropical forests. So a lot of times they're not really in, we don't see them nearly as prevalent in global north countries. It's the global south countries, developing countries, emerging economies, but the continent of Australia has got a lot of mangroves too, right? So you sort of see that, but mostly the attention is just, we hadn't gotten a lot of attention because for example, in the United States, where a lot of the mangroves were, was Florida. And they were all ripped out because people wanted long stretches of sandy beaches. They didn't want mosquitoes, right? All of those things that the reasons why the mangroves are there are all of the problems Florida is having now in of beach erosion and having to try to shore up during tropical storms because they've lost that natural barrier protection. And also just the biodiversity that was just off in the process of this. And so when it comes to these tropical and subtropical forests, another thing that goes along with them is the fact that they also protect the seaweed and the sea grasses and the salty marshes that are in the same brackish areas, which are also really great because these are carbon sinks. These are blue carbon areas. And these are so important. We talk about, everybody hears about. Blue zones for supposedly that these are the healthiest people in the world where these are in fact blue zones, legitimate blue zones. These blue carbons, areas that are carbon sinks that capture and sequester basically and store more CO2 than rainforest do. And that's what really started to get people's attention in my classes was that they had no idea that these trap three to five times more CO2 emissions than rainforest do. They'll reinforce get all the attention.   Jorden And I think this is actually where you see it reflected in the scientific literature over the last 15 years. Mangroves have a lot of attention in the scientific literature because of their recognized importance. It hasn't translated to the broader public. And on the carbon point, I want to put this in context for people. So I was trying to find different comparisons. And I think the best one was in a single square mile of mangroves, they remove and sequester roughly the same emission as 90 ,000 cars. So when we and I want to put this in context for, you know, North American audience. So when you're looking at Florida and the destruction there, this is even finding out. So I was like, oh, there's 800 square miles of mangroves still left in Florida, very dispersed and fractured and being lost. And seeing how much of that is what was there even a decade ago is sad. But let's looking at that 800 square miles that you have the capacity to annually remove and store the equivalent of 72 million cars. which is roughly 25 % of America's total commercial and personal vehicle fleet in what is just remaining. So like the actual carbon impact of these areas is just massive. And I really like 25 % of all personal and commercial and enger vehicles. I don't think that there's very few other natural processes that are in concentrated areas that I can point to that have that level of impact.   Kimberly And that's the thing is that. The rainforests got a lot of attention, and rightly so, because they are also really important. And they were being deforested, cut down at a breakneck speed rate for the hardwoods that they harvest and all of the other. There are an awful lot of renewable resources in rainforests. And as countries were sort of persuaded, and that was why, you know, 1994, that's why the UNEP had its sustainable development. meeting in Rio de Janeiro was to draw attention to that, to say, hey, we need to have more attention because Brazil's rainforest, one of the biggest places with rainforest was just being cut down at really high rate. And that was actually turned around and doing really well for a while. And then when Bolsonaro came in, he reversed everything. But now that Lulu's back in power again, like that's been reversed again. So it's hopeful again.   Jorden It's hopeful, but I think it really drives to how short -term politics can have massive long -term consequences on some of these issues, right?   Kimberly Yes, for certain.   Jorden You mentioned biodiversity. And one of the things that I thought is the coolest about these, and I got really excited when we were going to talk about it, is that just by their nature, like the mangroves themselves represent one of the most interesting forms of biodiversity on the planet because they are all specialized trees and shrubs. So we're saying mangroves, which is a broad definition of an ecosystem on brackish water that has specialized trees and shrubs. In the States, for example, there were four types primarily of trees and shrubs that exist in mangroves. And why they're so cool is they have literally evolved processes to deal with that high saline water. So, you know, some of them filter the salt out before the roots fully absorb the water. Others actually sweat and excrete the excess salt from their bodies and through their leaves. And it's just like such an interesting and unique type of plant life on our planet.   Kimberly Well, and it's really cool too, because for anyone who has seen mangroves, they have really long root systems that come up above the soil or the sand or wherever they're kind of situated. And so they have these really long root systems. And those are really cool because they're protective areas then for fish and other things that swim in the sea. Sea life, I guess we can use that. There's a word for that. So other sea life, right? And also because of the root system, they provide for all, like we said, you know, you mentioned too, the grasses and the marsh, like all of those reeds and so forth that grow along there in that area. Then all of this stuff acts as a filtration system that really keeps the freshwater separate from the seawater. And that's such an important thing. When we look at that, the other thing that is just, I think, so important about, in addition to this, they act as a filtration system. They trap the sediments and heavy metals and pollutants and so forth. And keeping that fresh and salt water separate. The thing that really just amazes me that's so cool is that they, in storing. this carbon like they do it in the sediment and they do it in the like below and so it's there and and it's going to stay there and they are always continuing to suck up more and more and more and unlike in forests where you see like the trees die or there are forest fires and other natural causes or the town whatever in this instance like they just continue to keep storing that and doing that indefinitely unless you start ripping them out. And that's where we lose, not just it has that dually awful environmental repercussion of losing the thing that's actually sucking up the carbon as well as releasing everything that had been stored back into the atmosphere. And so that's bad news.   Jorden A hundred percent. I think it's really key to focus on there for a second that the natural process of how it stores is much more in that root system. So again, there's smaller trees and shrubs. So what we see above ground is normally always in of size, the root network is going to be bigger. But in the mangrove case, in of actual volume, right, a material where in natural more boreal forests or tropical forests. A lot of that carbon, excuse me, is stored in the actual trunks and the actual tree mass above ground. So when those die off and through natural processes release more back and create, I think, more of a fluctuation. Whereas to your point, this is eons that this can be stored in if it maintains a healthy habitat.   Kimberly Yes. And the thing is, is that when you want to create beaches or something, though, or if you're digging up for farming, like is what's going on, especially with Indonesia and Malaysia and other places, Brazil too. For palm oil production, they have to necessarily, in order to monocrop the palm oil trees, the date palm trees, they have to actually then uproot the whole system as well. And that's what's really bad, which is why it's also so much worse and so much more important to protect because the consequences are so much worse because all of that stored carbon is being released in a way that... As you just described, that's not the case if you're just cutting where the tree is storing most of it above ground.   Jorden Exactly. You know, we've hit on you think about what is lost there, right? In the destruction of a mangrove and the carbon, the biodiversity and the entire. So you think about the fishing communities are and we're going to go into this more later. But it's taking that out doesn't just lose one thing. And a lot of these issues, you know, we know are interconnected and we highlight that. But we can point out this is the big aspect of this. And I think mangroves are so interesting because as you said, you told your students. They have such big factors that are like such big benefits across multiple categories. It's not just a loss on one. And so one of the ones going back to my example of how I got into this is the storm barriers and that coastal defense. And I wanted to hit through there's really there's four ways that mangroves really drive coastal defense for, you know, shorelines. And that's across waves. So I found some really interesting stats here because they've broken this out for policymakers. So mangroves reduce wave height from by 13 to 66 percent per 100 meter of mangrove. So one of the things that's going to come out here right away is the depth of those mangroves is really, really important. So, again, 100 meters between 13 and 66 percent height reduction. 1 ,000 meters of mangroves needed for storm surge protection, which reduce between 5 to 50 centimeters of the height of the storm surge per kilometer. So now you're thinking about these damages from climate change on the coastal systems because we're putting them right up against it and taking out these natural barriers. And one of the ones that I think it gets a lot of attention when it happens is tsunamis. And I found it interesting that per 100 meters of mangroves, tsunami flood depth is reduced by 5 to 30 percent. So just massive benefits. And across all of these benefits are done at a far lower cost by protecting these than building out in the places it would work, massive engineered dike systems. And then at the ultimate side, it's the erosion. Those roots we've been talking about allow the sediment to be trapped and stay there. And with the removal of the mangroves, you start losing your coastlines even faster and facing greater acceleration. It's just it's crazy to me. It actually is crazy when you start talking about this. Well,   Kimberly it ties into two things that we've talked about before. One is sand because we talked about sand depletion. Right. And even though. This sort of sand isn't necessarily exactly the same sort of sand we talked about for construction. There is still this aspect of sand demand where there is coastline erosion. And that sand, every community that has beaches is trying to shore that up somehow and try to replace that sand. It's coming from somewhere because this other sand is being washed out, right? And even if they're going off the coast and doing it, I mean, this is way out of my depth, but I mean, I guess an appropriate pun here because you go out to the depths. Then you're uprooting and dredging to bring sand in. You're uprooting the whole ecosystem there, right? And causing lots of more effluents and particle particulates in the water. So there's that. But also the other thing too, is what we talked about in the episode with extreme weather. And we continue to see this. And most recently with the earthquakes in Burma, Myanmar and Thailand, but with lots of flooding that's going on and lots of... hurricanes and extreme weather patterns, that this coastal defense is so important because we see more people flocking to these areas. But now they're going there because they want beaches. And yet that whole natural defense is gone, which could be there and actually really help to decrease the impact. But instead of adding more mangroves in, we end up saying, oh, but I want to be able to walk on the beach and not be bitten by mosquitoes.   Jorden It's the ultimate irony of removing something for a disappearing beach, essentially, that you're going to enjoy for a generation or two before it's wiped out anyways. And to your point, you could have enjoyed your coastline. You could have enjoyed all the benefits if we had just strengthened those protections.   Kimberly Well, and we are the privileged people, right? Because most of the places where these mangroves are and these coastlines are, are developing countries. And they are trying to improve their livelihoods. They're trying to make ends meet. And so unless they have a good incentive to protect and conserve the mangroves, they're going to use those for those resources. And even if they're renewable resources, if they're borrowing into the future and overusing them, they're still going to end up contributing to deforestation of them and depletion of them.   Jorden Exactly. I think it's another great tie back to our sand episode, you know, with the disappearing river in Kerala in India, right, where they were dredging and removing sand for a short term economic gain that was entirely reasonable, but in the long run ended up costing them all more to have water brought in after the destruction of the river and the complete loss of that economic gain. So it is like in a lot of these, especially in developing countries, it's that short term economic pressure, which produces entirely reasonable outcomes. If you think about it from their perspective. but are separated from the long -term costs and consequences.   Kimberly Well, that would be like us, you know, anyone coming, it's always the do as we say, not as we did, right? For the United States, Canada, global North countries, especially ones that were colonizers and going out and exploiting these resources. And the people who are in these places are still doing exactly the same thing, basically. Because they produce cash crops for them, or they produce hardwoods for them, or because they don't have any other ways to make money because they've never owned the means of production. And so then that means that they are still making boats out of the wood. I mean, this is good wood that floats. That's what mangrove trees are. Of course, they're going to be buoyant. And so using those and using them for firewood and stuff, because that's their economic reality.   Jorden No, exactly. And, you know, in a lot of cases, because we extracted so much of the value that they couldn't move up the value chain of economics. Right. And so this gets to one of my favorite area of economics, though, because there's so much work now on trying to quantify the actual ecosystem service benefits to the economy so that we can show, you know, countries and communities. wait, no, here is the money that's generated for your economy from keeping this and that you're not seeing because no one's paying for that service and no one's being charged for it. And so when I looked at the 2022 systemic review of ecosystem service literatures on mangroves, and they had a wide range that ranged from 2 ,700 USD per hectare up to 80 ,000 USD per hectare of mangrove and ecosystem service benefits. That range really depended on the amount of ecosystem services included in the review. I mean, Kimberly, I really only touched on five. Some of these reviews looked at a total of 27 to 32 ecosystem services connected to mangroves. So that's how essential they are. When I was trying to find what's a better one that we could give people to think about as a mental placeholder, the National Institute of Health in America uses an average of 21 ,000 USD per hectare. And that's in line with an average from a number of other studies I looked at. So when we're thinking about this again, 21 and that's an annual ecosystem service benefit. So you think about that for every hectare lost, you have to essentially. And no one's doing it. But you'd have to pay $21 ,000 on average in most places to replace the benefits to water, to land. And in a lot of cases, you can't actually even do it. This is a way of economists of trying to quantify that. But you can't go back in and put in water filtration systems on the coast to do that for the plants, right?   Kimberly Well, and like you just talked about, to try to do it with dams and dykes and stuff. And that's certainly way more expensive. And it's certainly not nearly as environmentally friendly. And also, I mean, these are these externalities that we talk about every single episode that don't get quantified, that don't get included in. And here are the real costs that we're talking about. The World Bank valued it at approximately $50 ,000 for those who don't do hectares. Two and a half acres is a hectare. We're talking about livelihoods that actually through conservation could help the people whose resources were exploited and also promote sustainable development in the process and facilitate this. And so we need to do this because we all, everyone on the planet is at risk. And this was always one of the things that I would always say to my, you know, ask my students. Do you think that this, you know, here we are in the middle of, you know, Kentucky, the tri -state area, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, do you, are you affected by mangroves? And we would talk about this and I would always put it as an exam question then. And invariably, some people would still say, no, I'm not affected by this. And I was like, where were you when we were talking about this? Because how can you have sat through our whole discussion on the myriad ways that, that. Having mangroves, whether they're on your own, you know, in your own backyard or whether they're content in a way that they don't have an impact on your daily life. And they do because we see things like rising sea levels and the impact of that. And so with rising sea levels. We're not only losing mangroves, not only to deforestation, but because of the rising sea level. So they're, they're actually under threat from that. And the sad irony is that their conservation can actually help to stop this. And if we don't stop the, you know, protect the mangroves, then we're going to have more, but the mangroves are going to disappear. And that, that sort of catch 22. And so with rising sea levels, yeah. Okay. So, well, oh, here we are in the middle of the country like you, you know, in the middle of Canada. And why? So what? How are we going to be affected by that? Well, what about migration? You've got climate migration is a real thing. And so if you have people screaming about putting up borders and blocking out immigrants, then here's one more thing that's going to continue to contribute to that factor. Jorden Well, and at a simple level. Even if, you know, the most self -centered person who still believes in climate change, we'll use them as my example here, even for them, right? That I live in the middle of Canada. I live on a hill, you know, with no tornadoes, nothing. I'm good and I have my net zero house. Why do I care? It's the carbon at the end of the day. For every carbon sink that we lose on this planet, humans are going to have to reduce more emissions more rapidly to make up for that. So if you are the most self -centered climate activist in the world, which most aren't, it still dramatically affects what you will have to do in your lifetime to lose these amazing ecosystems.   Kimberly Right. Because right there, we're talking about with climate change, rising temperatures, dropping temperatures, extreme weather. It doesn't matter where you live, you're going to end up being affected by it.   Jorden And so before we dived into the drivers of the risks, I want to do a little level setting for everybody on the state of it, right? Because we've been talking about this just generally. So a couple important things that really helped contextualize this for me is that 20 to 30 % of global mangroves are already lost in the last 50 years. So everything that we're talking about today as totals is off of a 30 % reduction already, excuse me. And then looking forward, another 50 % of those remaining mangroves are at risk of collapse by 2050. And one of the things I struggle with in climate is everybody always talking about 2050 and saying how far away it feels, right? But again, that's really only 24 years away, right? And when we think that COVID already started five years ago,   Kimberly when we think that COVID already started five years ago, that that was the lockdown was five years. Five years ago does not feel like that long ago.   Jorden No, exactly. So these things, these dates that sound far off give a false sense of hope. So again, 50 % at risk by 2050. And diving in, 20 % of all global mangroves are in the critically endangered and endangered categories, like the cusp of actually collapsing. And so I just wanted to, like, that's what we're talking about. This is an ecosystem around the globe threatened, and a lot of it is on the edge as we go through some of these issues. I will in transparency, the only nice thing is that the rate of mangrove loss has halved over the last 30 years. So I think that's one area that humans are. And then to your point of the attention rising, I think that you can really track rising attention to mangroves and their benefits to that reduction in damage.   Kimberly And but so then when you start. Going through all of the whole list here of why they're at risk, in addition to rising sea levels, right? We've got the obvious one, deforestation. None of these are mutually exclusive because you look at that and say, oh, well, it's caused by these various other things. But in and of itself, the mangroves are depleted at three to five times faster than what tropical forests are. And yet they're only 0 .4 % of the overall forest area of the entire world. So we're looking at a minuscule amount of area. And yet it's going at a really high speed, even though it has been, you know, the brakes have been put on. And so, again, you know, that deforestation is that they're no longer there to process the emissions, the mangroves and the plants that the mangroves that protect. But then it releases all that CO2 back in that had been sequestered. So that's hugely problematic. But the deforestation is happening because of tourism. Right. We talked about already with beaches and. marinas and people who want to do water sports and so forth and want to be able to enjoy that without all of the biodiversity that comes along with the mangroves, like the mosquitoes, of course, are always going to be the number one.   Jorden People and mosquitoes. Yes. I mean, I'm from northern Canada originally. Trust me, they can drive you insane, but that's not a reason to cut anything down. And thinking about the impact of there, 62 % of that global loss of mangroves between 2000 and 2016 was driven by land use changes on both the deforestation for growth on one side. but also, as you mentioned, tourism and aquaculture on the other side. And so going back to my coastal defense, kind of talking about that, you know, everybody should think about how we're cutting the width down in two ways, right? The inland pressures on deforestation for wood, for harvesting, for cropland, and then the ocean side pressure. on the mangroves from wanting more tourist opportunities and aquaculture and they do interesting things like again because you need that depth to get those benefits you're either letting more of the ocean surge on to land in the first place or you're reducing its actual ability to stop it before it hits you know important infrastructure on the other side so that's how I started thinking about some of these losses   Kimberly Yeah. And so because of the commercial pressures through like aquaculture, that's a big and growing industry. Shrimp farming. I being in Thailand and seeing the shrimp farming and just areas they were clearing to be able to do that. And tuna ranching is actually a thing, too. And and these are really rough on the environment because they're in such small and it's like livestock, you know, factory farming for fish in these little tiny areas that are really concentrated with a lot of waste and so forth. And then also added to the fact that they're depleting the mangroves that actually could, if they were in place, help to deal with some of these issues caused by aquaculture. So that can be done in a sustainable way. It absolutely can. But because of the front financing and the pressures to produce more at a quicker rate at a lower overhead and race to the bottom, that's less likely to happen. The other big factor, especially because Indonesia has the largest set of mangrove acreage, hectareage, whatever you want to say, in the world is because of palm oil production. And in the 1990s, 2000s, I think it was mid -2000s when the USDA decided, banned trans fatty acids in processed foods. That was when we saw this huge, I forgot exactly when the year was, so don't quote me on that. Like somewhere between the mid -90s and the mid -2000s, right? Like we see this huge shift in demand for palm oil. And because of that, there was just a huge shift in places where it was already coming from. Indonesia and Malaysia are the biggest producers in the world. Now suddenly it's like, oh, we're going to monocrop this. And I flying over Borneo and just seeing whole areas that had been. tropical jungle tropical rainforest area and we're just literally row after row after row of mangrove and the only roads that were there were the roads that were connecting to the different like owned farms basically and so i mean everybody's heard of of that for sure in the orangutans and all of the other wildlife that's been displaced because of that and so so we see this this Increased demand for palm oil. Again, like I'm the average person here. How am I having not just being affected by, but how am I having an impact on what's going on also in the world? In this case, then it's like, well, if you don't want to pay for fairly trade, ethically sourced palm oil, then you're contributing to the factor and you're going to in turn then be affected by the fact that there are fewer mangroves.   Jorden Exactly. And as we mentioned in our Halloween episode, getting into some of the chocolate things, it's actually an area of looking for chocolate that either doesn't use palm oil as an additive or uses ethically sourced. And, you know, it's funny on the aquaculture and shrimping because I think in true sustainable planet fashion, I made a giant asterisk and said and have in all caps, we need to do an episode on this. Right.   Kimberly Right.   Jorden Because it is it is mind boggling. I like that you mentioned that it can be done sustainably and I kind of. I wanted to talk as a second as we're talking about these impacts that are driving the losses, you can actually think about how having mangroves around would actually reduce the impacts of these drivers, right? So tourism, you know, it's a narrow focus on just beaches and marinas because what they actually lose out on from losing the mangroves is coral reef protection and marine life. So if your tourism, if you have a dead beach at the end of the day that has no underwater activity and is lifeless, that's going to dry up your tourism, right? So it's a short -term trade -off when not realizing that actually the longer -term, more sustainable from a financial and actual enjoyment sense involves those mangroves. And similarly in the aquaculture, because one of the big problems is that these shrimp pens are temporary. So they end up cutting down this massive section of mangroves, building temporary pens, over farming it. And then they think, oh, we'll take them down and we do it in a new area. But nothing grows back because of that accumulated bio waste turns the area toxic. And now and again, a more natural, less intensive method that was actually used around the mangroves and use them for their benefit of that toxin filtering can produce a more sustainable system. And that's for each of these. It's like taking them away makes it worse. Right. drives further loss. And it's just sad.   Kimberly Yeah. And when we look at pollution, the biggest waste where this is happening also too, is from the aqua farming and obviously the tourism and the things we've mentioned, but also from industrial waste because industrial waste then is polluting the mangrove areas because the industries are, you know, like they're not, they don't need the beach, whatever, but they're still protected by these mangroves, but that industrial waste is going out and it's also causing these dead zones. And so, That is also contributing to the depletion of the mangroves. And we also have the soil erosion from that deforestation. So we've got lots of dead zones being created from these various activities that happen and either are when the mangroves have been cut down or they could still be standing and they're still being depleted.   Jorden And this is this is something that made me like, you know, we'll get I do have hope for the end of the episode, everyone. But one of the things that made me sad about this is that even though, as I said, the rate of loss is declining, has not hit zero, we're still losing roughly six percent of glow or zero point six, almost a full percent of global mangroves per year. But even as we change that, right, and we and we drive that down. The damage we've already caused and the drivers of climate change are increasing the natural, like up till now, natural loss of mangroves has been the lower factor. But there's worry that as we've reached tipping points and then as we go forward, that even though humans might now try to pull back and desperately try to save them, the natural drivers will continue that loss. And there's this sad climate irony of our, you know, we finally woken up and now we want to save it. I think that in life, we pretend there's always time to fix things. And in certain cases, there might not be.   Kimberly Yeah. And with this, we see the rising global temperatures. We see the increased spread of disease, the decreased availability from nutrition and fishing and the people who are dependent on that in these coastal areas who are typically poorer people to begin with. And we see the people who are fishing have to go out further to get the fish. And that puts them at an added disadvantage to be able to do that. We look at the global implications of deforestation and pollution and displaced persons and degrading habitats and migration due to insecurity. We look at these environmental, economic, health and security implications of the lack of mangrove conservation makes us, you know, really think we hope it's not too late to be able to do this.   Jorden No, exactly. And the concentration really drives the problem here, right? Climate migration in general, depending on what factor you're looking at, can be very dispersed. So like not hot spots, because that's what really drives major problems. But when looking at like sea level rise, loss of mangroves, and then the migration that will be triggered from that, you know, one study put it at about 3 % of the global population by 2100. But when you dive down into that, it's 100 % of the population in a number of countries, right? So like that smaller global number hides the fact that we're talking about mass migration problems out of a concentrated area and then typically into a neighboring region. Which, as we've already seen in the 21st century, drives massive, massive internal issues and stabilization. So some of these times we think about this as a climate issue or we frame it as that. And I often wonder if we leaned more on the national security and the global stability angle, would people get a little bit more concerned and wake up to some of this?   Kimberly And that's why I mentioned that, because climate migration is a real thing within, in place, displaced internally. as well as, right, so we see more crowding of cities and pressure on cities and then mass urbanization. And then we see what that does if you don't have a sustainable city. The other side of that is crossing borders and also battles over resources. And so we see actual civil wars and conflicts within regions and within countries, but across borders for these things. So with that, we're going to try something new with this episode. celebrating our one year anniversary of sustainable planet. And we decided that we're going to break our episode into two parts. So if you enjoyed part one, great. Part two of our mangroves episode will drop next Thursday. So until then, you can let us know how you feel about this, right? This would be the opportune time to do that. Email us at splanetpod at gmail .com. I promise you that one of us will respond to you. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. If you want to see show notes from today, look at the website. I will also give you some additional resources and you can check our data twice. You can read more on my Substack posts and we'd really appreciate if you take time to rate and review our Sustainable Planet podcast that we have for you. Thanks for listening and have a sustainable day and happy Earth Day.

Some people have to think about it on a daily basis. The more fortune only think about it when a pipe bursts, there’s a drought warning, during a natural disaster, or if a contamination story hits the news. The reality is that freshwater supplies are dwindling, affecting everyone regardless of their personal situation. Jorden and Kimberly discuss the biggest threats, types of freshwater, the viability of alternative sources of potable water, the true cost of clean water, and who’s working to improve water security for the planet. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Some mind-blowing stats about water availability, usage, pollution, and fresh drinking water Whether Fiji should export its freshwater Why not all freshwater needs to be potable to be usable What s for the biggest ‘water footprint’ trades How most of the world’s freshwater is used Why tap water in developed countries is invariably safer to drink than bottled water How at-risk countries cope with potable water shortages Just how sustainable alternative water solutions actually are Recommended Resources Extensive UN 2018 review on water pollution from agriculture The UN’s Report on Freshwater Issues All about the UN World Water Forum Why WASH is worth ing US EPA Water Funding 2024 Report A telling water scarcity map Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

Some people have to think about it on a daily basis. The more fortune only think about it when a pipe bursts, there’s a drought warning, during a natural disaster, or if a contamination story hits the news. The reality is that freshwater supplies are dwindling, affecting everyone regardless of their personal situation. Jorden and Kimberly discuss the biggest threats, types of freshwater, the viability of alternative sources of potable water, the true cost of clean water, and who’s working to improve water security for the planet. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: Some mind-blowing stats about water availability, usage, pollution, and fresh drinking water Whether Fiji should export its freshwater Why not all freshwater needs to be potable to be usable What s for the biggest ‘water footprint’ trades How most of the world’s freshwater is used Why tap water in developed countries is invariably safer to drink than bottled water How at-risk countries cope with potable water shortages Just how sustainable alternative water solutions actually are Recommended Resources Extensive UN 2018 review on water pollution from agriculture The UN’s Report on Freshwater Issues All about the UN World Water Forum Why WASH is worth ing US EPA Water Funding 2024 Report A telling water scarcity map Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The 5-Year Anniversary of the Coronavirus lockdown prompted consideration of the single-use disposable packaging situation. Convenience for the consumer and lower costs for the manufacturer backed us into an ecological hole. Focusing on the food industry, Jorden and Kimberly discuss the shift from a much more sustainable system of reuse to one of discard. From Kraft Singles and Lunchables, fast food and junk food, coffee runs and booze bombs, consumers are spoiled by modern conveniences. But the trade-off for eating on the run is heaps and tons of petroleum-based, disposable packaging. Despite the shocking statistics for single-use wrappers and containers, cups and lids, straws and stirrers, convenience is king. A variety of innovative biobased packaging solutions offer hope, but require supply chain changes that may prove too unappealing to MNCs without government dictates. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How we became a ‘throw-away’ culture Why convenience dictates packaging Why the only sustainable way forward is to integrate alternative packaging Why integrating alternative packaging is an uphill battle, despite the multitude of benefits of biobased packaging What fast-food companies are doing to reduce single-use packaging Yet more ways that travel is a nightmare for the environment What we can do to reduce our dependence without giving up convenience Recommended Resources Susan Freinkel’s Plastic: A Toxic Love Story- Dated, but still worth the read A little history of disposables and a longer one Some fast food company packaging waste reduction strategies Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The 5-Year Anniversary of the Coronavirus lockdown prompted consideration of the single-use disposable packaging situation. Convenience for the consumer and lower costs for the manufacturer backed us into an ecological hole. Focusing on the food industry, Jorden and Kimberly discuss the shift from a much more sustainable system of reuse to one of discard. From Kraft Singles and Lunchables, fast food and junk food, coffee runs and booze bombs, consumers are spoiled by modern conveniences. But the trade-off for eating on the run is heaps and tons of petroleum-based, disposable packaging. Despite the shocking statistics for single-use wrappers and containers, cups and lids, straws and stirrers, convenience is king. A variety of innovative biobased packaging solutions offer hope, but require supply chain changes that may prove too unappealing to MNCs without government dictates. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How we became a ‘throw-away’ culture Why convenience dictates packaging Why the only sustainable way forward is to integrate alternative packaging Why integrating alternative packaging is an uphill battle, despite the multitude of benefits of biobased packaging What fast-food companies are doing to reduce single-use packaging Yet more ways that travel is a nightmare for the environment What we can do to reduce our dependence without giving up convenience Recommended Resources Susan Freinkel’s Plastic: A Toxic Love Story- Dated, but still worth the read A little history of disposables and a longer one Some fast food company packaging waste reduction strategies Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The results of a media search would have anyone believe that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are the worst things ever created, science experiments deg crops that destroy human health and the planet. Instead, the global food system is far more complex than the claim that conventionally-grown crops (a.k.a. GMOs) are Frankenfoods and organic crops will save the day. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How the methods farmers have used since the domestication of agriculture morphed into GMO production How corporations gave genetically modified crops a bad name Which claims about organic farming are overblown or legitimate Whether to believe nutritional claims about organic produce Why Asians have the Green Revolution to thank for development Why monocropping is rotten, even if the crops are organic Why organic crops will never be able to feed the global population How the race to the bottom is the biggest enemy of the global food system Recommended Resources The Mayo Clinic’s take on organics Are Organic Foods Really More Nutritious? The USDA’s attempt to standardize organic certification Why farmers choose GMO crops A bit dated, but systematic policy review of GMOs A video on bioengineering of food Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post

The results of a media search would have anyone believe that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are the worst things ever created, science experiments deg crops that destroy human health and the planet. Instead, the global food system is far more complex than the claim that conventionally-grown crops (a.k.a. GMOs) are Frankenfoods and organic crops will save the day. Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include: How the methods farmers have used since the domestication of agriculture morphed into GMO production How corporations gave genetically modified crops a bad name Which claims about organic farming are overblown or legitimate Whether to believe nutritional claims about organic produce Why Asians have the Green Revolution to thank for development Why monocropping is rotten, even if the crops are organic Why organic crops will never be able to feed the global population How the race to the bottom is the biggest enemy of the global food system Recommended Resources The Mayo Clinic’s take on organics Are Organic Foods Really More Nutritious? The USDA’s attempt to standardize organic certification Why farmers choose GMO crops A bit dated, but systematic policy review of GMOs A video on bioengineering of food Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post