About Climate Break
Climate Solutions in Under 2 Minutes
Climate change is upon us. Fire, drought, heat, sea level rise, hurricanes, wildfire smoke, and melting ice caps are all part of our new normal. But something else is happening, as well. Scientists, innovators, organizations, cities, companies, and residents are taking action, making progress, and finding solutions.
Subscribe to Our Podcast
Climate Break brings you stories of climate progress and interviews with climate innovators from California and around the world, in under 2 minutes. Some episodes offer extended interviews with the people taking action and finding solutions. Get new episodes delivered to your favorite podcast platform by subscribing!
Subscribe to Our Blog
You can also subscribe to the Climate Break blog, published alongside each episode. Each blog post has more information about the topic, links for further information, and suggestions for how you can get involved. Subscribe to get each new episode delivered to your inbox!
For Radio Stations
Climate Break brings your audience stories of climate progress and interviews with climate innovators around the world each week, all in just 1 minute and 45 seconds. Hosted by Ethan Elkind, the Director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California at Berkeley, and produced by UC Berkeley students, Climate Break empowers its audience to learn about climate change, stay up-to-date on the latest climate science, and incorporate climate solutions into their own lives.
Our episodes are available for free to radio stations across the United States, downloadable from PRX.
To air Climate Break on your station, we ask the following:
- You agree to not edit or excerpt Climate Break without our written permission.
- You do not charge listeners to access our audio, if placed on your website.
- You provide us with details of the day(s) and time(s) you intend to air the program.
Climate Break is regularly aired on KALW, KSFP-LP, and KLBP; several other stations have aired some of our most popular episodes. You can learn more about Climate Break’s audience by downloading our media kit.
If you would like further information, please contact us at climatebreakadmin@berkeley.edu.
Climate Break: A Brief History
Climate Break is a production of Project Climate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & Environment (CLEE) in conjunction with the UC Berkeley Journalism School. Our solution-oriented, radio-ready shows are produced by students and climate law and policy experts at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco Bay Area.
But how did all of this happen?
The Beginning
Climate Break began as an idea from Ken Alex. Ken, who is the director of Project Climate, is focused on moving promising climate solutions more quickly to policy and scale. What better way to do so than by letting the public know about all the cool solutions that are being developed? Ethan, who is the director of CLEE’s Climate Program and a regular host of the weekly call-in radio show State of the Bay on KALW, was excited at the prospect of hosting CLEE’s new podcast.
Not long after, Climate Break was born! Our first episode was published on August 20, 2020. Climate Break is produced almost entirely by UC Berkeley students and climate law and policy experts at the University of California, Berkeley. By working on the podcast, students get to see how the things they’re learning in the classroom play out through innovations across the globe. They also learn and hone skills critical to their professional development, whether that’s researching subject matter, editing audio streams to produce the show, or learning to think like a journalist.
Expansion Era & Partnership with KALW
KALW was a supporter from the start, helping the Climate Break team identify the best format for our podcast and encouraging us in our efforts. In January 2023, KALW began airing our weekly episodes three times a week: Thursdays at 7:19 am PT and 3:48 pm PT and again on Sundays at 5:04 am PT.
KALW also helps to grow our audience by connecting us with production support and other NPR-affiliated radio stations that might be interested in airing us. Through their efforts, we are pursuing multiple opportunities and are now aired on KSFP-LP, 102.5FM San Francisco. KSFP is a low-power community radio station, launched in August 2019, that offers a mix of original local and national talk radio including news, public affairs and storytelling programs. If you’re not in the San Francisco area, you can check them out online:
You can also hear us on KPBP-LP, a low-power FM station broadcasting at 99.1 FM from the Port of Long Beach. Their signal reaches downtown and west Long Beach, Wilmington, and into San Pedro, offering audiences locally grown entertainment, education, and conversation for Long Beach and neighboring Harbor Communities. It streams online at klbp.org and on their own app.
Disclaimer
Views expressed at our website, on podcast platforms, on the radio, and on social media are those of individual authors, producers, or commenters.
Transcript of Trailer
Ethan Elkind: Welcome to Climate Break from the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. I’m your host, Ethan Elkind.
Climate change is upon us. Fires, droughts, heat, sea level rise, hurricanes, wildfire smoke, sea level rise, and melting ice caps. As our climate continues to shift, these events have grown more frequent and severe.
But there’s also positive news. Scientists and innovators, companies and organizations, cities and citizens are all taking action, making progress, and finding solutions. Climate Break brings you these stories. We bring you interviews with climate innovators from UC Berkeley and around the world, in under 2 minutes at a time.
Join us for Climate Break on radio, by podcast, and on our website at climatebreak.org. And check out what we’re up to at the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at clee.berkeley.edu