Paul Robbins, Dave Cortez, and Roger Baker talk the Texas drought, climate change denial, Texas water politics, Keystone, fracking, and more…
From left: Rag Radio’s Tracey Schultz, the Sierra Club’s Dave Cortez, environmental writer Roger Baker, Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer, Rag Radio apprentice Ken Martin, and, seated, Austin environmental watchdog Paul Robbins. Photo by Greg Ciotti / KOOP Radio.
Our Rag Radio podcast features prominent Central Texas environmental activists Paul Robbins, Dave Cortez, and Roger Baker. Among the topics discussed are the continuing Texas drought and Austin’s attempt to respond to it in the face of climate change denial in Texas politics.
Listen to or download the podcast of our May 9, 2014, Rag Radio interview with Robbins, Cortez, and Baker here:
Rag Radio is a weekly hour-long syndicated radio program produced and hosted by long-time alternative journalist and Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer. The show is recorded at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas. It is broadcast live on KOOP every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) and streamed live on the web.
Caution. Men at work. Photo by Ken Martin / Rag Radio.
Paul Robbins is an environmental activist and consumer advocate, and editor of the Austin Environmental Directory, a comprehensive sourcebook of environmental issues, products, services, and organizations. In the early 1980s, Robbins helped start the City of Austin’s nationally renowned clean energy programs. He has long received public recognition as a watchdog of the city’s water and energy utilities on behalf of all Austin ratepayers.
Dave Cortez is the Central Texas organizer for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. He previously was the Sierra Club’s coordinator for the Texas BlueGreen Alliance — a coalition of labor and environmental groups advocating for clean economy and infrastructure jobs. He is now working to retire the coal-fired Fayette Power Project, and to push for the adoption of strong renewable energy policies in Austin. Dave is also working to incorporate anti-poverty and anti-racist principles and organizing strategies into Austin’s environmental activist community.
Roger Baker, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a long time transportation-oriented environmental activist, an amateur energy-oriented economist, an amateur scientist and science writer, and a founding member of and an advisor to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is active in the Green Party and the ACLU, and is a director of the Save Our Springs Alliance and the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin. His important Rag Blog series on the Texas drought has been widely distributed. All of Roger’s writing for The Rag Blog can be found here.
Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer who was a founding editor of the original Rag, published in Austin from 1966-1977. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer. And we are honored to have noted investigative journalist Ken Martin is our apprentice.
Rag Radio has aired more than 200 shows since September 2009, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP — and streamed live on the web — and is rebroadcast and streamed on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is also aired and streamed on KPFT-HD3 90.1 — Pacifica radio in Houston — on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. (CST).
After broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.
Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.
Please contact us at ragradio@koop.org.
