The Traffic Engineer Who Helped Tear Down a Freeway

The Traffic Engineer Who Helped Tear Down a Freeway

Jack, a self-described "low-level, powerless bureaucrat," didn't let that stop him from pushing for what he saw was right after the 1989 earthquake. What he knew: freeways don't reduce traffic - they invite more. This episode is part of Any Job Can Be a Climate Job, a podcast exploring how people bring climate impact into everyday work, even in roles that aren't labeled 'climate.' Jack Lucero Fleck spent decades inside San Francisco's transportation department, starting as a draftsman and retiring as the city's fifth traffic engineer. He used to call himself and his colleagues "low-level, powerless bureaucrats." Then they helped tear down the Embarcadero Freeway. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the double-decker freeway that walled off the waterfront, Jack's team did the work that answered the question everyone was stuck on: where would the traffic go? Their finding, that the surface streets offered "comparable capacity," helped win a 6 to 5 vote to take it down for good. This conversation was recorded live during San Francisco Climate Week, in collaboration with the Climate Action Resource Library, with audience questions at the end. It is a story about climate work hiding inside the nuts and bolts of a city, and about how change actually moves through a slow institution: anchor to a policy that already exists, and listen for what your opponent really wants. Who this episode is for * Public-sector and government workers who think their role is too small to matter * City planners, engineers, and transit advocates * Anyone trying to make change from inside a large, slow institution * People who want to persuade across deep disagreement ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters 0:00 "Low-level, powerless bureaucrats" (cold open) 2:04 The Embarcadero Freeway that walled off the waterfront 3:51 What a traffic engineer does, and how Jack got here 10:09 Starting as a draftsman: his first taste of power 11:07 The earthquake: "where will the traffic go?" 12:39 The myth of vanishing traffic and "comparable capacity" 14:55 Transit-first policy as leverage, and the climate angle 17:57 The Chinatown fight and the 6-to-5 vote to tear it down 20:46 The second fight: the terminal separator structure 24:42 Levers for employers, and solutions for suburban sprawl 28:57 Befriending Rose Pak and winning the Central Subway 31:08 After retiring: 350 Bay Area and solving warming 34:32 What "350" means: McKibben, Hansen, and 350 ppm 37:12 Audience Q&A: a friendship across the divide 42:38 Regional sprawl and induced demand 46:14 Autonomous vehicles and the "three revolutions" 48:30 EV chargers as infrastructure 51:57 Closing: listen for what your opponent actually wants ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Resources mentioned * 350 Bay Area [https://350bayarea.org/] and 350 Bay Area Action * 350.org [https://350.org/], founded by Bill McKibben (the name comes from 350 ppm CO2, via climate scientist James Hansen) * San Francisco's transit-first policy [https://www.sfmta.com/transit-first-policy] (1973) * Three Revolutions [https://islandpress.org/books/three-revolutions] by Dan Sperling (electric, autonomous, shared) * The End of Nature [https://billmckibben.com/books/the-end-of-nature/] by Bill McKibben * Climate Action Resource Library [https://carl.eco/] (co-host) For Jack's full climate allies list, plus his 2010 ITE paper ("What Will It Take to Stop Global Warming: The Case for Electric Cars") and his SPUR retirement talk on the automobile in the city, see the full episode notes on Substack [https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/]. Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest's own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Listen to the podcast * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job/id1780900570] * Substack [https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ Work with Louisa - advising, coaching, speaking: kidoki.com [https://www.kidoki.com] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 Credits Produced and hosted by Louisa Henry [https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisas/] Edited by Alex Leff [https://www.resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast/] Music by Run Riot Run [https://www.runriotrun.com/] Logo by Cassidy Frost [https://www.getlostcassidyfrost.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Sponsor or partner with the show: partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com [partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com] Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.

Data Centers Pay For His Kids' School. He Decarbonizes Them.

Find the customers that could churn. Do the math. This episode is part of Any Job Can Be a Climate Job, a podcast exploring how people bring climate impact into everyday work, even in roles that aren't labeled 'climate.' Ryan Sholin lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, the heart of what locals call "data center alley." He drives past 20 data centers on the way to the grocery store, and those data centers fund a big share of the property taxes that pay for his kids' schools. His job is to help decarbonize that same infrastructure. He got there through a commercial career, not a technical one, and this conversation is about finding the climate lever inside a sales role and making the business case in language leadership actually responds to. In this episode, we cover * The customer who ran their site through a green-website checker, got an "F," and emailed asking how to get an "A" * How he redirected an employee-resource-group budget to fund six weeks of carbon accounting training * Making the climate case to leadership through customer churn risk: "do the math, find the customers that could churn" * Grid carbon intensity explained with a smoothie, and why one grid operator "comes out orange" * The moment at Climate Week he realized he could already do the climate job About Ryan Ryan Sholin is a strategic account manager at Electricity Maps, where he works on decarbonizing the digital economy. He spent about seven years in commercial roles at Automattic's WordPress VIP and co-led its sustainability employee resource group. He lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, and serves on a Green Software Foundation committee. Who this episode is for * People in sales, account management, and other non-technical roles who don't see how they connect to climate * Tech and software workers curious about the carbon cost of the internet * Anyone trying to make a climate case to leadership in business terms * Employees who want to put an ERG or an internal budget to work for impact ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters 0:00 Welcome to "data center alley" 1:06 Meet Ryan: account manager at Electricity Maps 2:57 Living in Loudoun County, Virginia 5:17 How data centers fund the county and its schools 8:04 The job before climate: Automattic and WordPress VIP 10:12 The first spark: "performance is sustainability" 13:02 Reigniting a stalled sustainability group 14:45 The customer who got an "F" and wanted an "A" 16:27 Doing the math: customer churn as the business case 21:11 The ERG budget hack: training the team in carbon accounting 24:24 What stalled, and what he'd do differently 33:24 Leaving Automattic and the pay cut 36:54 Why Electricity Maps and "Never Search Alone" 42:56 How Electricity Maps works: the grid "smoothie" 47:47 Should individuals care when they charge? 50:19 2026 prediction: batteries 53:01 Wrap-up and three takeaways ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Resources mentioned * Electricity Maps [https://www.electricitymaps.com/] (Ryan's company) * Green Software Foundation [https://greensoftware.foundation/] * Green Web Foundation [https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/] (the website carbon checker behind the "F" grade) * Building Green Software [https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/building-green-software/9781098150617/] by Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, and Sara Bergman (O'Reilly) * "How Better Performing Websites Can Help Save the Planet" by Jack Lenox [https://wordpress.tv/2019/04/18/jack-lenox-how-better-performing-websites-can-help-save-the-planet/] * OPF Academy / 1.5 Academy [https://www.opf.degree/academy] * Never Search Alone [https://www.phyl.org/the-book] by Phyl Terry * Ministry for the Future [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future] by Kim Stanley Robinson * Form Energy [https://formenergy.com/] * Follow Ryan on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansholin/] and Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/ryansholin.bsky.social] Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest's own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Listen to the podcast * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job/id1780900570] * Substack [https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ Work with me For advising, coaching, speaking: kidoki.com [https://www.kidoki.com] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 Credits Produced and hosted by Louisa Henry [https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisas/] Edited by Alex Leff [https://www.resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast/] Music by Run Riot Run [https://www.runriotrun.com/] Logo by Cassidy Frost [https://www.getlostcassidyfrost.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Sponsor or partner with the show: partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com [partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com] Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.

No mandate. No law. Just scientists greening up their labs.

James Connelly is an architect who ended up running My Green Lab, the sustainability certification now adopted by many of the world's largest pharma companies. In this episode, we get into how and why scientists are stepping up to certify their labs, without a required law or mandate. * Why James believes life sciences will be the first industry to separate growth from carbon impact. * Real life examples of pharma employees who paved the trail for their companies, and got promoted along the way. * Why certification works well for scientists (and builders). * How to stay focused on the end goal of reducing environmental impact (instead of drowning in numbers and excessive reporting). * How James taught himself about climate through a junior-high research project, why he became an architect, and how that eventually set him up to become CEO of My Green Lab. -- ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:29 Meet James and My Green Lab 02:14 What labs find on their first assessment 04:38 The freezer that uses as much energy as two homes 05:38 Why certification works for scientists 07:37 How it scales from one champion to a whole lab 12:37 The AstraZeneca supplier cascade 16:39 Pernilla, Andrew, and getting promoted for sustainability work 20:05 From architect to CEO 24:21 Leading scientists when you're not one 27:33 ESG, DEI, and political headwinds 32:06 Why a nonprofit raised venture capital 35:43 If not science, who else? 38:15 Reporting vs. action 43:28 Travel, anxiety, and self-care 47:42 Where to find My Green Lab -- 🔗 Resources * My Green Lab [mygreenlab.org⁠] * Ambassador Program (free crash course) [mygreenlab.org/programs/ambassador-program⁠] * Accredited Professional program ($25 student / $75 commercial) [mygreenlab.org/programs/accredited-professionals⁠] * Annual online conference [mygreenlab.org/get-involved/events⁠] * Contact James: james@mygreenlab.org [james@mygreenlab.org] -- 🎧 Watch & Listen to the podcast YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob]Apple Podcasts [podcasts.apple.com/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job⁠] 🗞️ Sign up for the newsletter [⁠anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com⁠] 🤝 Partnerships ⁠partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com⁠ [partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com] ✨ Work with me: For speaking, coaching, and workshops: kidoki.com [https://www.kidoki.com] Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.

How Mastercard Cut $28M of Digital Waste + 3 Real Playbooks

Mastercard saved $28M cutting digital waste. Three more companies in this episode did the same. This episode is part of Any Job Can Be a Climate Job, a podcast exploring how people bring climate impact into everyday work, even in roles that aren't labeled 'climate.' If you're in tech, reducing emissions might be easier than you think. While it accounts for 4% of global emissions (and rising), most of it is wasteful by default, not by necessity. No one's bothered to look and make a shift. In this episode, Nolwenn and I dive into examples from 4 companies, talk about what they did, and what the impact was. * Leboncoin (French Craigslist) - 85% of Leboncoin's half-billion weekly API calls were returning 404 errors. A two-week sprint cut total calls by 72%. * Raptor Maps (solar field software) - App had grown so heavy that workers were buying new phones to run it. An offline-first redesign cut data load by 99%. * Brussels Environment (government website) - Hired eco-designers, set new baselines (page size, load time, eco-score), and rebuilt their site to be both lighter and more usable. * Mastercard (GreenOps program) - Saved $28 million and cut data center electricity by 40% in two years by shifting workloads to cleaner regions, right-sizing, and turning off unused instances. The playbook is free, and the case studies are reusable. You don't need permission to start. What will you do to make the world a better place today? About Nolwenn Nolwenn Godard is the founder of Carbon 2C and co-author of the Climate Product Leaders Playbook. She previously led product at PayPal and worked inside California state government, where she helped push climate considerations into the GenAI executive order. Her full story is in Part 1. Who this episode is for * Software engineers who want to do climate work without leaving their current job * Product managers looking to bake sustainability into their roadmap * CTOs and engineering leaders who need a credible, cost-defensible sustainability story * Climate-curious tech workers who feel stuck or unsure where to start * Anyone who wants to understand the actual environmental cost of running AI at scale ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters 0:00 Carbon vs cost: why workforces respond differently 0:32 Welcome: a playbook episode for tech teams 2:14 The 4% problem: tech as much emissions as aviation 3:22 Leboncoin: 85% of half a billion API calls were 404s 9:39 Raptor Maps: 99% data reduction for solar field workers 15:01 Brussels Environment and the search bar story 19:22 Mastercard's $28M GreenOps story 24:28 GreenOps vs FinOps vs DevOps 26:05 You don't need permission 29:09 Water, AI data centers, and the closed loop myth 34:25 How Nolwenn uses AI (and the AI Wattch extension) 37:21 Self-care and eco-anxiety 38:33 Where to find the free playbook ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Resources mentioned * Climate Product Leaders Playbook (free) [https://climateproductleaders.org/playbook] * Carbon 2C [https://carbon2c.com] * Green Software Foundation [https://greensoftware.foundation] * Green IO podcast/conference [https://greenio.tech] * GreenPixie [https://greenpixie.com] * GreenPT [https://greenpt.com] * AI Wattch: Chrome extension [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-wattch-track-your-ai-f/dicpbfeifndejijbnhenndlnbnglkgcl] | GitHub [https://github.com/AIWattch] * Greenspector [https://greenspector.com] * Nolwenn Godard on LinkedIn [https://linkedin.com/in/nolwenngodard] For the full resource list, see the show notes on Substack [https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/]. A note on the digital emissions stat: ICT is estimated at 1.5-4% of global GHG emissions today; one academic projection estimates this could rise to ~14% by 2040 under business-as-usual growth (Belkhir & Elmeligi, 2018). Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest's own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Listen to the podcast * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job/id1780900570] * Substack [https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ Work with me For speaking, workshops, and leadership programs: kidoki.com [https://www.kidoki.com] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 Credits Produced and hosted by Louisa Henry [https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisas/] Edited by Alex Leff [https://www.resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast/] Music by Run Riot Run [https://www.runriotrun.com/] Logo by Cassidy Frost [https://www.getlostcassidyfrost.com/] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Sponsor or partner with the show: partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com [partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com] Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.

From Climate Doom to the Redwoods: Alex Sherry on Teaching Hope, One Kid at a Time

Sometimes saving the planet starts with a banana slug on your face.Alex Sherry is a 23-year-old naturalist at Mission Springs Outdoor Education in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We talk about what happens when you put city kids in the redwoods for a week, what it's like to grow up inside the climate crisis instead of watching it approach, and how small moments outside can stick with kids for years.This episode is for teachers, coaches, parents, nannies, or anyone who works with kids. You have more influence than you realize, and Alex has ideas for how to use it. Fun, educational, and just a little outside the comfort zone. In this episode: * The one-week transformation from "afraid of dirt" to eating edible plants off the trail * A food waste system that took one group from 28 pounds to 4 in a week * The Thanksgiving table moment that changed Alex's major * How being outside every day is what actually calms her eco-anxiety * What any adult who works with kids can do starting tomorrow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About Mission Springs:Website: https://missionspringsoe.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/missionspringsoe/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters:00:00 Cold open: The banana slug club01:00 Why this conversation stuck with me03:13 The Oakland kids transformation09:41 Comfort zones and how kids grow at camp13:23 The Banana Slug Club Challenge15:50 Food waste: 28 pounds to 424:28 Screen time and Gen Alpha26:28 From climate doom to the redwoods32:48 Advice for anyone who works with kids35:35 What sticks in you?37:29 My closing reflection ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Listen to the podcast ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob] ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job/id1780900570] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🗞️ Sign up for the ⁠newsletter⁠ [⁠⁠https://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/⁠⁠] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Partnerships ⁠⁠partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com⁠⁠ [partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com] ✨ Work with me ⁠⁠For speaking, coaching, and workshops⁠ [⁠https://www.kidoki.com] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙 CreditsProduced and hosted by ⁠Louisa Henry⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisas/] | Edited by ⁠Alex Leff⁠ [https://www.resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast/] | Music by ⁠Run Riot Run⁠ [https://www.runriotrun.com/] | Logo by ⁠Cassidy Frost⁠ [https://www.getlostcassidyfrost.com/]