Podcasts about energy policy institute

In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale's Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney is asking one of the most complex questions in global development: how can the clean energy transition move forward quickly and equitably, particularly for low- and middle-income countries still grappling with poverty? There is a balance between emissions reductions and economic growth. While wealthy nations historically contributed the most to climate change, LMICs are now under pressure to take costly action to avoid it. Catherine is joined by Max Bearak of the New York Times, Jessica Seddon of Yale Jackson School and the Dietz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs, and Anant Sudarshan of the University of Warwick and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/climate-capital-and-conscience-who-will-pay-global-energy-transition

Air quality differs from place to place and day to day. But about 99 percent of the world's population breathes air at some point that does not meet pollution guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO).空气质量每天都有不同的位置。 但是，在某个时候，大约99％的人口呼吸着空气不符合世界卫生组织（WHO）制定的污染指南。Different forms of air pollution kill about 7 million people each year, the U.N. health agency estimates. But health experts say there are some actions individuals can take to protect themselves, even in the world's most polluted cities.联合国卫生局估计，每年不同形式的空气污染杀死约700万人。 但是健康专家说，即使在世界上最污染的城市中，个人也可以采取一些行动来保护自己。The first step is to start with the understanding that air is not only polluted when it looks smoky or smoggy, said Tanushree Ganguly. She is an air quality expert with the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago's India program.Tanushree Ganguly说，第一步是从了解空气时不仅在看起来烟熏或烟雾时受到污染的第一步。 她是芝加哥印度能源政策研究所的空中质量专家。“Blue skies can't guarantee you clean air,” Ganguly told The Associated Press.“蓝天不能保证您清洁空气，”甘加利对美联社说。Air pollutants often come from people burning things. Examples include fuels as well as clearing operations involving crops or trees. Pollutants can also be released from wildfires.空气污染物通常来自燃烧东西的人。 例子包括燃料以及涉及农作物或树木的清理操作。 污染物也可以从野火中释放出来。Among the most dangerous particles we can breathe in are called particulate matter. The smallest of these are known as PM 2.5. This is because they are less than 2.5 microns in diameter. These particles can travel deep inside human lungs and are mostly created by burning fuels. Larger particles, known as PM 10, are linked to agriculture, roadways, mining or wind-blown dust.在我们可以呼吸的最危险的颗粒中，称为颗粒物。 其中最小的被称为PM 2.5。 这是因为它们的直径小于2.5微米。 这些颗粒可以在人类肺部深处传播，并且主要是由燃烧燃料产生的。 较大的颗粒（称为PM 10）与农业，道路，采矿或风吹灰尘有关。Other dangerous pollutants include gases like nitrogen dioxide or sulfur dioxide, which are also produced from burning fuels. This information comes from Anumita Roychowdhury, an air pollution expert at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi.其他危险污染物包括诸如二氧化氮或二氧化硫等气体，这些气体也是由燃烧燃料产生的。 该信息来自新德里科学与环境中心的空气污染专家Anumita Roychowdhury。The American-based Health Effects Institute says air pollution is the second-largest risk factor for early death worldwide, behind high blood pressure.美国的健康影响研究所表示，空气污染是全球早期死亡的第二大危险因素，仅次于高血压。Short-term exposure can cause asthma attacks and increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke, especially in older people and those with existing medical problems. Long-term exposure can cause serious heart and lung problems that can lead to death.短期暴露会引起哮喘发作，并增加心脏病发作和中风的风险，尤其是在老年人和现有医疗问题的人中。 长期暴露会导致严重的心脏和肺部问题，导致死亡。

Today my guest is Anant Sudarshan, an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). We talked about air pollution in India, crop burning, subsidizing electricity, depleting ground water, the impact of the collapse of keystone species and much more.  Recorded November 11th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Anant on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:52) - Air Pollution in India (00:06:00) - Causes of Pollution in Delhi (00:07:32) - Addressing Crop Burning as a Source of Pollution (00:14:11) - Regulatory Frameworks for Pollution in India (00:18:16) - Creating a Market for Pollution (00:39:52) - Vehicular Pollution and Rationing (00:53:56) - How Subsidies Complicate the Pollution Problem (01:02:44) - Pigouvian Subsidies (01:08:19) - Electricity as a Right (01:26:04) - The Near-Extinction of Vultures in India (01:38:41) - Outro

Let us know how we're doing - text us feedback or thoughts on episode contentIn this first of two parts, Paul takes a deeper dive into the climate implications of the conservative policy playbook, Project 2025. Paul unpacks how the document lays out a vision for a smaller federal government, and how doing so may impact not only climate action but America's leadership across emerging economic industries.For further reference:"Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" - Project 2025"What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US" - Yale Climate Connections"The Endangerment Finding: What Does It Actually Do?" - Resources.org"2024 Poll: Americans' Views on Climate Change and Policy in 12 Charts" - Energy Policy Institute at the University of ChicagoFollow Paul on LinkedIn.

Rooftop solar is four times more expensive in America than it is in other countries. It's also good for the climate. Should we even care about its high cost? Yes, says Severin Borenstein, an economist and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. In a recent blog post, he argued that the high cost of rooftop solar will shift nearly $4 billion onto the bills of low- and middle-income Californians who don't have rooftop solar. Similar forces could soon spread the cost-shift problem across the country. On this week's episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Borenstein about who pays for rooftop solar, why power bills are going up everywhere, and about whether the government should take over electric utilities. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.Mentioned:California's Exploding Rooftop Solar Cost ShiftWhat rooftop solar costs customers without it, from the California Public Advocates OfficeBorenstein on California's new income-graduated fixed electricity chargeBorenstein on what constitutes a fair electricity billJesse's upshift; Rob's downshift.--This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by…Watershed's climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's heartbreaking when a drought or flood causes crops in a region to fail, and children to go hungry. Kids can starve to death or endure social, economic, and health problems well into adulthood due to malnutrition. But what if there was a way to predict when these weather disasters are likely to happen, so governments, aid organizations, and residents could prepare? A team at the University of Chicago says people could already do this, using one of the best-known weather patterns: the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO. “ENSO has destabilizing effects on agriculture, economic production, and social stability throughout areas of the global tropics that are teleconnected to it. It has been linked to human health outcomes directly through its effects on vector- and water-borne infectious diseases, as well as indirectly by decreasing agricultural yields and increasing food insecurity and the likelihood of conflict,” they write in a Nature Communications article. It's possible to predict this Pacific Ocean-based pattern, says Dr. Amir Jina, an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago. In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Dr. Jina explains how people could use predictions about El Niño years to get ahead of some of the forces that make children go hungry.

Anyone who has even casually glanced at the news over the past several weeks would be hard pressed to miss the plethora of headlines about north India's air pollution crisis. Every year as late Fall rolls around, air pollution across north India—including in the nation's capital of Delhi—climbs to levels that make life almost unlivable for hundreds of millions of residents.As bad as the crisis is, the situation is not helpless. Milan's guest on the show this week, the economist Anant Sudarshan, has spent years trying to evaluate solutions to what seems like an intractable problem. Anant is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).Milan and Anant discuss the contours of India's air pollution crisis, the country's environmental data challenge, and the efficacy of Delhi's controversial “odd-even” scheme. Plus, the two discuss strategies for managing industrial pollution, the potential of Indian emissions markets, and whether voters sufficiently value the air they breathe.Episode notes:Michael Greenstone et al., “The Solvable Challenge of Air Pollution in India,” India Policy Forum 2017-18: 1-51.Michael Greenstone et al., A Roadmap Towards Cleaning India's Air (EPIC India and Harvard Kennedy School, 2018).Michael Greenstone et al., “Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India,” Working Paper, January 27, 2023.

A new environmental report says rising air pollution across South Asia can cut life expectancy rates by up to five years.一份新的环境报告称，南亚地区日益严重的空气污染可能导致预期寿命缩短五年。South Asia includes the world's most polluted countries, including India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. The area accounts for more than half of the total lives lost worldwide to pollution, the Energy Policy Institute said in its latest Air Quality Life Index. The institute is part of the University of Chicago.南亚包括世界上污染最严重的国家，包括印度、孟加拉国、尼泊尔和巴基斯坦。 能源政策研究所在其最新的空气质量生命指数中表示，该地区占全球因污染而死亡的总人数的一半以上。 该研究所是芝加哥大学的一部分。The report blames the air pollution dangers on fast industrialization and population growth across South Asia. Researchers estimate the area currently has particle pollution rates that are 50 percent higher than at the start of the century.该报告将空气污染危险归咎于整个南亚的快速工业化和人口增长。 研究人员估计，该地区目前的颗粒物污染率比本世纪初高出 50%。Individuals living in Bangladesh, the world's most polluted country, stand to lose 6.8 years of life on average per person, the report found. This compares to 3.6 months in the United States. The information is based on satellite data used to estimate the effects of increased airborne fine particles on life expectancy.报告发现，居住在世界上污染最严重的国家孟加拉国的人平均寿命将缩短 6.8 年。 相比之下，美国为 3.6 个月。 该信息基于卫星数据，用于估计空气中细颗粒增加对预期寿命的影响。The report said India has been responsible for about 59 percent of the world's increase in pollution since 2013. In densely populated New Delhi, the world's most polluted large city, the average life expectancy had dropped by more than 10 years.报告称，自2013年以来，全球污染增量约59%是由印度造成的。在人口稠密的新德里，世界上污染最严重的大城市，平均预期寿命下降了10多年。The report called for cuts in worldwide levels of lung-harming airborne particles to levels sought by the World Health Organization (WHO). If these cuts were reached, it could raise average life expectancy rates by 2.3 years.该报告呼吁将全球范围内危害肺部的空气颗粒物水平降低至世界卫生组织（WHO）要求的水平。 如果这些削减得以实现，平均预期寿命可能会提高 2.3 年。A person living in Pakistan would gain 3.9 years from meeting WHO pollution guidelines, the report added. And in Nepal, a person would live 4.6 years longer if the guidelines were met.报告补充说，居住在巴基斯坦的人如果符合世界卫生组织的污染指南，将获得 3.9 年的寿命。 在尼泊尔，如果满足这些准则，一个人的寿命将延长 4.6 年。The report noted that China has worked to reduce pollution by 42.3 percent between 2013 and 2021. The researchers said this shows the need for governments to produce and share air quality data to help reduce inequalities in getting tools to fight pollution.报告指出，2013年至2021年间，中国已努力将污染减少42.3%。研究人员表示，这表明各国政府有必要生成和共享空气质量数据，以帮助减少在获取防治污染工具方面的不平等现象。

According to the CDC's COVID-19 dashboard, just 1.7% of the 324 COVID-19 deaths logged in the week ending Aug. 19 had the virus listed as the primary cause of death. The primary cause of death is defined as the condition, injury, disease, situation or event that initiated the chain of events resulting in a person's death. A report published Tuesday by the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute, which identified air pollution as the world's top threat to public health, responsible for reducing average life expectancy by 2.3 years worldwide.  Tuesday - 8/29/2023 - Hour 3  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Poor air quality is now one of the greatest threats to human health. That's according to a study from the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute. Researchers say air pollution cuts life expectancy by five years in South Asia, the worst affected region.Two BBC reporters — Jaidaa Taha in Cairo and Trisha Husada in Jakarta — tell us what it's like living in cities coping with high levels of pollution. And from Delhi our South Asia correspondent, Samira Hussain, discusses the startling impact pollution can have on health outcomes. We also hear from Glory Dolphin Hammes — the CEO of IQAir, a tech company that monitors air quality in real time around the world. Email: whatintheworld@bbc.co.uk WhatsApp: +44 0330 12 33 22 6 Presenter: Hannah Gelbart Producers: William Lee Adams, Mora Morrison, Alex Rhodes and Julia Ross-Roy Editors: Verity Wilde and Rachael Akidi Okwir

But the former Prime Minister is unlikely to be released soon. Also: A new study by the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago says the impact of air pollution is now the greatest external threat to human health - and people in South Asia are among the worst affected, and how doctors in Australia extracted a live worm from a woman's brain.

Dr. Michael Greenstone: Decoding the social cost of carbon and the carbon offset market In this episode, Chris and Georges do a deep dive into the economic implications of carbon emissions with one of the world's leading climate finance experts, Dr. Michael Greenstone. As a former chief economist for President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Greenstone played a pivotal role in developing the "social cost of carbon." The trio discusses the significance of understanding the economic cost of carbon emissions and the tools policymakers have at their disposal to combat climate change. Guest Dr. Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics Background Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. As a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change. He is also the co-director of the King Climate Action Initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and co-founder of Climate Vault, a 501(c)(3) that uses markets to allow institutions and people to reduce their carbon footprint. Conversation Sheds light on the concept of the social cost of carbon, its current applications, and the overarching importance of carbon pricing in shaping future climate policies, especially in the United States. Touches upon the controversial topic of carbon offsets, distinguishing between the voluntary offset market and regulated cap and trade permitting systems. Introduces Climate Vault, a non-profit startup co-founded by Dr. Greenstone that not only allows entities to offset emissions using regulated permits but also aids in purchasing carbon removal, thereby supporting emerging carbon removal companies to scale their technologies.   

Many cities in the US have been experiencing smoky and hazy skies lately. Some of you have probably been affected by poor air quality due to the ongoing wildfires in Canada that are causing pollution to travel as far as Chicago and New York. On a former episode of our podcast, we spoke with some of the leading experts on air pollution about how this problem has been getting worse and the cost we're all paying for it.We're taking a summer break while we work on some special episodes and will be back in August, but in the meantime we wanted to share some of our best and most relevant episodes. These episodes contain some fascinating and life-changing information for new and returning listeners. We can't always see the consequences of air pollution around us, but it's costing us years off our lives. According to a new Air Quality Life Index report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), air pollution is taking 2.2 years off the average global life expectancy. In some of the most polluted regions in the world, residents are expected to lose an average five years of their lives, if the current high levels of pollution persist. While smog seem like a difficult problem to tackle, some countries have proven it's possible to clean up the air. In the past seven years, China has reduced air pollution as much as the United States has in the past three decades. And since India's Gujarat state launched the world's first clean air market in 2019, they've been successful in cutting particulate pollution by at least 20 percent. In this episode, we speak with EPIC's Air Quality Programs Director Christa Hasenkopf and EPIC's South Asia Director Anant Sudarshan about why we need to treat air pollution as a global health threat—and what we can do about it.

On today's episode of Free Range, Livermore is joined by Michael Greenstone, the Milton Freedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the Director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He served as the Chief Economist for President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors and has worked for decades engaged in research and policy development on environmental issues. Livermore and Greenstone begin by discussion the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and their policy implications (0:47-4:47) Greenstone offers his take on what the IRA means (if anything) concerning the role of economists in debates over climate policy (4:48-8:49) and the two discuss the relationship between energy prices and politics. (8:50-14:10) Livermore and Greenstone agree that transparency of pricing mechanisms can be both a feature and a bug. Greenstone mentions that while the US is viewed as a free market place, our instinct is to approach the situation as engineers. (14:11-20:20) He then offers thoughts on why the engineering approach won out in the IRA. (20:21 - 25:34) The two discuss the factors that helped lead to lower technology costs green cleaner energy sources, which helped pave the way for the IRA. (25:35-28:12) The sulfur dioxide trading mechanism in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments is a classic example of policy that promoted low cost emissions reductions; R&D funding is another area where government is justified. (28:13-30:24) The two turn to the question of economic forecasting in climate debates. (30:25-34:17) Greenstone discusses the work of the Climate Impact Lab, which he directs, which is improving estimates of climate damages and the social cost of carbon. (34:18-40:55) The two discuss the role of adaptation in climate damage estimates (40:56-47:05) and the role of distributional analysis. (47:06-51:15) The two then discuss an alternative to the social cost of carbon that is based on “marginal abatement costs” associated with achieving a given climate goal. (51:16-57:11) To conclude, Livermore asks about the potential path forward for global cooperation on climate change. For Greenstone, he focuses on areas of policy that he can influence, and in particular on driving down the difference (delta) between the private cost of clean energy and dirty energy and looking for opportunities to leverage our policies for reductions elsewhere in the world. (57:12-59:36)

How'd you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Today, we're re-podcasting the first episode of our 3-part mini-series on Hispanic American swing voters. The series continues into October for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That's the operative question in this first episode, featuring three noted experts: former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo, UT San Antonio political scientist Dr. Sharon Navarro, and former four-term San Antonio Mayor and Clinton Cabinet member, Dr. Henry Cisneros. Carlos Curbelo suggests the recent shift of some Latinos to the GOP may be due to discomfort with far left rhetoric. Dr. Sharon Navarro observes many Hispanic voters may be registered to one political party yet remain “persuadable.” Listen in for a better understanding of the less purely-partisan viewpoints characterizing Hispanic American swing voters, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss episodes two and three of the series, coming soon. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney SHOW NOTES Our Guests The Hon. Carlos Curbelo: Twitter, Unite America, University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute. Check out Carlos as a regular contributor to Telemundo, NBC News, MSNBC and NBC 6 Dr. Sharon Navarro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and editor of Latinas in American Politics: Changing and Embracing Political Tradition. Dr. Navarro's faculty page, Twitter, website Dr. Henry Cisneros, former four-term Mayor of San Antonio, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and former President of Univision. Currently a board member of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dr. Cisneros on Twitter. More on our website: https://fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/hispanic-series-1 Join Us for Premium Content: Apple: https://link.chtbl.com/PurpleApple Patreon: patreon.com/purpleprinciplepodcast And follow us online! Twitter: @purpleprincipl Facebook: @thepurpleprinciplepodcast Instagram: @thepurpleprinciplepodcast Our website: https://bit.ly/2ZCpFaQ Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2UfFSja 

97% of the world is breathing air considered to be “unhealthy” according to the WHO's 2021 updated guidelines. Responsible for a host of ailments ranging from lung cancer and heart disease to cognitive impairment, air pollution is one of the defining global health challenges of our generation. In recognition of the 2022 UN International Day of Clean Air, we welcome back Christa Hasenkopf, Director of Air Quality Programs and the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) at the Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago (EPIC) to discuss the current landscape of global action on air pollution, and how the AQLI and EPIC are creating impact by making the impacts of air pollution more tangible. In this episode:

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ryan Kellogg, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and affiliated faculty at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Kellogg discusses why carbon pricing, long the preferred emissions-reduction tool for most economists, actually may not be as efficient as other policy options. Kellogg and Raimi explore how economic theory has led many to favor carbon pricing, and why the conventional wisdom on carbon pricing may turn out to be wrong in the real world. References and recommendations: “Carbon Pricing, Clean Electricity Standards, and Clean Electricity Subsidies on the Path to Zero Emissions” by Severin Borenstein and Ryan Kellogg; https://www.nber.org/papers/w30263 “Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy” by Russell Gold; https://www.russellgold.net/superpower

Last month, India protested over its ranking on the Environmental Performance Index of 2022, prepared by researchers at the Yale and Columbia Universities in the U.S. The report measures 40 performance indicators across 11 issue categories to measure the “state of sustainability around the world.” India was ranked last (180) with low scores across a range of indicators. The Indian Government as well as environment experts have pointed to the faulty methodology of the index that skews the results in favour of the Global North.  In this podcast, The Hindu speaks with experts on the issues in the methodology, and what the state of India's environment is actually like.  Host: Sonikka Loganathan  Guests:  Sharachchandra Lele- Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy & Governance at ATREE Bengaluru and professor at IISER Pune & SNU Delhi.  Chandra Bhushan- President & CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST).  Anant Sudarshan- South Asia Director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

We can't always see the consequences of air pollution around us, but it's costing us years off our lives. According to a new Air Quality Life Index report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), air pollution is taking 2.2 years off the average global life expectancy. In some of the most polluted regions in the world, residents are expected to lose an average five years of their lives, if the current high levels of pollution persist. While smog seem like a difficult problem to tackle, some countries have proven it's possible to clean up the air. In the past seven years, China has reduced air pollution as much as the United States has in the past three decades. And since India's Gujarat state launched the world's first clean air market in 2019, they've been successful in cutting particulate pollution by at least 20 percent. In this episode, we speak with EPIC's Air Quality Programs Director Christa Hasenkopf and EPIC's South Asia Director Anant Sudarshan about why we need to treat air pollution as a global health threat—and what we can do about it.

How'd you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That's the operative question in this first episode on Hispanic swing voters, featuring three noted experts: former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo, UT San Antonio political scientist Dr. Sharon Navarro, and former four-term San Antonio Mayor and Clinton Cabinet member, Dr. Henry Cisneros. Carlos Curbelo suggests the recent shift of some Latinos to the GOP may be due to discomfort with far left rhetoric. Dr. Sharon Navarro observes many Hispanic voters may be registered to a political party yet remain “persuadable.” Tune in for a better understanding of the less purely partisan viewpoints characterizing Hispanic American swing voters.   Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney SHOW NOTES Our Guests The Hon. Carlos Curbelo: Twitter, Unite America, University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute. Check out Carlos as a regular contributor to Telemundo, NBC News, MSNBC and NBC 6 Dr. Sharon Navarro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and editor of Latinas in American Politics: Changing and Embracing Political Tradition. Dr. Navarro's faculty page, Twitter, website Dr. Henry Cisneros, former four-term Mayor of San Antonio, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and former President of Univision. Currently a board member of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dr. Cisneros on Twitter. More episode resources on our website: https://fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/hispanic-series-1 Join Us for Premium Content: Apple: https://link.chtbl.com/PurpleApple Patreon: patreon.com/purpleprinciplepodcast Find us online! Twitter: @purpleprincipl Facebook: @thepurpleprinciplepodcast Instagram: @thepurpleprinciplepodcast Our website: https://bit.ly/2ZCpFaQ Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2UfFSja 

On this week's episode, we're talking about one of the most urgent issues facing humanity today, and how we can reframe our mindset around it to better encourage and allow ourselves to take action. That issue, of course, is climate change. Technology has created a lot of the problems we face, but is also coming up with some of the most innovative and inventive solutions. Solving this is going to take creativity, collaboration, and a willingness to change, but that's what we're all about here at the Tech Humanist Show! What is our individual responsibility to tackling these problems? What are the most exciting solutions on the horizon? Who should we be holding to account, and how? Those answers and more on this week's episode. Guests this week include Sarah T. Roberts, AR Siders, Tan Copsey, Anne Therese Gennari, Christopher Mims, Art Chang, Dorothea Baur, Abhishek Gupta, and Caleb Gardner. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube. Full Transcript: Hello, humans! Today we're talking about a problem that technology is both a major cause of and perhaps one of our best potential solutions for: climate change. By almost any reckoning, the climate emergency is the most urgent and existential challenge facing humanity for the foreseeable future. All of the other issues we face pale in comparison to the need to arrest and reverse carbon emissions, reduce global average temperatures, and begin the work of rebuilding sustainable models for all of us to be able to live and work on this planet. By late 2020, melting ice in the Arctic began to release previously-trapped methane gas deposits. The warming effects of methane are 80 times stronger than carbon over 20 years, which has climate scientists deeply worried. Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest has been devastated by burning. The plastic-filled oceans are warming. Coral reefs are dying. Experts are constantly adjusting their predictions on warming trends. And climate issues contribute to other socio-political issues as well, usually causing a big loop: Climate disasters create uninhabitable environments, leading to increased migration and refugee populations, which can overwhelm nearby areas and stoke the conditions for nationalistic and jingoistic political power grabs. This puts authoritarians and fascists into power—who usually aren't too keen on spending money to fix problems like climate change that don't affect them personally—exacerbating all of the previous problems. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson showcased exactly this type of position before a recent UN climate conference, claiming the fall of the Roman empire was due to uncontrolled immigration as a way of refocusing people's fear and attention away from climate change. Marine Le Pen of France went so far as to say that those without a homeland don't care about the environment. Similarly out-of-touch and out-of-context things have been said recently by right-wing leaders in Spain, Germany, Switzerland… the list goes on and on. Perhaps the most psychologically challenging aspect of all this is that even as we begin to tackle these issues one by one, we will continue to see worsening environmental effects for the next few decades. As David Wallace-Wells writes in The Uninhabitable Earth: “Some amount of further warming is already baked in, thanks to the protracted processes by which the planet adapts to greenhouse gas…But all of those paths projected from the present…to two degrees, to three, to four or even five—will be carved overwhelmingly by what we choose to do now.” The message is: It's up to us. We know what's coming, and are thus empowered to chart the course for the future. What we need are bold visions and determined action, and we need it now. At this point you may be thinking, “I could really use some of that Kate O'Neill optimism right about now…” Not only do I have hope, but many of the climate experts I have read and spoken with are hopeful as well. But the first step in Strategic Optimism is acknowledging the full and unvarnished reality, and the hard truth about the climate crisis is that things do look bleak right now. Which just means our optimistic strategy in response has to be that much more ambitious, collaborative, and comprehensive. As Christiana Figuere and Tom Rivett-Carnac wrote in The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, “[To feel] a lack of agency can easily transform into anger. Anger that sinks into despair is powerless to make change. Anger that evolves into conviction is unstoppable.” One of the things slowing progress on the climate front is the people on the extreme ends of the belief spectrum—especially those in positions of power—who believe it's either too late to do anything, or that climate change isn't happening at all. Technology exacerbates this problem through the spread of false information. Thankfully by this point most people—around 90% of Americans and a higher percentage of scientists—are in agreement that it's happening, although we're still divided on the cause. The same poll conducted in October 2021 by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, found that only 54% of Americans believe humans contribute to climate change. A separate study conducted that same month looked at 88,125 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 2012 and 2020, and determined that 99.9% of those studies found human activity to be directly responsible for our warming planet. It's important, however, not to write off the people who aren't yet fully convinced. Technology, as much as it has given us near-infinite access to information, is also a tremendous propagator of mis- and disinformation, which is fed to people by algorithms as immutable fact, and is often indistinguishable from the truth. Sarah T Roberts, who is Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she also serves as the co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, explains further. Sarah T Roberts: “When I think about people who fall victim to conspiracy theories, what I see is a human impulse to make sense of a world that increasingly doesn't. And they're doing it in the absence of information that is way more complex and hard to parse out and might actually point criticism at places that are very uncomfortable. They sense a wrongness about the world but they don't have the right information, or access to it, or even the ability to parse it, because we've destroyed public schools. And then the auxiliary institutions that help people, such as libraries, and that leaves them chasing their own tail through conspiracy theories instead of unpacking things like the consequences of western imperialism, or understanding human migration as economic and environmental injustice issues. Y'know, you combine all that, and people, what do they do? They reach for the pablum of Social Media, which is instantaneous, always on, easy to digest, and worth about as much as, y'know, those things might be worth. I guess what I'm trying to do is draw some connections around phenomena that seem like they have come from nowhere. It would behoove us to connect those dots both in this moment, but also draw back on history, at least the last 40 years of sort of like neoliberal policies that have eroded the public sphere in favor of private industry. What it didn't do was erode the public's desire to know, but what has popped up in that vacuum are these really questionable information sources that really don't respond to any greater norms, other than partisanship, advertising dollars, etc. And that's on a good day!” The fact is, there are a number of industries and people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Not all of them engage in disinformation schemes, but some corporations—and people—who are interested in fighting climate change aren't willing to look at solutions that might change their business or way of life. Too much change is scary, so they look for solutions that keep things as they are. AR Siders: “Too much of our climate change adaptation is focused on trying to maintain the status quo. We're trying to say, ‘hey, the climate is changing, what can we do to make sure that everything stays the same in the face of climate change?' And I think that's the wrong way to think about this.” That's AR Siders, assistant professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and the Department of Geography and a Core Faculty Member of the Disaster Research Center. Siders' research focuses on climate change adaptation governance, decision-making, and evaluation. ARSiders: “I think we need to think about the idea that we're not trying to maintain the status quo, we're trying to choose how we want our societies to change. I often start talks by showing historic photos, and trying to point out, in 1900, those photos don't look like they do today. So, 100 years in the future, things are going to look different. And that's true even if you don't accept climate change. Even if we stop climate change tomorrow, we might have another pandemic. We'll have new technology. And so our goal shouldn't be to try to lock society into the way it works today, it should be to think about, what are the things we really care about preserving, and then what things do we actively want to choose to change? Climate adaptation can be a really exciting field if we think about it that way.” And it is! But as more people have opened their eyes to the real threat looming in the near-horizon, disinformation entities and bad actors have changed their tactics, shifting responsibility to individuals, and away from the corporations causing the majority of the harm. So let's talk about our personal responsibility to healing the climate. Tan Copsey: “We always should be careful of this trap of individual action, because in the past the fossil fuel industry has emphasized individual action.” That's Tan Copsey, who is Senior Director, Projects and Partnerships at Climate Nexus, a strategic communications organization. His work focuses on communicating the impacts of climate change and the benefits of acting to reduce climate risks. You'll be hearing from him a lot this episode. We spoke recently about climate change solutions and responsibilities across countries and industries. He continued: Tan Copsey: “I don't know if it's true but apparently BP invented the carbon footprint as a way of kind of getting people to focus on themselves and feel a sense of guilt, and project out a sense of blame, but that's not really what it's about. Dealing with climate change should ultimately be a story about hope, and that's what I kind of try and tell myself and other people.” Speaking of, Shell had a minor PR awakening in November 2020 when they tweeted a poll asking: “What are you willing to change to help reduce carbon emissions?” The tweet prompted many high-profile figures like climate activist Greta Thunberg and US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call out the hypocrisy of a fossil fuel company asking the public for personal change. In truth, research has found that the richest 1% of the world's population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, with people in the US causing the most emissions per capita in the world. Now, this doesn't mean to abandon personal responsibility. We should all make what efforts we can to lower our carbon footprint where feasible—whether by reviewing consumption habits, eating less meat, driving less, or anything from a wide variety of options. There's interesting psychological research around how making sustainable choices keeps us grounded in the mindset of what needs to change. I spoke with Anne Therese Gennari, a speaker, educator, and environmental activist known as The Climate Optimist, about the psychology behind individual action, and how the simple act of being more climate conscious in our daily lives can make the world a better place in ways beyond reducing our carbon footprints. Anne Therese Gennari: “Do our individual actions matter… and I think it matters so much, for 4 reasons. The first one is that it mends anxiety. A lot of people are starting to experience climate anxiety, and the first step out of that is actually to put yourself back in power. Choosing optimism is not enough. Telling ourselves, ‘I want to be optimistic,' is gonna fall short very quickly, but if we keep showing up for that work and that change, we're actually fueling the optimism from within. And that's how we keep going. The second one is that it builds character. So, the things that you do every day start to build up your habits, and that builds your character. Recognizing that the things we do becomes the identity that we hold onto, and that actually plays a huge part on what I'll say next, which is, start shifting the culture. We are social creatures, and we always look to our surroundings to see what's acceptable and okay and not cool and all these things, so the more of us that do something, it starts to shift norms and create a new culture, and we have a lot of power when we start to shift the culture. And then lastly, I'll just say, we always plant seeds. So whatever you do, someone else might see and pick up on, you never know what's gonna ripple effect from your actions.” No one person can make every change needed, but we can all do something. Every small action has the potential to create positive effects you'll never know. One surprising piece of information is that some of the things we're doing that we know are bad for the environment—like online delivery—may have more of a positive environmental impact than we thought. While the sheer amount of product that we order—especially non-essential items—is definitely exacerbating climate change, there are some positive takeaways. Christopher Mims, tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Arriving Today, on how everything gets from the factory to our front door, explains how, especially once our transportation and delivery vehicles have been electrified, ordering online may be a significantly greener alternative to shopping in stores. Christopher Mims: “The good news—you would think all of this ordering stuff online is terrible for the environment—look, it's bad for the environment in as much as it makes us consume more. We're all over-consuming, on average. But it's good for the environment in that, people forget, hopping into a 2 or 3 thousand pound car and driving to the grocery store—or a store—to get 5 to 15 pounds of goods and driving it home is horribly inefficient compared to putting the same amount of goods onto a giant box truck that can make 150 stops (if you're talking about a UPS or an Amazon delivery van), or a few dozen if you're talking about groceries. The funny thing is that delivery has the potential to be way more sustainable, and involve way less waste than our current system of going to stores. Frankly, physical retail is kind of a nightmare environmentally.” That's only a small piece of the puzzle, and there are still social and economic issues involved in the direct-to-home delivery industry. More important in regards to our personal responsibility is to stay engaged in the conversation. A both/and mindset is best: embrace our own individual responsibilities, one of which is holding companies and entities with more direct impact on the climate accountable for making infrastructural and operational change that can give individuals more freedom to make responsible choices. Tan Copsey again. Tan Copsey: “It is about political action and engagement for me. Not just voting, but it's about everything that happens in between. It's about community engagement, and the tangible things you feel when there are solar panels on a rooftop, or New York begins to move away from gas. I mean, that's a huge thing! In a more existential sense, the news has been bad. The world is warming, and our approach to dealing with it distributes the benefits to too few people. There are definitely things you can do, and so when I talk about political pressure, I'm not just talking about political pressure for ‘climate action,' I'm talking about political pressure for climate action that benefits as many people as possible.” So, if part of our responsibility is to hold our leaders to account… what changes do we need? What should we be encouraging our leaders to do? Since we're talking about political engagement, let's start with government. Tan spoke to me about government response to another global disaster—the COVID-19 Pandemic—and some of the takeaways that might be applied to battling climate change as well. Tan Copsey: “What's really interesting to me about the pandemic is how much money governments made available, particularly the Fed in the US, and how they just pumped that money into the economy as it exists. Now, you can pump that money into the economy and change it, too, and you can change it quite dramatically. And that's what we're beginning to see in Europe as they attempt to get off Russian gas. You're seeing not just the installation of heat pumps at astonishing scale, but you're also seeing real acceleration of a push toward green energy, particularly in Germany. You're also seeing some ideas being revisited. In Germany it's changing people's minds about nuclear power, and they're keeping nukes back on.” Revisiting debates we previously felt decided on is unsettling. Making the future a better place is going to require a great deal of examination and change, which can be scary. It's also something federal governments are designed not to be able to do too quickly. But that change doesn't have to work against the existing economy; it can build with it. It might be notable to people looking at this from a monetary perspective—the world's seven most industrialized countries will lose a combined nearly $5 trillion in GDP over the next several decades if global temperatures rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius. So it behooves everyone to work on these solutions. And what are those solutions? AR Siders spoke to me about the four types of solutions to climate issues. A lot of her work involves coastal cities, so her answer uses “flooding” as an example, but the strategies apply to other problems as well. AR Siders: “So the main categories are, Resistance, so this is things like building a flood wall, putting in dunes, anything that tries to stop the water from reaching your home. Then there's Accommodation, the classic example here is elevating homes, so the water comes, and the water goes, but it does less damage because you're sort of out of the way. Then there's Avoidance, which is ‘don't build there in the first place,' (America, we're not very good at that one). And then Retreat is, once you've built there, if you can't resist or accommodate, or if those have too many costs, financial or otherwise, then maybe it's time to relocate.” We'll need to apply all four strategies to different problems as they crop up, but it's important that we're proactive and remain open to which solution works best for a given issue. City governments have tremendous opportunities to emerge as leaders in this space. Studies project that by the end of the century, US cities could be up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the afternoon and 14 degrees warmer at night, meaning cities need to start taking action now. Phoenix, Arizona—a city that experiences the “heat island effect” year round—is actively making efforts to minimize these effects. In 2020, they began testing “cool pavement,” a chemical coating that reflects sunlight and minimizes the absorption of heat to curb the heat island effect. Additionally, measures to offer better transit options are on the table, with cities like Austin and New York emerging as leaders in the space. The Citi Bike app in New York City now shows transit information alongside rental and docking updates as acknowledgement that for many trips biking isn't enough, but in combination with buses or trains, biking can simplify and speed a commute as part of a greener lifestyle. Austin's recognition of the synergies between bikeshare and public transit has been praised as a model for other cities, as city transit agencies move away from seeing themselves as managers of assets (like busses), and towards being managers of mobility. I spoke with Art Chang, who has been a longtime entrepreneur and innovator in New York City—and who was, at the time of our discussion, running for mayor—about the need for resilience in preparing cities for the future. Art Chang: “There was a future—a digital future—for New York, but also being open to this idea that seas were rising, that global temperatures were going up, that we're going to have more violent storms, that things like the 100-year flood line may not be drawn to incorporate the future of these rising seas and storms. So we planned, deliberately and consciously, for a hundred-fifty year storm. We softened the edge of the water, because it creates such an exorbitant buffer for the rising seas and storms. We created trenches that are mostly hidden so that overflow water had a place to go. We surrounded the foundations of the building with what we call ‘bathtubs,' which are concrete enclosures that would prevent water from going into these places where so much of the infrastructure of these buildings were, and then we located as much of the mechanicals on top of the building, so they would be protected from any water. Those are some of the most major things. All technologies, they're all interconnected, they're all systems.” Making any of the changes suggested thus far requires collective action. And one of the ways in which we need to begin to collaborate better is simply to agree on the terms we're using and how we're measuring our progress. Some countries, like the United States, have an advantage when it comes to reporting on climate progress due to the amount of forests that naturally occur within their borders. That means the US can underreport emissions by factoring in the forests as “carbon sinks,” while other countries that may have lower emissions, but also fewer naturally-occurring forests, look worse on paper. This isn't factually wrong, but it obscures the work that's needed to be done in order to curb the damage. I asked Tan about these issues, and he elaborated on what he believes needs to be done. Tan Copsey: “Again, I'd say we resolve the ambiguity through government regulation. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at ESG. So this big trend among investors and companies, the idea that you take account of environmental, social, and governance factors in your investments, in what your company does. Realistically, there hasn't been consistent measure of this. I could buy an exchange-traded fund, and it could be ‘ESG,' and I wouldn't really know what's in it. And it could be that what's in it isn't particularly good. And so regulators are really trying to look at that now and to try and standardize it, because that matters. Likewise, you have carbon markets which are sort of within European Union, and then you have voluntary carbon markets, which are often very reliant on forest credits sourced from somewhere else, where you're not quite sure if the carbon reduction is permanent or not. And yeah, there is a need for better standards there.” To do this holistically we will need to get creative with economic incentives, whether that involves offsets, green energy credits, or new programs at local, state, or national levels. One of the more aggressive and comprehensive plans for rethinking energy policy came from the EU in summer 2021, just as Germany and Belgium reeled from killer floods that were likely exacerbated by the climate crisis. The EU announced its ”Fit for 55” plans, ”a set of inter-connected proposals, which all drive toward the same goal of ensuring a fair, competitive and green transition by 2030 and beyond.” It's an approach that is systemic, recognizing the interconnectedness of a wide variety of policy areas and economic sectors: energy, transportation, buildings, land use, and forestry. And we need more programs and regulations like this. But until we have those better regulations we need, there are still things business leaders can do to make their businesses better for the environment today, so let's move away from government and talk about businesses. A lot of businesses these days pay an enormous amount of lip service (and money) to showing that they care about the environment, but the actual work being done to lower their carbon footprint or invest in cleaner business practices is a lot less significant. Tan spoke to me about this as well. Tan Copsey: “They need to move from a model which was a little bit more about PR to something that's real. In the past when a business issued a sustainability report, it was beautiful! It was glossily designed… And then when it came to like, filings with the SEC, they said ‘climate change is a serious issue and we are taking it seriously,' because their lawyers read it very, very closely. And so, if dealing with climate risk is embedded in everything you do as a business (as it probably should be), because almost every business, well, every business probably, interacts with the energy system—every business is a climate change business. They should be thinking about it, they should be reporting on it, y'know, when it comes to CEOs, it should be part of the way we assess their performance.” Nowadays, lots of companies are talking about “offsetting” their carbon emissions, or attempting to counter-act their emissions by planting trees or recapturing some of the carbon. But is this the right way to think about things? Dorothea Baur: “Offsetting is a really good thing, but the first question to ask should not be, ‘can I offset it?' or ‘how can I offset it?', but, ‘is what I'm doing, is it even necessary?'” That's Dorothea Baur, a leading expert & advisor in Europe on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability across industries such as finance, technology, and beyond. Her PhD is in NGO-business partnerships, and she's been active in research and projects around sustainable investment, corporate social responsibility, and increasingly, emerging technology such as AI. Dorothea Baur: “So, I mean, let's say my favorite passion is to fly to Barcelona every other weekend just for fun, for partying. So, instead of offsetting it, maybe I should stop doing it. And the same for tech companies saying, you know, ‘we're going to be carbon negative!' but then make the most money from totally unsustainable industries. That's kind of a double-edged sword.” It is notable that one of the key ways businesses and governments attempt to offset their emissions is “planting trees,” which has more problems than you may think. Yes, trees are an incredibly important part of a carbon sink approach, and we definitely need to plant more of them—but there's a catch to how we say we're going to do it. The promise of tree-planting has been such an easy add-on for companies' marketing campaigns to make over the years that there's a backlog of trees to be planted and not enough tree seedlings to keep up with the promises. It's not uncommon for companies to make the commitment to their customers to plant trees first, only for them to struggle to find partners to plant the promised trees. Dorothea Baur lamented this fact in her interview. Dorothea Baur: “It's also controversial, what I always joke about—the amount of trees that have been promised to be planted? I'm waiting for the day when I look out of my window in the middle of the city and they start planting trees! Because so much—I mean, the whole planet must be covered with trees! The thing is, it takes decades until the tree you plant really turns into a carbon sink. So, all that planting trees—it sounds nice, but also I think there's some double-counting going on. It's easy to get the credit for planting a tree, but it's hard to verify the reduction you achieve because it takes such a long time.” It's going to take more than lip service about tree-planting; we have to actually expand our infrastructural capability to grow and plant them, commit land to that use, and compensate for trees lost in wildfires and other natural disasters. Beyond that, we have to make sure the trees we're planting will actually have the effect we want. The New York Times published an article in March, arguing that “Reforestation can fight climate change, uplift communities and restore biodiversity. When done badly, though, it can speed extinctions and make nature less resilient…companies and countries are increasingly investing in tree planting that carpets large areas with commercial, nonnative species in the name of fighting climate change. These trees sock away carbon but provide little support to the webs of life that once thrived in those areas.” And that can mean the trees take resources away from existing plant life, killing it and eliminating the native carbon-sink—leading to a situation where net carbon emissions were reduced by nearly zero. These are problems that require collaboration and communication between industries, governments, activists, and individuals. Beyond those initiatives, companies can also improve their climate impact by investing in improvements to transportation for employees and customers, perhaps offering public transit or electric vehicle incentives to employees, or investing in a partnership with their municipality to provide electric vehicle charging stations at offices and storefronts. Additionally, business responsibility may include strategic adjustments to the supply chain or to materials used in products, packaging, or delivery. Another issue when it comes to offsetting emissions is the leeway the tech industry gives itself when it comes to measuring their own global climate impact, when the materials they need to build technology is one of the chief contributors to carbon emissions. Dorothea Baur again. Dorothea Baur: “The whole supply chain of the IT industry is also heavily based on minerals. There are actually, there are really interesting initiatives also by tech companies, or like commodity companies that specifically focus on the minerals or the metals that are in our computers. Like cobalt, there's a new transparency initiative, a fair cobalt initiative. So they are aware of this, but if you look at where is the main focus, it's more on the output than on the input. And even though the tech companies say, ‘oh, we're going to be carbon neutral or carbon negative,' as long as they sell their cloud services to the fossil industry, that's basically irrelevant.” Currently, AI tech is an “energy glutton”—training just one machine learning algorithm can produce CO2 emissions that are 5 times more than the lifetime emissions of a car. But there is still hope for AI as a tool to help with climate change, namely using it to learn how to more efficiently run energy grids and predict energy usage, especially as energy grids become more complicated with combined use of solar, wind, and water power in addition to traditional fossil fuels. AI can also make the global supply chain more efficient, reducing emissions and speeding up the process of developing new, cleaner materials. One small-scale use-case is “Trashbot,” which sorts waste materials into categories using sensors and cameras, eliminating the need for people to try to sort out their own recyclables. What's clear from every emerging report is that net zero emissions are no longer enough. We need governments and companies and every entity possible to commit to net negative emissions. Cities need ambitious plans for incentivizing buildings that sequester carbon. Companies need logistics overhauls to ensure their supply chains are as compliant as possible, and then some. Tan Copsey: ““What's interesting is when they talk about Net Zero—particularly companies, but also a lot of governments—they talk about Net Zero by 2050. What is that, 28 years. 28 years is still a long time away, and if you're a government, the current president certainly won't be president in 2050. If you're a company CEO, you may not be CEO next quarter, let alone in 28 years, and so we have to have nearer-term targets. You want to be Net Zero by 2050? Tell me how you're gonna get there. Tell me what you're gonna do by 2030, tell me what you're gonna do by next quarter. One of the things that encourages me is things like change in financial regulation, which sounds arcane and slightly off-topic, but it's not. It's about what companies report when, and how investors hold those companies to account to nearer-term action, because that's how we get there.” One of the reasons that corporations do so little to minimize their carbon footprint is that they don't accurately measure their own carbon emissions. Using AI to track emissions can show problem areas, and what can be done to address those issues. Abhishek Gupta, machine learning engineer, founder of the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, and board member of Microsoft's CSE Responsible AI board, spoke to me about an initiative he's working on to help ease this burden by making it easier for developers to track the effect they're having on the environment by incorporating data collection into their existing workflow. Abhishek Gupta: “One of the projects that we're working on is to help developers assess the environmental impacts of the work that they do. Not to say that there aren't initiative already, there are—the problem with a lot of these are, they ignore the developer's workflow. So the problem then is, if you're asking me to go to an external website and put in all of this information, chances are I might do it the first couple of times, but I start to drop the ball later on. But if you were to integrate this in a manner that is similar to ML Flow, now that's something that's a little more natural to the developer workflow; data science workflow. If you were to integrate the environmental impacts in a way that follows this precedent that's set by something like ML Flow, there is a lot higher of a possibility for people taking you up on that, and subsequently reporting those outcomes back to you, rather than me having to go to an external website, fill out a form, take that PDF report of whatever… that's just too much effort. So that's really what we're trying to do, is to make it easy for you to do the right thing.” And Abhishek isn't the only one who sees potential in AI. Dorothea Baur also spoke to me about her belief in AI, although she sees us using it for a different purpose. Dorothea Baur: “AI has huge potential to cause good, especially when it comes to environmental sustainability. For example, the whole problem of pattern recognition in machine learning, where if it's applied to humans, it is full of biases, and it kind of confuses correlation and causation, and it's violating privacy, etc. There are a lot of issues that you don't have when you use the same kind of technology in a natural science context, you know? Where you just observe patterns of oceans and clouds and whatever, or when you try to control the extinction of species. I mean, animals don't have a need for or a right to privacy, so why not use AI in contexts where it doesn't violate anyone's moral rights? And where you, at the same time, resolve a real problem.” Turning AI and algorithms away from people and towards nature is a wise decision in many respects. A lot of our efforts to curb the effects of climate change thus far have overlooked the same people that are overlooked in our data, and in almost every measurable respect, negative impacts of the climate crisis are felt most by marginalized populations and poorer communities. Tan Copsey: “I think that when it comes to climate tech, you need to think about who it's supposed to benefit. There's more than 7B people on earth, it can't just be for the US market, it has to be for everyone.” “The best futures for the most people” really comes into play here—communities of color are often more at risk from air pollution, due to decades of redlining forcing them into more dangerous areas. Seniors, people with disabilities, and people with chronic illnesses may have a harder time surviving extreme heat or quickly evacuating from natural disasters. Subsidized housing is often located in a flood plain, causing mold, and frequently lacks adequate insulation or air conditioning. People with a low-income may also be hard-pressed to afford insurance or be able to come back from an extreme loss after catastrophe strikes. Some indigenous communities have already lost their homelands to rising sea levels and drought. Indigenous communities, speaking of, often have traditional approaches—empowered by millennia of historical experience—to living gently on the planet and a mindset for cooperating with nature that are well worth learning. Seeking leadership on climate issues from Indigenous people should be a priority. An article published by Mongabay on December 21, 2021 gives an example of an initiative in Mexico that is using the knowledge of indigenous communities, and is working. Essentially, the Ejido Verde company grants interest-free loans to local communities to plant and tend pine trees for the tapping of resin, a multibillion-dollar global industry. Younger generations are eager to participate, and fewer people feel the need to migrate away from their homes. According to a paper by the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, the only way that recovery can work is if it is based on sound science, supported by fair governance, incentivized by long-term funding mechanisms, and guided by indigenous knowledge and local communities. Speaking of long-term funding mechanisms, let's talk about another group of leaders who have the potential to make a drastic positive impact today: private investors. Activist investors may seem unwelcome, but when they're making priorities known on behalf of humanity, they're ultimately doing us all a service. These people have the ability to help shape company and government policy by letting their dollars speak for us, by investing in solutions and burgeoning industries that we drastically need. That's been happening, such as when the shareholders of both ExxonMobil and Chevron sent strong messages about getting serious with respect to climate responsibility. In Europe, shareholder votes and a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its emissions faster than they'd already been planning. And social and financial pressure is a good way to nudge executives in the right direction, especially leaders who don't make climate-friendly decisions out of fear of pushback from their boards and investors. Tan Copsey: “Investors increasingly should be thinking about the companies they invest in on the basis of their climate performance. And that isn't just, ‘oh, they reduced some greenhouse gas emissions,' because, y'know, you look at a lot of tech companies and they have reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but really they have to do more than that. For businesses in other sectors, it may not be that simple. Certainly there are harder to abate sectors, and so it could be that you are the CEO of a steel company, and your emissions are still gigantic, but the change you can make by introducing, say, hydrogen, and getting rid of coal, or introducing renewable energy plus hydrogen to your—the way in which you do steel, is transformative for the global economy and transformative for the climate system, and in a way investing in that company is more climate-friendly than investing in a tech company; but chances are you have an ETF and you're doing both.” Despite everything I've talked about today, it's important for all of us to remain optimistic. I asked Anne Therese Gennari why optimism is important, and her answer didn't disappoint. Anne Therese Gennari: “Optimism, for scientific reasons, is actually very important. If you look to neuroscience, we need optimism to believe something better is possible, and then find the motivation and the courage to take action right now to get us closer to that goal. And I think there is a huge difference between optimism and toxic positivity, and I think a lot of people who don't agree with optimism associate it with always trying to be happy, thinking good thoughts and hoping things will turn out to the better. And that's why I love to come back to this understanding that ‘awareness hurts, and that's okay.' Because when we tell ourselves that not everything is beautiful, and sometimes things will be painful, we can actually handle that, and we can take that. But from that place of awareness, we can start to grow a seed of hope and tell ourselves, ‘well, what if? What if we did take action, and this happened? What if we can create a more beautiful world in the future? And so, we can paint a picture that's all doomsday, or we can paint one that's beautiful. So which one do we want to start working towards?” And if you find yourself saying, “I really want to be optimistic, but it's too hard! There's just so much bad news out there…” don't fret! You aren't alone. You might even say that's a quite human response. Anne Therese Gennari: “We're human beings, and as a species, we respond to certain kinds of information in different ways. Information that's negative or fear based has a very limiting response in our brains. When we hear something that's overwhelming, like climate change, and we know it's urgent, we might understand that it's urgent, but the action isn't there. Because how our brains respond to something that we don't want to happen is actually to not take action. And it goes back to way back in time, where like, you're facing this dangerous animal, and you're like ‘there's no way I can fight this animal, I can't outrun it, so what am I gonna do? I'm gonna stand here super still and hope that it doesn't see me.' That's literally what our brains think about when something's that overwhelming. And so I think the more urgent the matter is, the more important it is that we actually fuel ourselves with an optimistic future or goal to work towards, because that is the only way that we can actually trigger action.” So let's fuel our minds with an optimistic future to work towards. Despite all the bad news you've heard—even on this episode—there are a lot of hopeful developments happening! The most recent U.N. Climate Conference, COP26, established the Glasgow Climate Pact, which recognizes that the situation is at an emergency level, asking countries to accelerate their plans by calling for provable action by next year. Policy changes, government regulations, and people becoming motivated are all on the rise. Caleb Gardner, who was lead digital strategist for President Obama's political advocacy group, OFA and is now founding partner of 18 Coffees, a strategy firm working at the intersection of digital innovation, social change, and the future of work, spoke to me about what he's most optimistic about, which is right in line with this show's values. Caleb Gardner: “I'm probably most optimistic about technology's ability to tackle global problems like climate change. I'm actually pretty bullish on technology's ability to solve and actually innovate around the reduction of carbon in our atmosphere, electric vehicles, electric grid… and what's great is a lot of that's already being driven by the private sector around the world, so it's not as dependent on government as we think that it is.” So let's talk about some of the emerging technologies that show a lot of promise in mitigating the effects of climate change—and that might make sense to invest in, if you have the means to do so. A team of UCLA scientists led by Aaswath Raman has developed a thin, mirror-like film that reflects heat to outer space through radiative cooling, and can lower the temperatures of objects it's applied to by more than 10 degrees. The idea comes from generations of knowledge from people living in desert climates who learned to cool water by letting the heat radiate out of it overnight. If this film were added to paint and/or applied to pipes and refrigeration units, it could help cool buildings and make refrigeration systems more efficient, reducing the need for air conditioning, which accounts for as much as 70% of residential energy demand in the United States and Middle East. One of the strongest selling points of innovations like this film is that it doesn't need electricity; it only needs a clear day to do its job. Another innovation in reflecting energy back into space comes in the form of ‘cloud brightening,' a technique where salt drops are sprayed into the sky so that clouds reflect more radiation, allowing us to refreeze the polar ice caps. Then there's the new trend of green roofs, in particular the California Academy of Sciences' Living Roof, which spans 2.5 acres and runs six inches deep, with an estimated 1.7 million plants, collecting 100 percent of storm water runoff and offering insulation to the building below. The whole endeavor is brilliantly hopeful and strategic. A massive green roof is completely on brand for a science museum, but that doesn't mean other buildings and businesses wouldn't benefit from them as well. The National Park Service even estimates that over a forty year building lifespan, a green roof could save a typical structure about $200,000, nearly two-thirds of which would come from reduced energy costs. Other building technologies move beyond solar panels and green roofs, with automated building management systems detecting usage patterns of lighting, heating, and air conditioning. There have also been innovations in window insulation, trapping heat during the winter and blocking it out in the summer. ‘Green cement' can be heated to lower temperatures and cuts emissions by a third compared to regular cement. There are new Hydrogen-powered ships whose emissions are water. Electric planes have been developed for short-distance flights. Large floating solar power installations have the potential to generate terawatts of energy on a global scale, and when built near hydropower, can generate electricity even in the dark. Lithium batteries continue to get smaller and more efficient, and can be charged faster and more often than other batteries, making electric vehicles cheaper. And speaking of electric vehicles, they can help with our energy storage problems, with owners buying electricity at night to charge their cars and selling it to the grid when demand is high and cars are unused during the day. Feeding cows seaweed and replacing beef with insects such as mealworms can drastically reduce methane emissions. Scientists in Argentina are working on backpacks for cows that collect their methane, which have shown to collect enough methane from a single cow every day to fuel a refrigerator for 24 hours. To help curb other types of emissions, carbon capture and storage technologies like NZT allow us to capture CO2 in offshore storage sites several kilometres beneath the North Sea. But it's not just about new technologies, or technologies that only work for the richest people. Here's Tan again to elaborate on this idea. Tan Copsey: “This is a really tricky moment, y'know, this is a really bad time to be inefficiently using the resources we have. As we think about climate tech, think about optimizing mobility, as well as copying the existing model. There's a lot of existing tech out there that would make people's lives better—very simple irrigation systems—and so, we shouldn't just think of this in terms of big new exciting things, we should think about it in terms of deploying existing things.” All of this is part of embracing the mindset that says things can change. We need a can-do mindset, but we also need clarity and collaboration. Basically all options need to be implemented if we want to curb the damage that has already been done. Our solutions need to work in conjunction with one another, and support the greatest number of people. To close out, here's Christopher Mims with the last word on putting away the doom and gloom, and remaining optimistic in the face of overwhelming adversity. Christopher Mims: “If you really think about the whole sweep of human history, we live in a time where the pace of especially technological, and therefore in some ways cultural change, is so much faster than ever. We keep inventing new ways to kind of trip ourselves up, and then we have to just adapt so quickly to them. We're constantly playing catch-up with our own technological and social developments. So there's a lot of beating ourselves up over like, ‘woah, how come we didn't do it this way, or we didn't do this right?' or whatever. Sometimes I'm just like, ahh, just chill! We're going as fast as we can. It's very easy to get caught up in the moment to moment, but I think there is this kind of overall arc where, if we don't cook ourselves to death, or blow ourselves up, or distract ourselves to death, we're moving in directions that, once we have fully understood how to live in harmony with the technology that we've created, we'll probably be okay.” Thanks for joining me on The Tech Humanist Show today. I hope you've learned something, and at the very least, that you're going into the future with more hope than you had before.

On #TheUpdate this Tuesday, the shooting epidemic on the streets of the City of New York has now made it's way underground. A man riding a northbound N train during yesterday's evening rush was shot in the leg when a other man armed with a gun approached and demanded his cell phone. The NYPD say that a 2-year-old girl was fatally struck by an SUV driven by her mother's boyfriend. The toddler's 23-year-old mother was removing packages from the rear of a Nissan Rogue when the child wandered in front of the vehicle. And in a new poll by the Associated Press, the Center For Public Affairs Research, and the the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, a majority of Americans regard the deteriorating climate as a problem of high importance to them. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/brandon-julien/support

In this episode, you'll hear:What is climate change and why is it occurring?What is the Net Zero America Project?How can the United States create a net-zero economy by 2050?What role will finance play in the revolution in the economy?Related Article:  Climate report to add pressure on governments to decarbonizeRelated Article:  SEC's Gensler takes to Twitter to push mandatory climate disclosuresRelated Article:  What the U.N.'s climate change report means for advisersUnited Nations SDG #13 The Net Zero America Project reportIPCC Climate Change Report:  Sixth Assessment Guest Bio: Chris Greig commenced a 25-year career in industry in 1986 as the co-founder of a successful process technology and contracting company, which he sold in 1999 to a major European engineering company. From 1999 to 2011, he held senior project and executive roles in the construction and energy resources sectors, including as CEO of ZeroGen, a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. In 2011 he joined the faculty of the University of Queensland (Australia), where he led both the UQ Energy Initiative and the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation. He also served as chairman of the Energy Policy Institute of Australia, deputy chairman of Gladstone Ports Corporation, and non-executive director of two ASX-listed engineering companies. He was a Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow in Energy and Environment at the Andlinger Center from 2018 to 2020, and joined Princeton University as a senior research scientist in August 2020. He also holds an adjunct professorship at UQ. Chris has a PhD in chemical engineering from UQ and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. His research interests lie in energy transitions, economics and policy, energy for development, mega-project implementation, and CO2 capture and storage systems.

When was the last time you heard a positive story about climate change, a story about someone with a new idea or innovative solution to help reduce our carbon footprint? This is that story. Michael Greenstone is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Director of the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and former chief economist in the Obama White House. Now, he's developed a new nonprofit called Climate Vault, which could be a powerful new tool in the fight against climate change, and it's built around a simple idea: outbidding polluters for the right to pollute.

This week, Michael Greenstone (University of Chicago) joins Nikos Tsafos (CSIS) to discuss the recently published roadmap for energy and climate policy published by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). This roadmap brings to the U.S. climate debate a host of practical recommendations to lead the transition to a decarbonized economy. Nikos and Michael look at key issues including carbon pricing, transportation, and efficiency while also looking at how to apply lessons learned from previous strategies. Read the Report: U.S. Energy and Climate Roadmap: Evidence-based Policies for Effective Action (https://epic.uchicago.edu/us-energy-and-climate-roadmap/)  

In this final episode for Season 1 of the Women in Utilities Podcast, I'm joined by Britt Ide.Britt is an engineer and a lawyer who has over 25 years experience in the energy and utilities industry and currently serves on the Board of Directors or on Advisory Boards for a number of public and private companies and non-profit organisations. These include the Board of Directors for NorthWestern Energy,  ATLIS Motor Vehicles, the Energy Policy Institute, and Hot Rock Energy Research Organisation and the Advisory Board for 3 Degrees.Britt shares with me what being on a Board entails, the skills and experience that you need,and how to find Board opportunities. While serving on a Board maybe something for the latter part of your career, Britt shares some tips on how you can start to prepare yourself for Board positions early on. Britt is very passionate about encouraging women to pursue careers in engineering and increasing the number of women and the diversity of Boards. She has been involved in a lot of initiatives to make an impact in these areas and in this episode she shares some of the resources and programs that are available to women interested in board opportunities. Links to all of the resources Britt talks about can be found below.Resources discussed:Athena Alliance: https://athenaalliance.com/50/50 Women on Boards: https://5050wob.com/Clean Energy Education and Empowerment International Initiative: https://www.c3e-international.org/https://www.c3eawards.org/Nurole: https://www.nurole.com/Women's Energy Network: https://www.womensenergynetwork.org/Women Corporate Directors: https://www.womencorporatedirectors.org/Organisations discussed:North Western Energy: https://www3.northwesternenergy.com/home3 Degrees: https://3degreesinc.com/Atlis Motor Vehicles: www.atlismotorvehicles.comEnergy Policy Institute: https://www.boisestate.edu/epi/home/about-us/Plan C Advisors: https://www.plancadvisors.com/Coalition for Green Capital: https://coalitionforgreencapital.com/Hot Rock Energy Research Institute: https://www.hotrockhero.org/

There's no denying the world is already paying for climate change. The price is stronger hurricanes, bigger wildfires, and unpredictable heat waves. So, how can people living on a changing globe literally pay to mitigate the effects of climate change? One solution is to utilize the social cost of carbon, says economist Michael Greenstone. He co-led the development of the US government’s social cost of carbon as chief economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. President Biden has raised carbon's value back to Obama-era levels after the Trump Administration lowered it. Greenstone, who leads the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago, speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin about how we're just beginning to experience what the climate has in store.

It's a rude wake-up call for us all. Brazil's environmental ministry has released preliminary figures showing that deforestation in the Amazon has hit its highest rate in a decade. Between August 2018 and July 2019, approximately 11,088 square kilometers of rainforest was destroyed, a 9.5 percent increase on the previous year.  The dense rainforests of Brazil consume an enormous amount of the world's Carbon Dioxide and release Oxygen in return. The latest data is big blow to all those who are fighting to save the environment and the planet - our only home. Faraway in India, high pollution is a big issue all around the year, especially in winters. According to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago's Air Quality Life Index, the average Indian loses 5.2 years due to particulate pollution. India secured 168 rank in the 12th edition of the biennial Environment Performance Index (EPI Index 2020) — that measured the environmental performance of 180 countries — and was released by the Yale University in June 2020.  In 2018, India's rank was 177. Let's wake up before it's too late... (Please do subscribe, like, comment, and share if you liked this episode/channel) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kaj-studio/message

The overarching theme of the Online Tylösand Summit 2020 is Climate Change. This session focuses on the impact and cost of climate change and what policy conclusions that can be drawn based on this knowledge. Speakers Keynote Michael Greenstone Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Greenstone previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. He is also a Co-Director of the Climate Impact Lab, producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impact of climate change. Panelists John Hassler Professor of Economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. Hassler serves as a Member of The Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and as a Board Member of Stockholm Resilience Centre. He was previously the Chair of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council, as well as the Chair and Co-author of the SNS Economic Policy Council Report 2020 “Swedish Policy for Global Climate”. Lena Hök Senior Vice President Sustainability at Skanska Group. Hök previously served as Head of Sustainability at Skandia Norden. She is the Chair of the Sustainability Committee at ICC Sweden and serves on the board of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) as well as on the board of BoKlok. Moderator: Mia Horn af Rantzien, CEO, SNS.

The Honourable Doug Black, Q.C. was elected by Albertans as a Senator-in-Waiting on April 23, 2012. In that election, he received the most votes of any elected representative in Canada before or since. He was subsequently appointed to the Senate of Canada on January 25, 2013. Today, he continues to be an active Senator on behalf of Albertans. In the last Parliament, he was the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce. Prior to serving in the Senate, Senator Black practiced law, and served as a board member or advisor to several Canadian businesses. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2002 and was named in 2012 as one of Canada’s most influential lawyers by Canadian Lawyer Magazine.  Deeply involved in his community, Senator Black has been awarded the Alberta Centennial Medal in recognition of his community contributions. He has served as Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary, Chair of the Capital Campaign for the Banff Centre, Governor Emeritus of the Banff Centre, and was founder of Lakecrest School in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Senator Black was the founding president of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, the organization dedicated to the development of a Canadian energy framework. He is also the co-founder of Alberta2.0, a group of Alberta leaders who have developed a roadmap for a more robust and resilient Albertan economy. Additionally, Senator Black sits on the executive of the Canada-UK Parliamentary Association and is a member of both the Canada-Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Canada-US Inter-Parliamentary Group. Senator Black lives in Alberta with his wife and together they have two married children and five grandchildren. Follow Us: Instagram: www.instagram.com/crossborderpodcast/ Twitter: twitter.com/CrossBorderPod Facebook : www.facebook.com/CrossBorderInterviewPodcast/ Website: www.crossborderinterviews.ca/ Cross Border Interviews is owned by Miranda, Brown & Associates Inc.

Swarthmore College Men's Basketball alumnus Michael Greenstone, class of 1991, appeared on this week's episode of Then & Now to discuss his time at Swarthmore and his career in economics with host Brandon Hodnett. Greenstone was a 1,000-point scorer for Swarthmore Men's Basketball and earned his bachelor's with high honors in economics. He earned his PhD in economics from Princeton and is now the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Greenstone previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States government's social cost of carbon. His research has influenced policy globally and focuses largely on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society's energy choices. In this episode, he recounted scoring his 1,000th point while being guarded by his brother, how Swarthmore encouraged his intellectual curiosity, how his Air Quality Life Index has helped visualize pollution's impact on life expectancy, and how he's currently studying COVID testing. Watch this interview on YouTube or Facebook or listen to it on your podcasting platform of choice. Help more people find this interview and more great content from Swarthmore Athletics by leaving a review, sharing this interview and by subscribing to our channels.

In this week's episode, guest host Richard G. Newell talks with Amy Harder, a reporter at Axios who covers energy, the environment, and climate change issues. Previously, Amy covered similar topics for the Wall Street Journal and the National Journal; she also was the inaugural journalism fellow for the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute in 2018. Harder and Newell discuss the likelihood of bipartisan policies moving forward, given various election result scenarios; how to effectively use political capital; "climate hawks" and the viability of climate policy; implications of changes in the Supreme Court for environmental cases; and more. This episode is the first in our month-long spin-off series, “Big Decisions: The Future of US Environmental and Energy Policy.” For this series, which will air in our same Resources Radio time slot every Tuesday in October, RFF President Richard G. Newell and RFF Board of Directors Chair Sue Tierney will share guest-hosting duties; they will talk with leading decisionmakers, analysts, researchers, and reporters about the big decisions that will impact US environmental and energy policy in the years to come. References and recommendations: "The New Map" by Daniel Yergin; https://www.danielyergin.com/books/thenewmap "The Golden Spruce" by John Vaillant; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/182225/the-golden-spruce-by-john-vaillant/9780676976465

Ralph welcomes Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” who argues that despite it being a vast storehouse of knowledge, the internet could be turning us into superficial thinkers. Also, NY Times opinion writer, Justin Gillis, along with the executive director of the Energy Policy Institute, David Pomerantz report on the scandal of fossil fuel and nuclear companies bribing state politicians.

In this week's episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Amy Harder, national energy and climate change reporter at Axios. Harder's reporting includes exclusive scoops and analyses of national and global trends. Previously, she covered similar issues for the Wall Street Journal and National Journal. Harder also was the inaugural journalism fellow for the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute in 2018. Harder has been a longtime friend of RFF and has participated as a moderator in several RFF events. You may have followed her work on shale gas development, carbon pricing, and so many of the other topics of interest in today’s energy and climate policy conversations. Here, Harder discusses how she thinks about environmental journalism—and journalism in general—in this day and age. References and recommendations: RFF's Global Energy Outlook tool; https://www.rff.org/geo/ Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold's climate reporting; https://twitter.com/russellgold "See how global warming has changed since your childhood" by Tim Leslie, Joshua Byrd, and Nathan Hoad; https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/how-climate-change-has-impacted-your-life/11766018

2019 is already shaping up as a tumultuous one in Washington, D.C., with divided government, a government shutdown and 2020 presidential campaigns already taking shape. And when it comes to energy and climate policy, there’s a lot of uncertainty, too, including what to make of calls for a Green New Deal. In this edition of the Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless sits down with two of the most prominent energy and climate reporters in Washington: Steve Mufson of The Washington Post and Amy Harder of Axios.  Steve has worked at The Post since 1989, covering the White House, China, economic policy and diplomacy, as well as energy. Earlier, he spent six years at the Wall Street Journal in New York, London and Johannesburg. Amy has been with Axios for two years, with her column, Harder Line, a regular feature of the news service. Previously, she worked for the Wall Street Journal and the National Journal. Amy is also the Inaugural Journalism Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. Bill, Steve and Amy discussed what lies in store for energy and climate policy and regulation in Washington in 2019, with Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives and making climate change a priority for action this year. They also delved into the emergence of the Green New Deal among Democrats and how that concept may complement mainstream policy objectives of the party or conflict with them.  Among other topics, they explore legislation aimed at OPEC’s role in oil markets and bills meant to promote carbon-capture and nuclear technologies, as well as whether lawmakers or the Trump administration will take steps to temper the impact on fuel prices of new shipping emissions regulations in 2020. There’s talk of regulation, too, and what tops the agendas at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Finally, Bill takes a few moments to talk about the Columbia Energy Journalism Initiative, a program at the Center on Global Energy Policy that helps energy journalists deepen their understanding of complex issues like markets, policy, science and geopolitics. And while at it, he asks Steve and Amy for their advice for budding energy journalists.

As climate change continues to stir concern and debate around the world, Prof. Michael Greenstone knows the importance of using his research to better explain the connection between the environment, health and global energy. The challenge for he and his colleagues at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) is waiting for others to put that information into action.   “I’m in charge of my research, and I’m not in charge of the world,” Greenstone said of Big Brains. “What we can do as scientists is make sure that the information is being articulated as clearly and in an accessible way as possible. It’s ultimately up to societies to judge what they’re going to do with it.”   Greenstone’s work has already had global impact. He and his EPIC colleagues developed a new pollution index that found air pollution cuts the global life expectancy by nearly two years. The Air Quality Life Index establishes air particulate pollution as the single greatest threat to human health globally.   On this episode of Big Brains, the environmental economist discusses how the global energy challenge is one of society’s most important problems and something he calls “the social cost of carbon”—the most important number you’ve never heard of when it comes to climate change.   Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify, and rate and review the podcast.

A Conversation with Bill Brown, CEO of NET Power by Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago & UChicago Podcast Network

Professor Robert Rosner is the founding co-director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), founding chair of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Laboratory's Director's Council, and former Director of Argonne National Laboratory. At the close of the 75th anniversary of the first nuclear reaction, which took place at the University of Chicago, Vishwanath Subramaniyam Emani Venkata stopped by Professor Rosner's office to discuss the future of nuclear energy in the United States and around the world.Credits:Vishwanath Subramaniyam Emani Venkata for interviewingDavid Raban for engineeringAnita Joshi for editing

Professor Robert Rosner is the founding co-director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), founding chair of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Laboratory's Director's Council, and former Director of Argonne National Laboratory. At the close of the 75th anniversary of the first nuclear reaction, which took place at the University of Chicago, Vishwanath Subramaniyam Emani Venkata stopped by Professor Rosner's office to discuss the future of nuclear energy in the United States and around the world.Credits:Vishwanath Subramaniyam Emani Venkata for interviewingDavid Raban for engineeringAnita Joshi for editing

A new technical report on US fuel efficiency targets says the vehicle fleet may fall short of a goal of 54.5 miles per gallon. Senior editor Brian Scheid parses the key points of the report and talks with Sam Ori, executive director at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago,...

A Kreisman Housing Breakfast Series event co-sponsored by the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago and the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Led by University of Chicago environmental lawyer Mark Templeton, an expert panel will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different public and private approaches for addressing the impacts of climate change on infrastructure and housing. Featuring panelists: - Henry Henderson, Midwest Director, Natural Resource Defense Council - Bill Abolt, Vice President, AECOM - Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics In conversation with Mark Templeton, Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic. Recorded on April 21, 2015.

A Kreisman Housing Breakfast Series event co-sponsored by the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago and the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Led by University of Chicago environmental lawyer Mark Templeton, an expert panel will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different public and private approaches for addressing the impacts of climate change on infrastructure and housing. Featuring panelists: - Henry Henderson, Midwest Director, Natural Resource Defense Council - Bill Abolt, Vice President, AECOM - Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics In conversation with Mark Templeton, Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic. Recorded on April 21, 2015.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Twice a year, the University of Chicago offers the Joint Speaker Series for members of the University, Argonne, and Fermilab communities to foster new interactions. The program provides a setting for all three communities to gather informally around topic areas outside of standard specialties. The eighth program in the series, “Clean Energy 2030: Building a Sustainable Future,” occurred on December 4, 2013. It featured Mark Peters, deputy laboratory director for programs at Argonne (moderator); Leah Guzowski, energy policy scientist, Decision and Information Sciences, at Argonne; Hussein Khalil, director, Nuclear Engineering Division, at Argonne; Peter Littlewood, Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago and associate laboratory director for physical sciences and engineering at Argonne; and Robert Rosner, the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics, and co-director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Each Joint Speaker Series event features a reception and a moderated panel discussion that explores interdisciplinary topics. Scientists and scholars from all three institutions, as well as occasional outside experts, participate on the panels. In the inaugural “Art and Science” event, panelists discussed how computer-generated art can help scientists better understand and communicate their findings. The discussion of fresh topics encourages collaboration among faculty, researchers, scientists, and engineers at all three institutions.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. At the Atomic Age Symposium II: Fukushima on May 5, 2012, UChicago professor Robert Rosner offers his thoughts on the Fukushima disaster and the safety and communications issues related to the management of nuclear power. Rosner is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC). Rosner previously served as Director of Argonne National Laboratory and is actively involved in efforts to promote nonproliferation. Hiroaki Koide, nuclear reactor specialist and Assistant Professor at Kyoto University's Nuclear Research Institute, responds to Rosner's talk with his own arguments. The event was introduced by Michael Fisch, Assistant Professor in Anthropology. This symposium was sponsored by the Committee on Japanese Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Human Rights Program, and the Program on the Global Environment at the University of Chicago, and DePaul University.