Podcasts about Environmental economics

Did you know that a cluttered home can contribute to stress, reduce productivity, and even impact overall well-being? This week on Room by Room: The Home Organization Science Insights Podcast, host Sabrina Oktavelia sits down with Oluwaseyi Popogbe to discuss the crucial role of sanitation in maintaining a functional and harmonious home. As a seasoned Economics lecturer and researcher with over a decade of academic experience, Oluwaseyi Popogbe specializes in Development Economics, Environmental Economics, and Monetary Economics. Her work sheds light on the vulnerabilities of the urban poor, highlighting the impact of limited education, health challenges, and inadequate living standards on sanitation and home organization. In this episode, Sabrina and Oluwaseyi Popogbe dive into the importance of shared responsibility in keeping a home clutter-free. They explore how a lack of understanding of sanitation, especially in lower-income households, can contribute to declining living conditions. Additionally, they discuss actionable strategies for creating an organized home, including seeking support for those who struggle with cleaning—such as individuals with mental health challenges—so they can eventually maintain their space independently. Tune in to this episode for practical insights on turning home organization into a collective effort and fostering a healthier, more organized living space! Follow Oluwaseyi Popogbe's work: Orcid: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-1393-7121 Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fZigS38AAAAJ&hl=en Connect with Oluwaseyi Popogbe via the following platform: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seyipops/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oluwaseyi-omowunmi-popogbe/ Produced by the Home Organization Science Labs, a division of LMSL, the Life Management Science Labs. Explore LMSL at https://lifemanagementsciencelabs.com/ and visit http://ho.lmsl.net/ for additional information about Home Organization Labs. Follow us on Social Media to stay updated: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCODVhYC-MeTMKQEwwRr8WVQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeorg.science.labs/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeorg.science.labs/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HOScienceLabs LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/home-organization-science-labs TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@home.org.science.labs You can also subscribe and listen to the show on your preferred podcasting platforms: Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/room-by-room-the-home-organization-science-insights-podcast/id1648509192 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7kUgWDXmcGl5XHbYspPtcW Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/37779f90-f736-4502-8dc4-3a653b8492bd iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/102862783 Podbean: https://homeorganizationinsights.podbean.com/ PlayerFM: https://player.fm/series/3402163 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/room-by-room-the-home-organiza-4914172 

Have you ever had a business idea that sounded too wild to work? Don't dismiss it just yet! In this episode, Deborah sits down with Vanessa Thompson to discuss the power of innovation and sustainability in building a thriving business. If you've ever doubted your ideas because they seemed too different, this conversation will inspire you to embrace your creativity and take action. Success often comes from the boldest ideas, so don't be afraid to be unique! Here are the things to expect in the episode:How sustainability can drive innovation and business success.Some businesses that have successfully integrated sustainability into their models and achieved success.The superpower of active listening, particularly for women leaders.How nature-inspired solutions (biomimicry) can lead to groundbreaking innovations.And much more! About Vanessa:Vanessa Thompson is a sustainability and finance expert with a decade of experience at the UN Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, the World Bank, JLL Spark Ventures, and Silicon Valley startups. Her podcast has featured icons like Olympian Venus Williams and top industry leaders. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of U.C. Berkeley (B.S. Environmental Economics) with an MBA from Santa Clara University, Vanessa's upcoming book explores sustainable leadership as a driver of business innovation. Connect with Vanessa Thompson!Website: https://www.the-sustainability-experts.com/Vanessa's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessathompson5/The Sustainability Experts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-sustainability-experts/The Sustainability Experts Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sustainability-experts/id1727766301Book Recommendations:Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall   Connect with Deborah Kevin:Website: www.deborahkevin.comInstagram: www.instagram.com/debbykevinwriterLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-kevin/Book Recommendations: https://bookshop.org/shop/storytellher Check out Highlander Press:Website: www.highlanderpressbooks.comTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@highlanderpressInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/highlanderpressFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/highlanderpress

On this show we'll be chatting with John Kandulu, from Flinders University, about the economic value of green space. John is a Senior Research Economist.He has over 15 years of experience as an applied economist, having worked across the education, not-for-profit, private and government sectors. His research focuses on formulation and assessment of policies related to natural resource and environmental management. His work involves calculating the anticipated net returns on potential investment opportunities, policies and projects. Currently, his research interests are centred on the design and evaluation of effective diversity and inclusion policies to support inclusive natural resource management.You are listening to the Green Adelaide Podcast. This podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green, and wild in metro South Australia. Subscribe to the Green Adelaide Podcast for new episode alerts!

Economic issues often affect policy decisions and behavior related to climate change. We talk about this with Peter B. Meyer, Ph.D. Planet Philadelphia airs on 92.9 FM in NW Philadelphia & gtownradio.com, 4-5:00 PM ET the 1st & 3rd Friday/month. Please support Planet Philadelphia environmental radio show and Gtown Radio at https://gtownradio.com/donate/.

Does a food carbon tax increase animal deaths and/or the total time of suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish? Theoretically, this is possible, as a carbon tax could lead consumers to substitute, for example, beef with chicken. However, this is not per se the case, as animal products are not perfect substitutes. I'm presenting the results of my master's thesis in Environmental Economics, which I re-worked and published on SSRN as a pre-print. My thesis develops a model of animal product substitution after a carbon tax, slaughter tax, and a meat tax. When I calibrate this model for the U.S., there is a decrease in animal deaths and duration of suffering following a carbon tax. This suggests that a carbon tax can reduce animal suffering. Key points Some animal products are carbon-intensive, like beef, but causes relatively few animal deaths or total time of suffering because [...] ---Outline:(00:57) Key points(03:07) The Small Animal Replacement Problem(05:46) The model(05:49) Input data and market model(08:14) Measuring animal welfare impacts(09:39) Results(09:42) Carbon taxes(11:31) Slaughter taxes(12:10) Is a carbon tax or a slaughter tax better?(13:41) Cant we just put a simple tax on meat and fish instead?(14:06) Limitations(15:54) Full thesisThe original text contained 1 image which was described by AI. --- First published: January 3rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KbREamTda2sZhKtTz/will-a-food-carbon-tax-lead-to-more-animals-being --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Karen Palmer, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF) and director of RFF's Electric Power Program; Kevin Rennert, a fellow at RFF and director of RFF's Federal Climate Policy Initiative; and Margaret Walls, a senior fellow at RFF and director of RFF's Climate Risks and Resilience Program. Palmer, Rennert, and Walls offer insights on notable stories in energy and the environment in 2024, including an intense Atlantic hurricane season and emerging narratives around climate policymaking in all three branches of government. They also look ahead to developments to watch in environmental and energy policy in 2025. References and recommendations: “Storm Watch Series: Weather Volatility in the United States” on the Common Resources blog; https://www.resources.org/special-series-weather-volatility-in-the-united-states/ “Brave the Wild River” by Melissa L. Sevigny; https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393868234 “Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky” edited by Melissa Helton; https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781950564439/troublesome-rising/ “Shift Key” podcast; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shift-key-with-robinson-meyer-and-jesse-jenkins/id1728932037 “Alone on the Ice” by David Roberts; https://wwnorton.com/books/Alone-on-the-Ice/ “Landman” television series; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14186672/ “Boomtown” podcast; https://www.texasmonthly.com/podcasts/series/boomtown/

This week, we're rebroadcasting an episode from the Resources Radio archive while the team is on a break through the rest of December. We'll be back with new episodes in the new year; in the meantime, enjoy this throwback and poke around the archive at Resources.org for more topics you might be interested in. In this week's episode rerun, host Margaret Walls talks with economists Maximilian Auffhammer, Paul J. Ferraro, and John Whitehead. All three guests are recent recipients of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) Fellows Award. The AERE Fellows Program recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of environmental and resource economics, including research, mentorship, service in the AERE community, and policy advising. Auffhammer, Ferraro, and Whitehead reflect on their careers, discuss winning the award, and offer insights into the current state of environmental and resource economics and the evolution of the field. References and recommendations: Association of Environmental and Resource Economists; https://www.aere.org/ Berkeley/Sloan Summer School in Environmental and Energy Economics; https://www.auffhammer.com/summer-school “Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics” by Spencer Banzhaf; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pricing-the-priceless/417AAD8A445E8B64BAD6BC201D2F2163 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.; https://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/digital/collection/p17336coll22/id/2681/

In this episode, our guest is Robin Burgess from the LSE and we talked about the direction that the Environmental Economics is taking, new datasets, approaches, tension between economic growth, and climate change, and more! Current Host: Ruveyda Gozen (@ruveyda_gozen) Podcast Owners: Ruveyda Gozen (@ruveyda_gozen) and John Van Reenen (@johnvanreenen) 01:30 Deforestation and Political Incentives 06:25 The Direction of Environmental Economics 10:50 A Personal Story by Robin Burgess and His Production Function 14:30 His New ERC Grant and The Projects Ahead! 21:00 Economic Growth and Climate Change Tension 25:40 Whose Turn(!) to Pollute? 34:30 Green Policies 42:50 Cheezy Questions!

Send us a textIf you're looking for truth about climate science, this is a powerful and unbiased discussion with an expert in the field.Eban Goodstein is the Vice President for Environmental and Social Leadership at Bard College in in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. At Bard, Goodstein directs the Graduate Programs in Sustainability. Goodstein is the author of three books: Economics and the Environment, now in its ninth edition; Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming; and The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment. Articles by Goodstein have appeared in among other outlets, The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Land Economics, Ecological Economics, and Environmental Management. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Time, The Economist, USA Today, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He serves on the editorial board of Sustainability: The Journal of Record. Goodstein has coordinated many national and international climate educational engaging thousands of colleges, universities, and K-12 schools in solutions-based dialogue, most recently WorldWide Climate and Justice Education Week in April 2024.  Support the show

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, Jordan converses with Mikayla Novak and Nathan Goodman on their paper, "Militarized Climate Planning: What is Left?", co-authored by Lofthouse, Novak and Goodman. Their paper is influenced by Don Lavoie's critiques of central planning laid out in his book, National Economic Planning: What is Left?, applied to today's issue of militarized climate planning or "war footing." Instead of using climate planning to solve climate change, they advocate for a peaceful, polycentric approach that is more adaptive to local knowledge. Mikayla Novak is senior fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Associate Director of the Entangled Political Economy Research Network. Learn more about her work with EPERN here.Nathan Goodman is a senior research fellow and senior fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is an alum of the Mercatus PhD Fellowship. Learn more about Nathan's work here.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to seasons one and two.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Local Seafood Year-round: Eating with the Seasons Guests Molly Moran-Ogren, Jordyn Kastlunger and Alexander Esterly, RI Seafood Marketing Collaborative By purchasing and eating local seafood, we help sustain regional fisheries and local fishing businesses. The Seafood Marketing Collaborative (SMC) is actively engaged in a host of programs and activities aimed at fostering increased awareness of, interest in and demand for local seafood products. In addition to developing and trademarking the RI Seafood logo, the Collaborative has launched a robust website, which serves as the focal point for the marketing campaign. The RI Seafood Brand is at the heart of the local food scene in the Ocean State. It guarantees seafood is fresh and landed in right here in Rhode Island, and it supports the local economy and local traditions. Consumers can find RI Seafood products in grocery stores and restaurants and at festivals and farmers' markets during every season. Molly Moran-Ogren, SMC Chair, was born in Juneau, Alaska, and is a fourth-generation commercial fisherman. Understanding that commercial fishing is a livelihood dependent on the resource, and wanting to keep her family's legacy alive, Molly shifted her career from fishing to advocating for all parts of the seafood industry. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Nevada, a Juris Doctor from Roger Williams University School of Law, and a Master's Degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island. As the appointed Chair of the SMC, Molly oversees the day-to-day programmatic initiatives, budget, grant proposals, collaborative coordination and meetings, and more. Jordyn Kastlunger, SMC Marketing Specialist, manages the social media pages of RI Seafood, publishes the newsletter, and works closely with local fishermen for features. She comes from a third-generation fishing family in San Diego and grew up working as a deckhand for her father and assisting in the direct sales of their catch to the community. Jordyn graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor's degree in Communications and a minor in Sustainability. She has attended a variety of conferences and meetings both on a national and international level speaking about the importance and success of commercial fishing and sustainable seafood sources. Alex Esterly, RI Seafood's Marketing Intern focuses on community engagement by representing the collaborative at local seafood festivals and farmers' markets. His love for all things seafood comes from the time he spent fishing as a child on the Jersey Shore with his grandpa. Alex is originally from Pennsylvania and made his way to the Ocean State to attend the University of Rhode Island where he received his bachelor's degrees in Environmental Economics and Marine Affairs, and his master's degree in Environmental Economics. These three guests share their amazing background stories, detai their experiences working together in the SMC and guide us toward eating more sustainably. INFORMATION RESOURCES Overall website: https://seafood.ri.gov/ Seafood finder: https://seafood.ri.gov/ri-seafood-finder PDF cookbooks: https://seafood.ri.gov/local-species/recipes-resources Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RISeafoodRocks/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ri.seafood/ Monthly Newsletter sign up: Sign Up Learn more at https://netwalkri.com email wendy@netwalkri.com or call 401 529-6830. Connect with Wendy to order copies of Fiddlesticks, The Angel Heart or Storywalker Wild Plant Magic Cards. Subscribe to Wendy's blog Writing with Wendy at www.wendyfachon.blog. Join Wendy on facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/StoryWalkingRadio

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, Jordan interviews Justus Enninga on the intersection of economics, environmentalism and urbanism. In this conversation, Justus speaks on his PPE beginnings spawned from his time spent in Southeast India as well as on Tocqueville, city planning, climate migration, agglomeration effects in cities, immigrant influxes, and more.Justus Enninga is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London, where his research focuses on the intersection of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) as well as on the question of how different institutional arrangements help citizens to adapt to environmental challenges. In addition to being a PhD candidate, he also works as a director at the Prometheus Institut, a classical liberal think tank in Berlin, as well as an economic policy editor for The Pioneer. He is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to seasons one and two.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on August 2, 2024.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Guests:Adam Bell, Director of Policy at StonehavenMegan Kenyon, Policy Correspondent at The New StatesmanSugandha Srivastav, British Academy Fellow and Lecturer in Environmental Economics at the Smith School, Oxford UniversityOne week after Labour's sweeping victory, we ask three of the smartest observers of UK climate and climate tech policy about early moves like the hiring of Chris Stark, the removal of the offshore wind ban, and picking a fight with NIMBYs - some of whom may turn out to be people who otherwise argue for faster climate action in the Greens and Lib Dems. Can they keep up the pace? UK's New Climate Policies:Adam Bell discusses the recent swift actions by the new UK government, such as lifting the ban on onshore wind. He highlights the necessity of equitable climate policies to avoid creating "low carbon haves and have-nots" and the potential for backlash if climate benefits are not widely shared​Challenges and Strategies in Climate Communication:Adam Bell emphasizes the importance of innovative communication strategies to garner local support for climate projects. He suggests that community-specific benefits, such as cash payments or co-ownership, might be necessary to gain broader acceptance of renewable infrastructure projects like pylons and wind turbines​(Meeting with Richard De…)​.Policy Insights and Green Economy Reporting:Megan Kenyon shares insights from her reporting on the green economy, including the rapid policy shifts following the UK election. She mentions the importance of engaging the community in the planning and implementation of climate projects to ensure their success and sustainability​Global Climate Action and Economic Implications:Sugandha Srivastav discusses the broader global context, focusing on emerging markets like India and their significant impact on global emissions. Innovative Approaches to Climate Policy:Sugandha highlights the importance of using the latest and most efficient technologies in the energy transition and the economic advantages of renewable energy over fossil fuels. She underscores the need for public investment in areas that provide significant societal benefits, drawing parallels with the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine​Resources Mentioned:Adam Bell's Upcoming Paper: Adam mentions an upcoming paper that outlines strategies for achieving the UK's 2030 climate goals. Keep an eye out for this report for detailed policy recommendations​ at StonehavenMegan Kenyon's Green Economy Reporting: Subscribe to The New Statesman's "Green Transition" newsletter for in-depth analysis and updates on the green economy.Sugandha Srivastav's Work on Renewable Energy: Check out Sugandha's TEDx talk and her article in The Conversation about the potential of renewable energy and the economic implications of transitioning from fossil fuels. Subscribe at wickedproblems.earth to go ad-free and get our show notes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  Discover the secrets to successful Adaptive Reuse in Urban Development in this enlightening webinar. Experts will guide you through the essential aspects of this innovative approach, highlighting embodied carbon, financial strategies, community enhancement, strategic planning, and navigating project limitations. Dive into the world of adaptive reuse, where we balance heritage preservation with modern urban needs. What You Will Learn: Learn about reducing environmental footprints and enhancing sustainability through adaptive reuse of existing structures. Explore the strategic planning and flexibility of adaptive reuse for sustainable urban development. Discover the financial and community revitalization benefits of adaptive reuse in urban areas. Understand the challenges and limitations in adaptive reuse, including legal, structural, and financial factors. Bryce Gerritsen is a member of the Sustainability Consulting Team at Sustainable Investment Group (SIG) as a full-time Sustainability Consultant. In this role, Bryce oversees and manages multiple projects related to sustainable and healthy buildings for commercial real estate clients.   Education Bryce holds a MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics from University of California – Davis and a BS in Environmental Economics and Policy from Oregon State University. His academic studies focused on measuring resource and environmental impact, economic analysis of resource and environmental policies, and ecosystem services valuation. While at OSU, Bryce worked with a multidisciplinary team as part of the EPA's P3 Sustainability Grant Competition to develop a web application for enhancing residential green infrastructure and community-based environmental management.   Experience Bryce has worked with more than 50 organizations from a wide range of industries, both private and civil, to integrate sustainability into their processes and develop 5-year sustainability action plans. These plans have saved the organizations more than 56M kWh and $7.8M annually.   Interests Bryce is most at home in the outdoors where he loves to spend time with the family hiking, camping, and spotting wildlife. When not in the mountains you will usually find him wrenching on a car.   Monte Hilleman, comes to us as an expert in the green building industry with over 25 years of experience and a strong reputation for credible and authentic urban development that maintains the vitality and sustainability of urban spaces. Monte has built his legacy at the forefront of developing and advancing ESG goals to create social, ecological and economic transformation.    Monte's leadership and experience in equitable economic and community development, including real estate transactions and finance, renewable energy infrastructure, workforce development, and sustainable urban design and development, is leading the industry towards a regenerative and equitable future. Trish Matthews, Principal at Matthews Design Group: MBA-HR LEED/ WELL AP/ FitWel/ RESET. Matthews Design Group Inc. is a niche firm focused on Human-Centered Sustainable Design. MDG advises developers/ building projects on healthy building certifications and rating systems, sourcing and securing green initiatives and grants.   We believe that buildings are the first line of defense against illness, both mental and physical. Our approach is focused exclusively on the ways that buildings, and everything in them, can improve our comfort, drive better choices, and enhance, rather than compromise, occupant health, and wellness.   We support our clients by implementing standards or certifications that put health first in the built environment.   MDG is proud to be part of the global movement to transform our buildings and communities in ways that help people thrive. We believe in People above all.   Show Highlights   Green financing tools to promote sustainable practices and funding opportunities in the industry.  Community impact and wellness, promoting concepts for occupants' health in repurposed spaces. Trends in regulatory frameworks, highlighting the need for stakeholder collaboration for successful implementation of sustainable strategies in adaptive reuse initiatives. Discussion on unlocking the potential of adaptive reuse and urban development with a focus on sustainability. Challenges in urban development and the importance of sustainable growth and cultural heritage preservation. Importance of prioritizing energy, transport, materials, and engaging the design team early in adaptive reuse projects. Overview of the green financing feasibility snapshot and its impact on project valuation. Community resilience and revitalizing communities through green building concepts. Case studies and their impact on community well-being.   “Adaptive reuse helps with the BD+C credit site development through protection of existing vegetated areas and habitats. It helps us meet the fundamental commissioning and verification prerequisite by optimizing existing systems for efficient performance. Adaptive reuse can earn us LEED points through the following materials and resource credits: building life cycle impact reduction sourcing of raw materials and construction and demolition waste management LEED recognizes the creativity and forward thinking approach required for adaptive reuse projects. We can earn innovation points for energy efficiency, materials reuse, historic preservation, community impact, flexibility and adaptability, and collaboration.” -Bryce     Show Resource and Information Connect with Charlie Cichetti and GBES   GBES is excited our membership community is growing. Consider joining our membership community as members are given access to some of the guests on the podcasts that you can ask project questions. If you are preparing for an exam, there will be more assurance that you will pass your next exam, you will be given cliff notes if you are a member, and so much more. Go to to learn more about the 4 different levels of access to this one-of-a-kind career-advancing green building community!   If you truly enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a positive rating and review on .  We have prepared more episodes for the upcoming weeks, so come by again next week! Thank you for tuning in to the !   Copyright © 2024 GBES  

In this week's episode, host Margaret Walls sits in on the annual conference of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists to talk with Jill Caviglia-Harris, a professor at Salisbury University, about her work teaching and mentoring early-career scholars in the field of environmental economics. Caviglia-Harris discusses her approach to teaching and mentorship, efforts to facilitate diverse perspectives in environmental economics by building diverse cohorts of scholars, and the importance of collective leadership methods in these types of inclusive programs. References and recommendations: “The six dimensions of collective leadership that advance sustainability objectives: rethinking what it means to be an academic leader” by Jill Caviglia-Harris, Karen E. Hodges, Brian Helmuth, Elena M. Bennett, Kathleen Galvin, Margaret Krebs, Karen Lips, Meg Lowman, Lisa A. Schulte, and Edward A. G. Schuur; https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol26/iss3/art9/ “Looking at Environmental and Natural Resource Economics through the Lens of Racial Equity” by Amy Ando, Titus Awokuse, Jimena González Ramírez, Sumeet Gulati, Sarah Jacobson, Dale Manning, Samuel Stolper, and Matt Fleck; https://www.resources.org/common-resources/looking-at-environmental-and-natural-resource-economics-through-the-lens-of-racial-equity/ “Systemic Racism in Environmental Economics” podcast episode from Resources Radio; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/systemic-racism-in-environmental-economics-with-jimena-gonzalez-ramirez-and-sarah-jacobson/ “Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Systemic Racism” by Amy Ando, Titus Awokuse, Nathan W. Chan, Jimena González Ramírez, Sumeet Gulati, Matthew G. Interis, Sarah Jacobson, Dale T. Manning, and Samuel Stolper; https://www.rff.org/publications/working-papers/environmental-and-natural-resource-economics-and-systemic-racism/ “Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Systemic Racism” by Amy W. Ando, Titus O. Awokuse, Nathan W. Chan, Jimena González-Ramírez, Sumeet Gulati, Matthew G. Interis, Sarah Jacobson, Dale T. Manning, and Samuel Stolper; https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/727693 “Thinking Like an Economist” by Elizabeth Popp Berman; https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167381/thinking-like-an-economist

In this week's episode, host Margaret Walls talks with economists Maximilian Auffhammer, Paul J. Ferraro, and John Whitehead. All three guests are recent recipients of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) Fellows Award. The AERE Fellows Program recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of environmental and resource economics, including research, mentorship, service in the AERE community, and policy advising. Auffhammer, Ferraro, and Whitehead reflect on their careers, discuss winning the award, and offer insights into the current state of environmental and resource economics and the evolution of the field. References and recommendations: Association of Environmental and Resource Economists; https://www.aere.org/ Berkeley/Sloan Summer School in Environmental and Energy Economics; https://www.auffhammer.com/summer-school “Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics” by Spencer Banzhaf; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pricing-the-priceless/417AAD8A445E8B64BAD6BC201D2F2163 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.; https://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/digital/collection/p17336coll22/id/2681/

Welcome to Living Well with MS, where we explore topics relating to living a full and healthy life with multiple sclerosis. In this episode, we are pleased to welcome Dr Fraser Quin as our guest! Dr Quin is the Executive Director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM), a charity that promotes the role of lifestyle medicine in improving people's health and wellbeing. He speaks to Dr Jonathan White about the role of lifestyle medicine for people with MS, the importance of sleep and how healthcare professionals are training to support their patients with lifestyle medicine. Topics and Timestamps 00:00 Dr Quin's background and role at the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM). 04:02 What is lifestyle medicine? And what isn't lifestyle medicine? 07:02 The role of the BSLM in the healthcare landscape. 10:28 The history and future of lifestyle medicine across the globe. 16:08 Why sleep is such an important pillar of lifestyle medicine. 20:28 How doctors are being trained in lifestyle medicine. 29:27 The #1Change Campaign: How making one small healthy change can change your life. Want to learn more about living a full and happy life with multiple sclerosis? Sign up to our newsletter to hear our latest tips. More info and links: Learn more about the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine Find out more about the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Find out more about the Royal College of Psychiatrists Watch back our livestream on talking to skeptics with Dr Jonathan White and Yasmin Neves Learn more about the #1Change campaign Learn about creating habits with Atomic Habit by James Clear Sign up to the 6 Months to Overcoming MS course New to Overcoming MS? Visit our introductory page Connect with others following Overcoming MS on the Live Well Hub Visit the Overcoming MS website Follow us on social media: Facebook Instagram YouTube Pinterest Dr Quin's bio: Dr Quin's career Dr Fraser Quin is the Executive Director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, European Lifestyle Medicine Council and World Lifestyle Medicine Organisation. Fraser is currently a Non-Executive Director of Ark Housing Association and was previously Chair of Deaf Action, Scotland's largest Deaf charity. His academic background Fraser also has a background in higher education and was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, completing his PhD at Edinburgh University. His personal life Fraser is a strong advocate for Lifestyle Medicine and is in his own words “living the dream” as a keen cyclist, with his type 2 diabetes currently in remission. He is also an avid motorcyclist and regularly tours Europe and the UK on his Triumph. Don't miss out:  Subscribe to this podcast and never miss an episode. Listen to our archive of Living Well with MS episodes here. If you like Living Well with MS, please leave a 5-star review. Feel free to share your comments and suggestions for future guests and episode topics by emailing podcast@overcomingms.org. Make sure you sign up to our newsletter to hear our latest tips and news about living a full and happy life with MS. Support us:  If you enjoy this podcast and want to support the ongoing work of Overcoming MS, we would really appreciate it if you could leave a donation here. Every donation, however small, helps us to share the podcast with more people on how to live well with MS.

In this first of a two-part series, we unpack the vital role of policy in driving the energy transition with Nicholas Rivers, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the Institute of the Environment at the University of Ottawa. Join us as we explore the layers of policy implementation, the interplay of social and technological solutions, and the challenge of designing policies that balance data with public opinion and emotion. Related links   More about Nicholas Rivers: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/969 uOttawa Institute of the Environment: https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/environment The Canadian Climate Institute: https://climateinstitute.ca/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en     To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcript: Energy Policy Deep Dive with Nicholas Rivers (Part 1)   Fri, May 24, 2024 11:55AM • 52:17 SUMMARY KEYWORDS emissions, policy, carbon, price, work, canada, carbon pricing, technology, government, cost, climate change, electricity, big, emitters, action, ontario, regulations, podcast, climate, energy SPEAKERS Nicholas Rivers, Trevor Freeman   Trevor Freeman  00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. We've talked a lot on the podcast about how climate change is a big complex problem. And the entity transition that is already underway is also a big complex undertaking. These things require complex solutions to address them, it's not a single thing that's going to solve this for us. You know, we often think about solutions as being some kind of technology, either an existing technology or something that we're going to innovate on or invent in the future. And we talk about a lot of those on the podcasts, everything from heat pumps, to renewable generation to grid modernization. But technology doesn't just exist and grow in a bubble. And we can't just rely on technological solutions on their own to solve climate change or to help continue the energy transition. There is also a need for other approaches, for example, Social approaches, you know, we need to educate people on what climate change is and how it works and what we need to do to change it. We need to motivate people, we need to rile up people to create that desire for change, and create the political and social will to go behind that. What are the key drivers to help advance all of these different moving parts, if you will, is policy our policy solutions, you can really think of policy as the foundation or the bedrock upon which all these other things are built. And when we talk about policy, we're talking about all different levels. So from the federal government, to provincial governments, who are municipal governments, and you know, this is the Canadian context, we're in Canada speaking about this. So if you're listening from a different country, you know, slot in your various levels of government there. Our policy solutions are what push or pull certain actions. And I'm sure we're all familiar with the sort of carrot and stick analogy. Carrots being those things dangled in front of us to help us move towards some more desirable action or desirable state sticks being you know, the sort of prod or push that are going to, you know, help push us into something or away from something else. These policy solutions are really designed to make a desirable action easier and more likely, and to make an undesirable action harder and less likely. So in the context of climate change, for example, the desirable action might be the adoption of cleaner technologies, like EVs or renewable generation, or speeding up the development and adoption of new technologies, where the undesirable action might be just the status quo like doing things, the way we've always done them, we know we need to change that's an important piece, or the undesirable action might be just the continued use of fossil fuels, we need to move away from that that's the undesirable action that's not going to help us solve climate change. And so we're going to talk about policy today. And I'll talk about our guests in a minute. But I think it's important to also remember this next piece, and that is that policy is tough. It is tough to know what will work and what won't work. It's tough to know what the thing is, that's going to really create the desired action you want, that people are going to get behind. policy can be uncomfortable, as I've said, policy prioritizes certain actions over others. And we've talked about this before Canadians and more broadly, people, we are not homogenous in the way that we think or care about things we don't always care equally about the same things. We all have different pressures and drivers in our lives. We all have different contexts in our lives, and so naturally, our priorities aren't always going to line up. And when you have a policy that is designed to prioritize certain actions over others, some portion of the population is going to disagree that that's the right priority. And in practical terms, it's usually a bunch of different portions of the population that agree or disagree in varying amounts. Policy is often designed and applied in what you might call a scientific way. So certain policy tools have expected outcomes that can be measured. There are, you know, metrics that go behind these things. But policy is often received by the general public in a very decidedly non-scientific way. In fact, we typically receive policy in a more emotional way, how we feel about some new policy really is what drives our opinion and our action around that policy. And that's more so than maybe the data will drive our opinion in our actions. In fact, the way that we look at that data is often influenced by sort of our emotion around how we feel about something. And I'm not saying that's wrong. That's kind of just human nature. And we all do it no matter what your I guess political leaning is where you fall in the spectrum. We all do this with, with policy, with the direction that our government is taking. But knowing that is helpful, and it lets us check in with ourselves against that, you know, are we really looking at things just based on the merits based on the data, or what is the emotion that we're feeling about certain things, I think that's important. So with that preamble, my guest today is here to help us pull apart the suite of policy tools that are already playing a role in helping us decarbonize and tackle climate change and some of the things that might be upcoming, or other options that are out there. And I'm gonna say off the bat that there's a lot to talk about here. This is quite a long conversation. So we're actually going to split this into two pieces. We'll have part one and part two, and kind of break it up into two different episodes so that they're a little bit easier to get through. But I'll say in advance, I appreciate you sticking through. I think this is an important topic of conversation and, and my guest today knows a lot about it. So I'm happy to have Nicholas Rivers on the podcast today. Nicholas Rivers is a Professor of Public and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the economic evaluation of environmental policies. He is a member of the Canadian climate Institute and served as a co editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and was previously a Canada Research Chair in climate and energy policy. Nick regularly provides advice on energy and climate policies to federal and provincial governments, as well as nongovernmental organizations. So Nicholas, welcome to the show.   Nicholas Rivers  07:32 Thanks for having me on, Trevor.   Trevor Freeman  07:34 So let's start with a little bit of background, can you give us a sense of how you got to where you are today, and really specifically how you came to be passionate about environmental policy?   Nicholas Rivers  07:44 Okay, well, this is something where, you know, maybe it's easy to look back and paint a linear trajectory. But certainly, this is not, this was not the aim. From a young age, I didn't have career goals, I would say leaving high school had no idea. I had been pretty good at math and, you know, a tinkerer. I liked playing with capsula, which was this cool, mechanical toy, and Lego, and that kind of thing. And so I did engineering, without really an end goal in mind. I did mechanical engineering. And at that time, you know, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I started reading books about kind of nascent books about climate change books about energy, I had friends that were really active in the kind of energy and environmental movements, and started to realize that that's maybe where I wanted to focus, my energy, my own energy. And so in my mechanical engineering degree, I wanted to start working on renewable energy, which was really at the beginning at the time, this was the late 1990s. So at the time, there was one wind turbine in Ontario. I went to visit it during my mechanical engineering degree, the Pickering one, right. It was up. No, it was up on the Europe like you're on the Peninsula, Brisbane and so Okay, gotcha, right by the British nuclear station. It was a test one, it wasn't a big commercial wind facility. So I was just like, digging around trying to find interesting stuff. And wind turbines look really interesting because they were big, and they were in moved and they you could see something they were doing. I didn't end up working in wind facilities. I ended up getting some jobs and hydrogen worked with Ballard and Hydrogenics as a co-op engineer. So that was my kind of foot in the in the renewable world. And I have to say, I didn't really like it all that much. I was doing, you know, I was in the field that I kind of wanted to be in the engineering field. And it's working on renewables, but the jobs I was doing didn't appeal to me. So they were really kind of small bits of the renewable energy picture and I was reading the books at the time by Amory Levin's and if you come across him or Paul Hodgkin and they were talking about big system transformations. And that's what I wanted to get into. And here I was figuring out the right radius to bend a pipe that transferred humidity from one stream to another. And it just wasn't jiving with the big picture that I was interested in. And so I ended up going back to university after my undergraduate degree, to study resource and environmental management with Mark Jackered, at Simon Fraser University. And Mark is one of the people that's been really central in thinking about energy policy and environmental policy in Canada over the last, I guess, like four decades now. And I think exposure to the way he was thinking and the way I was taught to think in that program really got me interested in and working on energy and environmental policy on a kind of as a career, and expose me to the possibility that you could work on this right, as a high school student leaving high school, you don't think that there's jobs working on energy policy, so it wasn't something I had in mind from for a long time. I'll also say, I grew up in a family that I don't know if they were environmentalist, but certainly fought a lot about the environment, you know, bird watching, and hiking, and that kind of thing. I was outside a lot when I was young, and I still like to be outside all the time. So I think there's, I've always had that kind of affinity for the environment. But this was a way that I could kind of blend some of my math skills or some of my interests and tinkering with, with some of those kinds of environmental affinity.   Trevor Freeman  11:31 Yeah, I mean, this is definitely not an episode where I need to give my backstory, but there's so much of what you said that, that I relate to from drawing a connection between playing with Lego as a kid and ending up in engineering school, that's totally my pathway as well, and being you know, good at math, getting into engineering school, and then realizing, hey, there might be something else out here through a project. And so I did my fourth year design project, just on a whim on a green roof for one of our university buildings    Nicholas Rivers  11:59 Ah cool.   Trevor Freeman  12:00 I would say that's kind of a point where it pushed me into this more sustainability focused career. So great to hear that. Thanks for sharing that. And certainly, I can appreciate the lack of linearity and a lot of careers in this space, and really the    Nicholas Rivers  12:14 Exactly, yeah    Trevor Freeman  12:15 everything. So. Okay, so the topic here, we're talking about today's policy. So I want to have you help us understand what is the history of decarbonisation policy in Canada? You know, we're at a point today, and we'll talk about maybe where we need to go moving forward. But what has come before this? When did we start seeing policies focused on reducing carbon in Canada, give us a bit of a crash course on our history so far.   Nicholas Rivers  12:45 Sure, I'll do my best. It's not that new. Right. We've known about this for a long time. In fact, I teach a course on climate. And, you know, in digging around for that course, we have studied climate change for over a century. The first, I think, relatively modern looking predictions about climate change came in the 1800s, the late 1800s. And so we have had a pretty good sense of where we're going for a long time. The first real government assessment of the severity of climate change came in the 1960s. This was a US government and national assessment, National Science Assessment. And it pretty much got the contours of the problem right, in the sense that we haven't, haven't changed our understanding of the science of climate change all that dramatically since the 1960s. The projections from that time still hold out today. In Canada, we didn't act quickly after the 1960s reports in the US, although we certainly followed them. The first thing Canada did, I would say, was hold a big international conference on climate change in the late 1980s, in Toronto. And this is a period, you know, when we were holding a number of these big international conferences on sustainable development, for example, or on climate for the first time, and Canada did its part in Toronto in '88 by holding this conference called the World Conference On The Changing Atmosphere. And at that conference, it was recognized that we can't keep going the way we are on climate. It's not sustainable, we're going to end up with more of a warmer world than we want. And we promised at the time, to reduce emissions by 20%. From those levels in the 80s. By the beginning of the century, by the beginning of a new millennium, which we didn't do. We didn't do it. Of course, yeah, this is gonna be a kind of recurring theme. It didn't do much in the way of policy, you know. So I think something we've learned is that just saying, we're going to do something doesn't amount all that much. But we've done that a number of times, and we started doing it in the 1980s. We didn't really start following up with proper policies, and by proper policies, I mean, policies that compel emitters, anyone who emits emissions to change their behavior in some way, either by replacing a technology or, or changing their actions. Until I would say the middle of the first century, or the first decade after the new millennium, so around 2005. And at the time, it wasn't the federal government that was really in the driver's seat on climate policy. It was the provincial governments. And so we saw at the time, British Columbia's government started experimenting with a carbon tax. We saw Alberta's government implement some restrictions on industrial emissions, we saw the Quebec government implement some, some transport industrial policies. We saw Ontario phase out coal fired power starting in 2007. And so it was really the provincial governments that were in the driver's seat, the federal government, you know, it was starting to tinker. But the federal government didn't really begin to take a really strong position, policy wise on climate change until around 2015. And that was the point when the federal government convened the provinces to get agreement that they should all move forward on implementing carbon pricing. All the provinces agreed except for one at the time. And so they all brought in a carbon price, either it was the federal carbon price that was imposed, or the provinces imposed their own carbon price. And that was the beginning really, of a whole slew of other policies and regulations. So since that 2015 period, I would say the federal government has really been more in the driver's seat on climate policy, and has implemented things like regulations on methane emissions, as has required the phase out of coal fired power, which is actually by 2030 of the requirement, but it's actually proceeding quite a bit quicker than the federal requirement. It's also got this carbon price in place, it's bringing in policies to require a complete cleaning of the electricity grid, a cap on oil and gas emissions and regulations on zero emission vehicles. And so really kind of multifaceted regulations coupled with this carbon price. And increasingly over the last couple of years, we're also seeing them coupled with pretty big subsidies for structural transformation of the economy. So you're seeing this play out in Ontario with battery plant investments, for example. And so I would say that's the policy kind of history, we're seeing a pretty slow start. We've known about the problem a lot longer than we've been acting on the problem. We saw ramp up provincially, after the millennium, and that we've seen the transition from the provinces to the federal government taking leadership on this file for the last decade or so.   Trevor Freeman  18:01 And as you said, like, slower than fast, but more to come. We're not done where we are today is not where we need to be. Yeah. So there's lots to talk about.    Nicholas Rivers  18:11 Yeah, exactly. Good point. So we, we've our admissions, not surprisingly, in the absence of any policies kept on growing up until about 2005, when we started bringing in policy. Until that point, it was like, received wisdom, that anytime the economy grew, which it mostly does every year, greenhouse gas emissions would grow with it. And that that held for a long time, like maybe even a century leading up to around 2005. And then policy really started to break that chain. And so we've seen a decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, as well as most other rich countries over the past decade and a half or so. But emissions aren't falling fast. In fact, they hardly even fall. They're falling from where they would have been, but they're not, they're more or less flat lines in Canada are beginning a very slow decline. Yeah. And we've got a maybe it's worth saying, one of the things that we've learned from the climate scientists is that emissions have to go to zero. There's not, you know, we can't solve this problem with modest cuts in emissions, which is where we're at right now that you can think of this as like filling up a bathtub with a tap, and the bathtub is going to keep filling until the tap comes off until the tap turns off completely. And so the goal, the end goal here, if we want to stop the world from heating up is stopping all emissions. And I think that's something that it took me a long time to appreciate. But it's something that I think is transformative and thinking about environmental policy.    Trevor Freeman  19:45 Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that really underpins the conversation today of seeing the role in policy to start decoupling what else is happening in our society with our emissions levels, and I think we're going to pick apart some of those Pacific examples during our conversation. So you brought up carbon pricing. I think everybody listening to this podcast, probably would agree that's, you know, at least the most public if not the signature national decarbonisation policy in Canada today, it's the one that certainly gets the most notice and the most discussion. So I want to start there, I want to pick it apart a little bit. I mean, to say that it's a divisive issue would be kind of an understatement. Help us understand how carbon pricing works in Canada today? What is our current scheme that we have in this country?    Nicholas Rivers  20:37 Good question. Okay, let me start out by saying what's the point of carbon pricing? Because I think it's not evident for lots of people, it seems like a crazy idea. The basic idea is that we live in a market economy. And a market economy is one where the market responds to the cost of producing something and the desire of people to buy something. And so the market sets the prices, and the market determines how much gets produced in response to the prices and how much people buy in response to the prices. It's not directed by some other entity, as a market economy tends to work best when the prices of things reflect their costs. So if I want to go buy some bread, the idea in a market economy is that the price of the bread that I buy should reflect the cost to produce the bread, right, the cost of the grains that are used to make it and the cost of labor, and the machines that are required to make it. And if that does reflect the cost, and there's a motivation for the bread maker to make the bread for me, and, and so it'll be there when I want to buy it. And the idea that behind this carbon pricing is that there is a cost to me producing carbon emissions. Right? So the cost is it makes the world a little warmer. And there's a cost in lives and livelihoods, and wellbeing, from climate change. But I don't pay a price, right, I don't pay the cost, I'm not required to pay the cost because this is a non market good. No one's producing climate change at the public good. And so the idea behind carbon pricing is, hey, the market doesn't work for this kind of good. One way we can fix it is by attaching a price to carbon emission. So it's just like bread when people use it, they have to pay the price to reflect the cost. And so that's the kind of basic fundamental and the, the idea that economists have had for a long time, is that if we properly price carbon emissions, people are going to use an awful lot less of them, because now their actions reflect the costs. Okay, so that's the kind of basic idea behind carbon pricing. Canada has brought in a carbon price federally in 2019 provinces implemented carbon prices, some of them much before that. So Alberta brought in an industrial carbon price in 2007. BC, brought in a carbon price throughout all emit for all emitters in 2008, and Quebec, as well. So, so the federal carbon price now is kind of the law of the land, in the sense that, in that 2016 meeting that I mentioned, where the federal and provincial governments agreed about carbon pricing, the agreement was we should all have a carbon price, let's make this a level playing field, let's all do our piece. And the federal government kind of took that message back and developed a federal carbon pricing benchmark, which said, Hey, provinces, you can do your own carbon price, as long as it's at least, you know, this certain level of stringency. But if you don't do it, we'll bring in our own federal carbon price in its stead. Okay, so provinces have the ability to do something on their own. And if they don't do anything, the federal government will, will bring in a carbon price. And so what we've got now is a kind of a system that's a bit piecemeal, where some provinces have their own carbon price and other provinces have not implemented a carbon price. And the federal government has brought one in and put in their place, the Federal carbon price as two parts. One is a consumer facing part. So for people like you and me, and for people or for institutions that are not giant emitters, like a university or hospital or a mall, for example. They all are subject to what the federal government calls a fuel Levy, and what the rest of us call a carbon tax. Big industrial emitters, like a pulp and paper plant or a steel plant, or a big electricity generator, are subjected to a different scheme. It's still a carbon price. But the way it works is a little different. And it's called an output based performance standard. So I'll speak briefly, on the industry side, the way it works is that each facility that produces a lot of emissions gets a target, then it's usually the same target for everyone in the sector. So at the target could be like, the target is for a steel sector, you have to produce steel with a carbon intensity of less than, say, one tonne of carbon per tonne of steel that you produce. So they get that target and if they managed to get their facility emissions below the target, they get a reward in terms of a carbon price, and if they their emissions are above the target, they have to pay a carbon price   Trevor Freeman  25:38 A financial reward. So they get some sort of incentive to be below that benchmark.   Nicholas Rivers  25:42 They basically get carbon credits, which have a financial value that you can trade them for dollars. So that's the way it works on the industry side. On the smaller emitter side, like you and me, it works a little differently. There's a levy on fuels. So any fuel that we might buy, like natural gas, or gasoline or diesel that contains carbon, or releases carbon, when it's combusted, is imposed in proportion to the amount of carbon that's released from that fuel when it's done. But, you and I are required to pay that fee. Now we don't pay it directly to the government, it's imposed at the retail level. So, you know, the gasoline station will pay the fee on our behalf, but then it'll raise the price of gasoline in the amount of the fee.    Trevor Freeman  26:33 Gotcha.    Nicholas Rivers  26:34 That's the main part of the system. The other thing with respect to this consumer carbon price, is that all that revenue that the government collects, is put into a pot. And then it's rebated back to us that, and you've probably heard about this, if you check your bank account, there'll be a Canada carbon rebate in your bank account, or at least each household will get one not each person.    Trevor Freeman  26:55 That's right.    Nicholas Rivers  26:55 So it depends on who to file their taxes First, each household who gets the rebate. So you want to be the first in your household to get your taxes done. But the money basically is raised from consumers in proportion to how much fuel they burn. And then the government collects it up, and rebates it back to consumers equally for all households. Okay, so a lot of people are confused about these parts, like why would they go to this trouble? Why would they raise money and then rebate it back? And this is an important point. This isn't a traditional tax, right? And then traditional tax governments implement the tax to raise revenue to, you know, buy or build a bridge or to fund a school or something like that. That's not what's going on here. The point of this fuel levy or carbon tax is to provide incentives for people to change their behavior. And in particular, it's to fix this market failure we talked about earlier with the cost of carbon emissions not reflected in their price. And so when the carbon price gets high, it will make a lot more sense for us as individuals to choose the low carbon action, as opposed to the high carbon action and save money doing it. And on the rebate side, the rebate is designed so that we don't get punished, we don't lose our you know, we don't become lower income as a result of this. And so it goes back to each of us equally. So no matter whether I do this, you know, whether I take the low carbon action, or I don't take the low carpet action, I get the same amount of rebate back regardless.   Trevor Freeman  28:26 So it opens the door, then to give people a little bit of control to work within the system to their own economic benefits.    Nicholas Rivers  28:35 Exactly.    Trevor Freeman  28:36 So if I can reduce my emissions and reduce my costs, I'm still gonna get the same amount back, but I'm going to be paying less of it.    Nicholas Rivers  28:42 You'll come out ahead.    Trevor Freeman  28:43 Yeah, it incentivizes me to do lower carbon things. So I pay less of that.    Nicholas Rivers  28:48 Exactly. That's the idea.    Trevor Freeman  28:49 Great. So I mean, the big question mark around all this. There's a lot of questions, obviously. But one of the big ones is, is it working? I mean, it's been in place, as you said since 2019. And in various forms across the country. Are we seeing the impact or the results that we as a society, or specifically the government intended to see from this? Are we reducing our fossil fuel consumption?   Nicholas Rivers  29:12 Yeah, I gotta give a two part answer.    Trevor Freeman  29:15 Sure. Yeah.    Nicholas Rivers  29:16 The first answer is, yes, it's working. So we've got dozens of studies that have looked at carbon prices in various jurisdictions around the world and use the data that we are able to gather to ascertain that yeah, carbon prices worldwide are definitely reducing emissions. Now, they're, they're not cutting emissions to zero, which is our goal, right? There's nowhere in the world that has implemented a carbon price and got emissions to go to zero. And you can see that in Canada emissions are basically flatlining. And so is it working? Yes, it's cutting emissions relatively where they would have been otherwise. But where it's not putting us yet on a trajectory towards getting to zero emissions. So emissions, carbon prices are still relatively low, worldwide and in Canada, and we don't really know what will happen when they ramp up to levels that might be commensurate with getting to zero emissions. But the initial forays into carbon pricing that we've seen around the world have suggested that this is definitely cutting emissions. Let me answer part two.    Trevor Freeman  30:22 Sure. Yeah.   Nicholas Rivers  30:23 And to part two is we don't really know that we don't really know because Canada implemented a carbon price nationwide in 2019. And so we don't have another Canada that didn't implement a carbon price in 2019. But everything else was exactly the same. To compare to, that's what we want to know, if we want to know that the carbon price worked, we would really want to have two Canada's and put a carbon price in one and not put a carbon price in the other, and then compare the two. And we don't have that. And in that sense, this is the same problem as we have for any big economic policy, or any big social policy or any big policy of any kind. We don't really know, for example, if single payer health care works, and then we don't have another candidate without single payer health care, but uh, we can, you know, have some proxies to think about whether it works, we can look at other jurisdictions that don't have single payer health care and try to make some comparisons. But we don't really know what would happen in Canada if we took away single payer health care, because we don't have another candidate without single payer health care. And so there are lots of studies that suggest that carbon prices are working. But we don't have, you know, that rock solid evidence, that of exactly what emissions are being cut by this, this carbon price in this context.    Trevor Freeman  31:39 Yeah, and I think that's partly why I talk about this a lot on the podcast with different guests on different topics. And it applies at the macro level with something like national policy, but also down to the micro level with, you know, what, what are individual utilities trying to do to meet the demands of the future, there really is not likely to be a single strategy that is going to get us where we need to be. It's not like we can pick that one. Policy, that one piece of technology. That's, that is the answer. That's really going to get us there. And I think that probably applies to carbon pricing as well. It's a tool in the toolbox.    Nicholas Rivers  32:16 Oh, absolutely. But I mean, I mean, let's just say that that's not what's what's happening. There were no governments, either provincially or federally, that have said, Okay, we're all in on carbon pricing. Now, we're done with our climate policy.    Trevor Freeman  32:29 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  32:29 That's not at all the picture in Canada. So let's not, I don't want to paint that as, as the picture because as I opened up this podcast saying, you know, Canada's done a ton in the last decade on climate policy, including things like vehicle standards and coal phase out and electricity and low carbon fuel standards, and I could the list goes really, on and on.   Trevor Freeman  32:51 Yeah, and I will definitely pull apart some of that, I think. So my next question on this is, as I mentioned, this is a divisive topic, there are differing ideas around carbon pricing, whether we should have when how it should apply. And the nature and the beauty and the frustration of our open democratic society is that we could very well pick a different direction. In the near future, we may have a different government next time around, that government could choose to do something different. What are other options out there? That might still factor in the fact that there is a cost to emitting carbon, but be a different strategy than the existing carbon pricing? Or is there another strategy out there? Or is there not?   Nicholas Rivers  33:39 Yeah, for sure, you can reduce emissions without a carbon price. The carbon price is one way of reducing emissions and it does have its appealing parts. It's appealing because it allows people some flexibility to respond in the way that suits them best, you know, I can either pay the carbon price or I can reduce emissions and not pay the carbon price. And, and for that reason, it's seen as a relatively economically efficient approach to reducing emissions. But there are other ways I would say the two big other ways are regulatory approaches, and incentive based approaches. So let me go through what those look like. In a regulatory approach. We don't say, here's the financial penalty for carbon emissions. Now figure out what you want to do, like a carbon price, we say here's exactly what you should do or what you have to do. And so a regulatory example would be we've got lots of these nationally, and provincially. But a regulatory example might say you can't generate electricity with coal fired power anymore. Okay, that's a regulation or it might say, you have to cut your emissions by 10% this year and every year going forward as silver it. So certainly regulatory approaches can work, they often seem to be less flexible than a carbon price, because you don't give emitters the choice of how to respond to you imposing upon them. And so that requires the government to know quite a lot about you know, what's feasible and what's appropriate for different situations that it doesn't need to know, in the carbon price case, it didn't. So if I want to regulate you, Trevor, and to do it in a way, that's reasonable, I got to know a lot about your life to know like about what you're, you know, what possibilities you have to reduce your emissions, before I can choose some appropriate, you know, regulations to impose on you. So if I tell you, you have to use a heat pump, and then it turns out you live in a house that is not amenable to a heat pump. I've kind of made life difficult for you. Yeah. So regulations certainly have a lot of potential and, and they are being used in contexts where the kind of technology has become more clear. And I think they have a lot of, they can play a big role, they are playing a big role in driving down emissions. So again, in cases where technology is relatively clear, and there's less of that kind of work in that situation, this doesn't work in this other situation. Another approach to reduce emissions would be an incentive driven approach. So you could think of a carbon price as a disincentive, right, every time you produce emissions, I'm going to charge you. And an alternative approach would be anytime you do something that reduces emissions, I'm going to reward you. And so we have that happening here as well. So there's subsidies for heat pumps, for example, or electric vehicles. We're seeing subsidies for construction of electricity, electric, battery, battery, electric plants. So this is certainly part of that role as well. I feel like subsidies play a useful role in really nascent technologies, but driving decarbonisation with subsidies, it my view is going to be, we're not going to be able to afford the cost as a government, it's going to be too much for the government to try to replace everyone's heating system. With a subsidy. I think we're finding that out. In the case of the green Homes program, the government has pulled back here as a sight into fiscal cost.   Trevor Freeman  37:16 Exactly, yeah, it's popular because it helps, you know, those early adopters get that more expensive piece of technology. But to your point, we can't pay for every single one of those units, we can't provide that incentive. So it's creating more of an ecosystem that makes those make more sense.    Nicholas Rivers  37:31 Yeah.    Trevor Freeman  37:32 Okay. So that's great. Thanks very much, Nick, for enlightening us that we could probably spend an entire episode no question just talking about that. But I do want to push forward here on to some of these other questions. I want to dive into some specific sectors of our economy or some specific issues and understand from you the role of policy and help us drive the change that we often talk about on this show. So given the kind of where I work, and the nature of these podcasts, electricity is a big piece for us. So a constant theme on the show is how electricity is really one of the main tools that we have to decarbonize, we all know that a lot of aspects of our life that are not currently run by electricity, like our transportation and our heating, we are going to move to that fuel source as as our heating or transportation method. We're pretty fortunate in Ontario, that we have a really clean grid, it's a little bit over 90%, emissions free, meaning, you know, most of the generation of our electricity doesn't create GHG emissions. But there are other parts of the country that do rely more on fossil fuels. And to your earlier point, 90% is good, but it's not 100%, there is still that 10% that we need to decarbonize. So what are some of the tools in place now? Or something? Some things that are being considered that will help us move toward totally emissions free electricity generation in Canada?   Nicholas Rivers  39:02 All right, good question. So electricity is a big source of emissions on its own, producing about 10% of Canada's emissions. And as you point out, it is the central tool, which we're hoping to use to decarbonize all the other sectors. And that only works if the electricity industry is clean. And so I think you're right to point out, this is one of the first things we've got to tackle. Unfortunately, it is the big success story in Canada, emissions have been falling rapidly in electricity generation in Canada. And it's because of policy especially. One thing that we've done that's been really effective, and I mentioned it earlier, is an explicit policy to phase out coal fired power generation. coal generation produces about twice as much greenhouse gas per kilowatt hour generated as natural gas. It's very dirty. And so it's the first So you want to do what to tackle. And so Canada's federal government brought in a policy that said, by 2030, there shouldn't be any more coal generation on the grid. That's, it's a little late to the game. And that I mean, this is, I think, an important policy. But Ontario started phasing out coal in 2007. And I believe it was finished by phasing out coal in 2014. And that's why, to his credit, so clean right now, I learned as part of another project that Ontario had the biggest coal fired generation station in North America, which was one of the ones that was closed. As part of this, this coal phase out big local health improvements, as well as greenhouse gas improvements.    Trevor Freeman  40:37 Yeah, that's important to say to you, there are other ancillary benefits here to policies.   Nicholas Rivers  40:42 I think, even if coal didn't produce greenhouse gas emissions, it would be worth closing it. And in fact that that was the reason for Ontario's coal phase out was a policy by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the environment that was worried about local health impacts, and they are dire, we lose about 10 million people worldwide every year from air pollution. So it is a sector that's really worth tackling on its own even without greenhouse gas issues. But it is a big greenhouse gas emitter. And that's the first thing we want to do. And we're being successful, there are some coal fired generating stations left in Canada, but they are many fewer than they were a decade ago. And, they will be phased out by 2030. I think before 2030, in most cases. Aster coal, which is the dirtiest fuel, we've got to tackle natural gas. Natural gas is going to be the main source of emissions in our electricity sector, once the coal is gone, and we're not yet in a position to get rid of natural gas from electricity grids. Natural gas is super useful, because it can ramp up and down really quickly. You can, I mean, I'm not an Electricity System Operator, but my understanding is you can basically flick the up switch and electricity, the gas turbine will go up, you know, in terms of power output pretty much right away. And then you can press the down switch and go down right away. That is not at all the case, for example, with a nuclear power station.    Trevor Freeman  42:06 Exactly. Yep, exactly.    Nicholas Rivers  42:08 And so gas is useful. And it becomes more useful when you put a lot of renewables on the grid, because renewables do fluctuate quite quickly. And, you know, if the sun goes behind the cloud, for example, or if the wind hits a gust, and so you want to be able to respond to those fluctuations with some other source that can go up and down quite quickly. And so we're using that natural gas for that role right now, that backup role. And, and there's not a, there's not a straightforward substitution for all of that gas capacity right now. I think in the near term, what we want to do is stop using or dramatically slow down using natural gas, for providing bulk energy. So bulk energy, I mean, not this kind of quick response function that natural gas plays, but the kind of 24/7 kind of energy that that we also need in society, we should be trying to displace gas's role in providing that, and we can do it relatively cost effectively. Now, with wind and solar electricity or nuclear power in Ontario.    Trevor Freeman  43:11 Yeah, that's our base load is what we call that So absolutely, that that load that's always there, if we can make sure that load at least is completely carbon free, that's a big win for sure.   Nicholas Rivers  43:21 Exactly. And so I would say be looking for opportunities to get wind and solar, and maybe nuclear or geothermal to be providing that bulk energy and start retaining natural gas for uniquely that backup role. And we're starting to see regulations that are developed with that aim in mind. So Canada is currently consulting on what it calls its clean electricity regulation, which is designed to basically limit gas to a backup role by 2035. So it is a regulation that is intent on getting rid of gas as a provider of bulk energy, and limiting it to only providing, you know, a certain number of hours of year of backup capacity. So it's not saying you can't have gas on the grid, but it says you shouldn't be using gas to provide your main source of power. Gotcha. So that's a policy that's not implemented yet. It's being developed. It's being consulted on and we'll see what the final version of that policy looks like. But I think that's basically the right angle to be trying to limit gas to smaller contributions. And eventually, we're going to want to figure out another source of energy that can provide that kind of high frequency or high reliability backup power. And that's tricky to do. Because gas does play that unique role. And so it's not something we need to do right away, but it's something that we should be thinking about how to provide that in the future.    Trevor Freeman  44:55 Yeah, I mean, that raises a great point and kind of leads into my Next question really well. There are certainly things we need to develop, things we need to figure out moving forward on, not just the policy side, but the technology side. In order to address what we have to do for climate change, what role does policy government play in supporting research and development of accelerating these new technological advances that we need, you know, in short order here?    Nicholas Rivers  45:29 Another good question. Okay. Let me start by saying, for our short term climate goals, and our short term climate goal nationally, is to reduce emissions by 40%. By 2030, an ambitious goal, we have the technology we need.    Trevor Freeman  45:44 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  45:45 The IEA, the International Energy Agency, the Canadian climate Institute, have done reports that try to figure out, you know, what we might or what pathway we might follow to get emissions down to 40, or 50%. And the common assessment, and I think it's reasonable, is that we have what we need to cut emissions by half. So we don't need to invent anything new, right away. But to cut emissions to zero. And this is like a mid century 2050 kind of goal, we probably do need to invent some new technologies. Some things like I just mentioned, like figuring out ways to produce firm power. So that kind of firming role that natural gas plays that's clean, would be an example, or figuring out ways to provide zero carbon, long distance transport, or zero carbon, concrete or cement, for example, yet another example. So we do have things to figure out, by all means. I would say the government can play a really big role here. And the government does play a big role here. Maybe we're thinking about how technology gets better. Before we start thinking about what the government can do. technology gets better in two big ways. One is, like before it's ready to be sold on the market. technology gets better through a deliberate research and development process. And so this is firms, or universities or national labs, working on, you know, new types of renewable energy. There's lots of work, for example, new types of solar cells happening right now, or new types of batteries. And this is like the deliberate efforts to invent new technologies for research and development. But the other big way that technology can improve is through the deployment process. And in fact, I think most of the big cost improvements for new technologies happen on the latter side. So it's like we've left after we've invented the basic technology, the scale up process, the economies of scale, deliver big cost gains, and performance improvements. And what we call learning by doing. It's like this process of just getting better at doing something by doing it lots of times. And solar is a really good example of that. You guys have probably talked about how solar on this podcast is so important, but solar has fallen and cost 1000 fold over the last 40 years. Yeah, 1000 fold that's crazy. And much of the cost decline, adults, especially over the last 15 years, has been learning by doing has been us just getting really good at squeezing out all the inefficiencies in the manufacturing process and, and very small improvements, but continuous improvements in the efficiency process of like actually harvesting the solar energy in the cell, such that the cost has continuously fallen by by, well, I don't know exactly the number per year, we talked about a learning curve, falling per number of technologies deployed. So every time solar installations double, we tend to see about a 15 to 20% cost decline.    Trevor Freeman  48:57 Gotcha.    Nicholas Rivers  48:58 And so I would say that that learning process is important as well. And the government can play a big role in both of those processes. Right? It certainly supports basic research and development. And this can be academic or industry research. Candidates don't do a great job on this front, we have quite low return development, investments compared to poor countries, and so are kind of free riding on on r&d investments compared to more innovative countries. And then the other big role for the government would be in helping to deploy new technologies and spur along that learning by doing process. And so that could be like providing niche markets for new technologies or through government procurement. You know, government could might say even though this new technology is a little more expensive, we can see it has a long term future and we're gonna we're gonna we're going to commit to buying it for government purposes, and government itself is a really big market, so that can be a big incentive for them. For cost declines, and it can just, you know, spur deployment. So we're seeing that with electric cars right now, the government is providing subsidies for people to buy electric cars. And one of the reasons that it does that is to help improve the technology.    Trevor Freeman  50:13 Yeah, and just for our listeners out there, you know, what, what Nicholas is describing is not unique to green technology to climate change technology. This is sort of a standard approach for technology development over the last, I don't know, centuries. Is that fair to say?    Nicholas Rivers  50:31 Yeah, the early ones, the reports that I've seen on learning by doing came from airplane manufacturing, right. So when people were learning to make wide body airplanes, researchers observed the same kind of cost improvements in that process, as we're currently observing in, for example, batteries, or electrolyzers, or solar panels.    Trevor Freeman  50:52 Yeah. And that's, that's encouraging, and that we kind of know as a society, how to help technology move along, if there's the political will. And then if ultimately the market decides, yeah, this is something we want, then that iterative process can happen to help get that cost down, as you said, learn by doing, figure out the installation cost, figuring out the manufacturing, supply chain issues, and really making a viable technology.    Nicholas Rivers  51:17 Yeah.    Trevor Freeman  51:18 Okay, so it's Trevor here, breaking into my own podcast. We're gonna pause there. As I said, at the beginning, this is really a long conversation. There's a lot to get through. And there's a lot more to that we talked about that Nicholas and I talked about, so we wanted to break it into two episodes. So this will be the end of Part One. Thanks for sticking with us and joining us today, and we look forward to having you back for part two that will be released at our next episode. So thanks very much, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps us spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you. Whether it's feedback, comments, or an idea for a show or guests. You can always reach us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com  

Imagine what economic growth looks like on a graph and you may picture a line slanting upwards from left to right. Have you ever wondered where the line stops? On a planet – or a region – with finite resources, it has to end somewhere.   This realization is helping a very different model of economic growth to gain traction: the circular economy. Circular, or “doughnut,” economies are sustainable and regenerative, where waste from one process becomes fuel for another. It's a model being popularized by economists like the U.K.'s Kate Raworth, and it's taking root around the world and in Central Ohio.   Central Ohio's economic activity is expected to result in more residential and industrial waste that will threaten the usable lifespan of the region's landfill. Growth is putting upward pressure on greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. A circular economy can mitigate many of these consequences by recapturing more and more recyclable materials in new ways, sending them back into the production cycle.   Central Ohio has an opportunity to set a national example showcasing the benefits of a circular economy, and key players in our region are working together to bend that growth line back onto itself to form a sustainable circle.   With a panel of regional leaders, we unpack the advantages of thinking about economic growth in an entirely new way and learn how key players in Central Ohio are working together to bring sustainable circular growth to the region.   Featuring panelists:  Scott Barbour, President and Chief Executive Officer, Advanced Drainage Systems   Dr. Elena Irwin, Professor of Environmental Economics, The Ohio State University Sustainability Institute   Tia Johnson, Owner, Compost Clubhouse   And Jeff Snyder, Director of Recycling, Rumpke Waste & Recycling  The host is Tres Carter, Director of Creative Engagement, COSI  This forum was sponsored by Advanced Drainage Systems, GBQ, The Grange Insurance Audubon Center, Rumpke Waste & Recycling, and SWACO. The forum partners were The COSI Science Festival, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Ellis.  The livestream presenting sponsor was The Center for Human Kindness at The Columbus Foundation.   This forum was recorded before a live audience at The Ellis in Columbus, Ohio's historic Italian Village on May 1, 2024.  

Jennifer, Çınla, and François are joined by Spencer Banzhaf, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Environmental & Resource Economic Policy at North Carolina State University, to discuss the history of environmental economics and, especially, his new book Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics.

Join Guy Ruddle and guests: Marylis Ramos, Director of Savills Earth Advisory Services, alongside Tom Hill Director of Impact Assessment at Savills, Sarah Jackson, Director in the Rural Consultancy team at Savills and Henry Le Fleming, Founder of Sustainability Analytics Ltd in the penultimate episode of the second Savills Earth podcast series.This episode highlights how environmental economics can be used to value impact. The podcast discusses the differences between ESG investing and impact investing, as well as highlighting real life scenarios of where impact investing can be applied within both the rural and urban contexts.

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, Jordan interviews Pablo Paniagua Prieto and Veeshan Rayamajhee on their co-authored work, "Governing the Global Fisheries Commons." On this episode and in their article, they address the challenges of overfishing and the depletion of global fisheries. They critique one-size-fits-all solutions, advocating for an approach that recognizes overfishing as a complex set of interconnected problems across various jurisdictions. Drawing from Elinor Ostrom's insights, they propose combining market-based strategies, such as individual transferable quotas, with government interventions like removing harmful subsidies, and highlight the importance of local knowledge, community participation, and multi-layered solutions to effectively govern the global fisheries commons.Pablo Paniagua Prieto is an economist and engineer from Politecnico di Milano and Professor of Political Economy at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. Pablo is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.Veeshan Rayamajhee is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University and a faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise. Veeshan is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

In this episode, Shaoda Wang, assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, shares his career path in the field of applied economics. He discusses his initial love for physics and later finds the connection between physics and economics and an early mentor who made him certain he wanted to become an economist, with hopes of making this world a better place by researching and educating future policymakers about developmental and environmental economics with a regional focus on China.

In this episode, guest Diane Osgood, discusses the topic of business sustainability and its importance. She defines business sustainability as the impact a company has on the environment and society through its modes of production and the impact of the products it makes. She also highlights the importance of managing the risks of climate and environmental impact on the company, its employees, and its customers. Diane emphasises the role of internal communication in helping employees understand the company's sustainability goals and progress, facilitating dialogue and action, and bridging generational perspectives. She recommends that internal communicators focus on educating employees about the company's sustainability challenges and progress.   Takeaways Business sustainability encompasses the impact of a company's production processes and the nature of its products on the environment and society. Internal communication plays a crucial role in helping employees understand the company's sustainability goals, progress, and the broader context of sustainability. Effective internal communication can facilitate dialogue and action, bridge generational perspectives, and empower employees to contribute to sustainability efforts. Educating employees about sustainability challenges and progress is essential for creating a shared understanding and fostering a sense of purpose and responsibility.   About Diane Osgood  Diane Osgood, US/France, is a pioneer in corporate sustainability and human rights. She has over 30 years of helping companies innovate and grow with purpose.  She focuses on the power of consumers to influence brands and shape the economy. Diane served as a senior advisor to President Clinton for the Clinton Global Initiative and on the Vatican Arts and Technology Council.  Diane has run her boutique consulting business since 2019. Prior to that, she was a Director of Sustainability and Innovation for Richard Branson's Virgin Group and VP of Strategy at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). Her consulting clients include Meta, Virgin Hotels, Addison/Sia-Partners, Avnet, Waters, Pega Systems, DuPont, Monsanto, P&G, Aventis Pharma, and social enterprises. She was a senior advisor to President Clinton for the Clinton Global Initiative and served on the Vatican Arts and Technology Council. She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Economics and Development Studies at the London School of Economics. She's a co-author and co-editor of the award-winning The Carbon Almanac (Penguin, 2022) and of the forthcoming Your Shopping Superpower. She contributes to Fast Company and GreenBiz.

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Fran Moore, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, about what it's like to serve as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Moore discusses the function of the CEA within the executive branch of the federal government, the range of economic expertise within the CEA, and how economists can improve the utility and relevance of their research for policymaking. References and recommendations: Frontiers of Benefit-Cost Analysis from the US Office of Management and Budget; https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-regulatory-affairs/frontiers-of-benefit-cost-analysis/ “A Progress Report on Climate-Energy-Macro Modeling,” containing a memo on tools to support the management of near-term macroeconomic and financial climate risks, from the Council of Economic Advisors; https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2023/12/22/a-progress-report-on-climate-energy-macro-modeling/ “Losing Earth: A Recent History” by Nathaniel Rich; https://www.mcdbooks.com/losing-earth/ “If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics” by Marilyn Waring; https://www.marilynwaring.com/publications/if-women-counted.asp “The Economist's View of the World and the Quest for Well-Being” by Steven E. Rhoads; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/economists-view-of-the-world/ABF1A4B73AA084CB909A3FF498153F16#fndtn-information

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bill Reynolds, Lars Wohlers, and Mike Mayer, co-founders of Experiential Interpretive Design, a coaching company they founded to help individuals, organizations, and sites develop the interpretive experiences they provide.In this episode, we learned about the founders, their respective specialties, and why they founded EID.Today is part 2 of this conversation. In this episode, I sit down with Mike Mayer to discuss his specialty (environmental education) and to learn more about the environmental program that inspires what he, Bill, and Lars do at EID.We begin this episode by learning more about the Institute for Earth Education. Some of this may sound familiar because I included a short segment in Part 1. Don't let this distract you because you'll hear something a bit different before Mike walks us through an example of the type of programming offered by the Institute.In this conversation, Mike and I also discuss creating holistic experiences in free-choice settings, the AMORE framework developed by Steve Van Matre, interpreting global topics across cultures, and what might change the status quo in environmental education. LINKSExperiential Interpretive DesignInstitute for Earth EducationInterpretive Design and the Dance of Experience (2009)Cooper Center for Environmental Learning, College of Education at the University of Arizona ________________________Producer: Tania MarienMusic: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License; SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.View The Freelance Project Portfolio to learn more about environmental education professionals and the businesses they start to strengthen environmental literacy.Contact Us

In this week's episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Spencer Banzhaf, a professor at North Carolina State University, about the history of the field of environmental economics. Banzhaf discusses the development of the economic definition of value, the early influence of agricultural economists in government, the origins of Resources for the Future and its contributions to the field, and how the field of environmental economics may evolve moving forward. References and recommendations: “Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics” by H. Spencer Banzhaf; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pricing-the-priceless/417AAD8A445E8B64BAD6BC201D2F2163 “Scarcity” by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind; https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987081 Beethoven's Seventh Symphony; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Beethoven)

 We are thrilled to be joined today by Valentin's Lira. Valentina is an Industrial Engineer from the University of Chile, with a postgraduate degree in Environmental Economics from the University of California Berkeley. She worked as a Development Engineer at CMPC Holding and as Director of the Development and Conservation Program of Fundación Chile, achieving the first sale of carbon credits from forestry projects in Chile. Since 2011, Valentina Lira the Sustainability Division at Viña Concha y Toro, in charge of the development and implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Strategy. During this time, the company has integrated the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and has become the first Latin American company to make its commitment to reduce emissions based on climate science and became the largest winery being B Corp Certified. Since 2020, she has been an active member of the SBT Net-Zero Expert Advisory Group, contributing to the generation of a global standard for Net Zero Emission scenario.  Valentina has recently returned from COP28 in Dubai. This year had an enormous emphasis on business and how companies can become more environmentally conscious. Environmental, social and corporate governance, also known as ESG is becoming a commercial necessity in addition to providing significant benefits to companies. In light of the intensifying global race to attain net-zero emissions, companies seeking to enter into new alliances and partnerships need to be able to articulate their ESG strategy and, more importantly, explain how they intend to carry it out. This makes getting support from a variety of stakeholders and creating a coherent, fair, and transparent approach to ESG at COP28 even more crucial.  We are very excited to hear from Valentina about her experiences at the COP conference, as well as the opportunities and risks presented to businesses in the broader world of ESG  

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, he interviews Bobbi Herzberg on a polycentric approach to solving climate change. Bobbi and Jordan discuss the importance and meaning of "polycentricity", how we can vote with our feet, major themes from public choice, Elinor Ostrom's work on climate change, and the six advantages that polycentric systems have for coping with climate change: (1) competition among decision makers, (2) cooperation among decision makers, (3) perceptions of legitimacy that lead to coproduction, (4) mutual learning through experimentation, (5) institutional resilience/robustness, and (6) emergent outcomes that are socially desirable but not centrally planned.Bobbi Herzberg is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research Fellow. Previously, she served as assistant director of individual freedom & free markets at the John Templeton Foundation, as administrative director of The Institute of Political Economy, and as president of the Public Choice Society from 2014-2016.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.Referenced Works: Jordan and Bobbi's "The Continuing Case for a Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change", Elinor Ostrom's "A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change"If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Jimena González Ramírez, an associate professor at Manhattan College, and Sarah Jacobson, a professor at Williams College. González Ramírez and Jacobson discuss some ways that systemic racism can unintentionally permeate research in the field of environmental and natural resource economics. They consider how historically racist policies and practices can affect research data and analysis and, in turn, produce findings which may render outcomes that discriminate. Specifically, the scholars identify several contributing issues: the prioritization of cost-effectiveness; inattention to procedural justice; abstraction from social and historical context; and a focus on problems that are easier, rather than more important, to solve. A recent Common Resources article by González Ramírez, Jacobson, and other coauthors delves into even more of the details that their conversation here doesn't cover. References and recommendations: “Looking at Environmental and Natural Resource Economics through the Lens of Racial Equity” by Amy Ando, Titus Awokuse, Jimena González Ramírez, Sumeet Gulati, Sarah Jacobson, Dale Manning, Samuel Stolper, and Matt Fleck; https://www.resources.org/common-resources/looking-at-environmental-and-natural-resource-economics-through-the-lens-of-racial-equity/ “Achieving environmental justice: A cross-national analysis” by Karen Bell; https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qgzvd “Sensing Air Pollution Exposure in New York City Schools, with Beia Spiller” podcast episode; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/sensing-air-pollution-exposure-in-new-york-city-schools-with-beia-spiller/ Work on waste sanitation infrastructure from Catherine Coleman Flowers; https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2020/catherine-coleman-flowers “An Immense World” by Ed Yong; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/616914/an-immense-world-by-ed-yong/ “Solito: A Memoir” by Javier Zamora; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705626/solito-by-javier-zamora/ “Can we talk to whales?” by Elizabeth Kolbert; https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/11/can-we-talk-to-whales

Continuing our series on Enviromental Economics, host Jordan Lofthouse chats with Katie Wright about sustainability, extensive and intensive margins, intellectual humility in statistical analysis, how her experience in Mercatus fellowships has aided her research, the nature of the water scarcity problem in the Western United States, and more.Katherine (Katie) Wright is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). She is an expert on water policy and her current work includes exploration of solutions to western water scarcity. Katie is an alum of the Mercatus Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Crowdfunding is a method for raising funds to support for-profit, social, and cultural initiatives.  Sukanya Ayatakshi-Endow specialises in Environmental Economics at Bournemouth University, UK and explores gender and the unconscious bias disadvantages women experience in obtaining access to finance on equity crowdfunding platforms.Read the original research: doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14395-3_5

In 1905, George Cove developed solar panels that could offer a cleaner and more affordable alternative to household fossil fuels. But, just when his company was about to take off in 1909, Cove was mysteriously kidnapped, leading fossil fuel companies to take over.  Guest: Dr. Sugandha Srivastav, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: In 1905, George Cove developed solar panels that could offer a cleaner and more affordable alternative to household fossil fuels. But, just when his company was about to take off in 1909, Cove was mysteriously kidnapped, leading fossil fuel companies to take over.  Guest: Dr. Sugandha Srivastav, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford Seg 2: UN experts have warned that Gaza is being "strangled" by Israel's weeklong siege and aerial bombardment. Now, concerns are growing that further escalation and a lack of safety for fleeing civilians could risk drawing regional foes into the long-running conflict. Guest: Crystal Goomansingh, Global News Europe Bureau Chief Seg 3: View From Victoria: Has the Surrey policing standoff come to an end? Mike Farnworth introduces legislation to make Surrey Policing Service the provider of policing services. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer. Seg 4: Buy now, pay later" is a relatively new financial technology that enables consumers to make immediate purchases and pay in installments at a later date.  Guest: Vivek Astvansh, Associate professor of Quantitative Marketing and Analytics at McGill University Seg 5: BC has introduced new legislation regulating short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb to improve the availability and affordability of long-term housing in the province. Guest: Dr. David Wachsmuth, Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance and Associate Professor at McGill University's School of Urban Planning Seg 6: The article underscores the challenges in discussing war with children and the need to shield them from the harsh realities of global conflicts by emphasizing the importance of preserving children's innocence.  Guest: Alex Kingsbury, Editor At Large for The New York Times Seg 7: The historical evolution of margarine in Canada is filled with debates, political opposition, and the federal ban on margarine, along with regional variations in provincial regulations and coloration policies Guest: Ryan Manucha, Lawyer and Author of "Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-ups: Canada's Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first of a series of episodes that investigates policy for environmental economics in development, Kelsey Jack and Robin Burgess introduce the topic to Tim Phillips, and its implications for adaptation, natural capital conservation, and innovation. 

Welcome to our new series, Environmental Economics, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse!Jordan Lofthouse sits down with Megan Jenkins to talk about endangered species, Prairie dogs in cemeteries, issues of incentive alignment, the rise of private conservation, the willing buyer and willing seller approach, and more.Megan E. Jenkins is the Senior Director of Research at the Center for Growth and Opportunity where she manages the Center's portfolio of policy-relevant research while ensuring student fellows receive quality mentorship and hands-on research experience. Megan is an alum of the Mercatus Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship. To learn more about her work at CGO.Learn more about the Center for Growth and Opportunity's fellowships.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2023 was actually the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The heat wave caused hundreds of deaths, thousands of hospitalizations, and billions of dollars in damages. It also exacerbated droughts, wildfires, and power outages. The culprit behind this unprecedented heat is climate change, driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The most well-known greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which comes from burning fossil fuels. Often overlooked is methane, which accounts for about 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and has more than doubled since pre-industrial times. Robert Stavins, PhD '88, says that reducing the amount of methane in the atmosphere is a critical and cost-effective way to slow climate change and its impacts. To get there, the AJ Meyer professor of Energy and Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School is leading a new initiative at the University's Salata Institute which aims to reduce methane emissions from different sectors using innovative approaches and collaborations. If successful, he says the world can “bend the curve” on climate change, giving humanity desperately needed time to address the larger, long-term problem of carbon dioxide.

Getting the global energy system to net-zero – a state in which it emits no more greenhouse gasses than it absorbs – means deploying clean energy infrastructure at a pace without historical precedent. The ripple effects of this transition are already apparent in business, geopolitics, and in people's daily lives.     Increasing public concern over climate change and breakthroughs in clean energy technology have rendered this challenge more achievable. But turning this momentum into tangible progress will require careful policymaking and implementation, across all levels of government.  How might the clean energy transition reconfigure the global economy? What levers can policymakers pull to accelerate it? And what emerging solutions are already changing the outlook for net zero? Today we're re-running host Jason Bordoff's interview with Cameron Hepburn about the economics of the climate crisis. Cameron is a Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.  He also serves as the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme, based at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Cameron has over 30 peer-reviewed publications spanning economics, public policy, law, engineering, philosophy, and biology.  In a summer of both heightened climate ambition and heightened alarm over climate change, this conversation was held in the aftermath of the COP27 climate summit. Jason and Cameron discussed how technology developments are accelerating the energy transition and how to scale their impact.

“...Because we recognize that taxes are not a funding operation, there's this myth that people who support MMT don't want to use fiscal policy to promote equity. Of course, taxes are redistribution … Things have gotten way out of hand, so taxation is also intended to promote equity, to affect distribution and allocation. Resource allocation.”Mat Forstater was on this podcast four years ago (episode 21!) recounting the history of MMT. He described his early days at Levy Institute and UMKC, his relationship with Warren Mosler and Pavlina Tcherneva, and how they established MMT as interdisciplinary, expanding into law and humanities. If you haven't listened to that episode, we urge you to check it out.This week, Mat talks to Steve about the role of taxation in the economy and its relation to government spending. It's not enough to understand how taxes create a demand for the nation's currency and give it value. Mat always reminds us to consider the total impact of any policy — from using taxation to encourage or discourage behavior, to its ripple effects and unintended consequences.They touch on the importance of decoupling taxation from federal programs and the need to design tax policies that consider the indirect effects on society. They also talk about the potential deflationary impact of programs like Medicare for All, and whether a job guarantee can address unemployment and provide quality jobs.Dr. Mathew Forstater is a professor in Economics at the University of Missouri/Kansas City and the Research Director of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. having received a Ph.D. at The New School for Social Research. His research focuses on the History of Economic Thought, Economic Methodology, Political Economy, Public Policy, Economics of Discrimination, Environmental Economics, African and African American Economic History. @mattybram on Twitter

What does it take to avoid global collapse?  Is there still time?  And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there? This week's guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible. Gaya Herrington received her first master's degree in Econometrics from the Liberal University of Amsterdam and her second master's in Sustainability from Harvard University. In between she worked for KPMG, for the Dutch Government as a regulator and then back to KPMG in the US, where she now lives. She is a member of the Transformational Economics Commission of the Club of Rome, a recurring guest lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and works at Schneider Electric as Vice-President of ESG Research. She wrote her thesis for her second Masters on the seminal Limits To Growth work that first came out in 1972. The paper she wrote as a result of this went viral - and she expanded it into a book called Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse. She has made this freely available by download and I have put a link in the show notes - because this is absolutely essential reading for anyone on this path. The take home message though, as you'll hear, is that if we all work together, there is still time. Which should be a fairly familiar idea to those of you who have listened to other guests. But this time, we'll really unpick the data and concepts behind it in the company of someone who has worked hard at the coal face of the old system and has seen how to change it. Gaya's book https://mdpi-res.com/bookfiles/mono/6206/Five_Insights_for_Avoiding_Global_Collapse.pdf?v1682069789Gaya's paper at KPMG https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.htmlManfred Max-Neef https://gaiafoundation.org/the-barefoot-economist-manfred-max-neef/Club of Rome: Earth for All https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-book/

Tisha Schuller welcomes Richard Newell, president and CEO of Resources for the Future (RFF), to the Real Decarbonization podcast. Listeners will hear Richard's perspectives on what can be done to accelerate participation in creating the low-carbon future. For more information on hydrogen hub proposals under the Department of Energy solicitation process, check out RFF's Hydrogen Hub Explorer tool: https://www.rff.org/publications/data-tools/hydrogen-hub-explorer/ Richard served as the administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration from 2009 to 2011 and as the senior economist for energy and environment on the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 2005 to 2006. Richard, who was previously the Gendell Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics at Duke and director of its Energy Initiative, is now an adjunct professor. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Climate Security Roundtable, the National Petroleum Council, and several other institutions. Richard has a Ph.D. in environmental and resource economics from Harvard, an MPA in public policy from Princeton, and bachelor's degrees in materials engineering and philosophy from Rutgers University. Follow all things Adamantine Energy and subscribe to Tisha's weekly Both of These Things Are True email newsletter at www.energythinks.com. Thanks to Adán Rubio who makes the Real Decarbonization podcast possible. [Interview recorded on May 30, 2023]

On this episode of Free Range, Mike Livermore is joined by Danae Hernandez-Cortes, an economist and professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University who studies environmental justice and the distributional consequences of environmental policy. The conversation begins with a discussion of the new emphasis within environmental economics on environmental inequality, with researchers now focusing on questions related to where pollution is located with respect to disadvantaged communities and how policy affects the distribution of environmental harm. Comparing environmental inequality to general inequality is difficult to do precisely, but Hernandez-Cortes describes the distribution in environmental inequality as comparatively sharper. Race and ethnicity tend to be an additional variable, beyond income as indicator of exposure to environmental harm. Many current inequalities are the result of historical legacies of discrimination and racism. There are many moving parts when it comes to environmental inequality, and it can be hard to isolate the most important causal variables. (0:40-18:05) Environmental inequality often correlates with other kinds of inequality where race is a factor. However, Hernandez-Cortes points out that her research suggests that health and environmental inequality are not as related as one would assume. The conversation shifts to market-based mechanisms as solutions for mitigating environmental inequality. While they tend to have lower costs and are more efficient, Hernandez-Cortes points out that they can potentially lead to environmental disparities by reallocating pollution. The effect of market-based mechanisms on environmental inequality is theoretically ambiguous and depends on context. In her work on market-based mechanisms to control greenhouse gas emissions in California, Hernandez-Cortes has found they have actually reduced environmental inequality, despite significant skepticism from the environmental justice community. Nevertheless, for Hernandez-Cortes, it is important to solve environmental justice problems with policies that focus on that issue even though broad environmental initiatives such as reducing aggregate pollution can sometimes reduce environmental inequality. Additionally, when it comes to policymaking, many activists look to be included in the process instead of just caring about the outcome. (18:07-47:06) Hernandez-Cortes notes that the quality of the outcome of a policy can affect the composition of people in a place. But, to assess the role of place in environmental inequality, many details are needed as factors like housing and income also come into play. Gentrification generally only results from a policy that changes the environment significantly. Overall, environmental issues are typically multi-generational, and they interact with other place-based sources of inequality, such as housing discrimination or unequal access to schools or health care, to have long term negative consequences. At the same time, interventions to improve environmental justice can also lead to benefits far into the future, as the same dynamics play out as a virtuous cycle of improvement. (47:07-1:01:01)

Esteemed economist Geoffrey Heal lauded recent technological advancements while also expressing his frustration with the impact of international efforts to combat climate change policy during the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Read a transcript of the podcast: https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/geoffrey-heal-podcast-transcript.pdf.

Benefit-cost analysis and alternatives for evaluating biotechnology policy Zachary S. Brown, Associate Professor of Agricultural & Resource Economics, NC State Website | Twitter @TheKazath A look at the limits of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) in biotechnology governance and discussion of its social utility compared to alternatives. Abstract Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is a ubiquitous method for evaluating policies throughout the US federal and state governments and around the world. It has been used for both normative and descriptive purposes, both prospectively and retrospectively, to assess the economic efficiency of policies. However, there are significant and well-known limitations in the method, especially in its insensitivity to fairness, equity, and justice. With these considerations receiving increasing prominence in political and policy discourses, including those surrounding biotechnology governance, what is the social utility of BCA going forward (compared to alternatives)? In this colloquium, I will quickly review the basic economic theory motivating BCA, summarizing some of my recent research deconstructing the method's inherent indeterminism. I will then outline different areas of biotechnology policy in the US government where a role for BCA has been – or could be – implicated. I will describe a partial BCA from my own research evaluating the consumer welfare implications of agricultural gene drives, to motivate audience discussion questioning the utility of BCA in biotechnology governance. Related links: Brown, Z. S. (2022). Distributional policy impacts, WTP-WTA disparities, and the Kaldor-Hicks tests in benefit-cost analysis. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 113, 102654. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102654. PDF > Jones, M. S., Delborne, J. A., Elsensohn, J., Mitchell, P. D., & Brown, Z. S. (2019). Does the US public support using gene drives in agriculture? And what do they want to know? Science Advances, 5(9), eaau8462. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau8462. PDF > Jones, M. S., & Brown, Z. S. (2019). Landscape-level pest control externalities when consumer preferences are non-neutral. In 2019 Annual Meeting, July 21-23, Atlanta, Georgia (No. 290815). Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. PDF > Speaker Bio Dr. Zack Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, serves on the Executive Committee of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center, and is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Policy (CEnREP) at NC State. He teaches classes in environmental and resource economics in NC State's Economics Graduate Program and also teaches and advises students in the AgBioFEWS graduate fellowship program funded by the National Science Foundation. His research broadly examines questions in the field of bioeconomics, examining interactions between economic agents and biological and ecological systems. GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in 1911 Building Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates. Genetic Engineering and Society Center GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium GES Mediasite - See videos, full abstracts, speaker bios, and slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite Twitter - https://twitter.com/GESCenterNCSU GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology. Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

This week is all about John Bogle, the Superhero of Wall Street for retail investors, Vanguard, low-cost index funds, and the benefits of ETFs with The Bogle Effect author, Eric Balchunas. The Bogle Effect is our Q1 pick for the Family Finance Mom Book Club. Eric Balchunas is Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, where he leads the ETF and fund research and contributes to Bloomberg Opinion. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and conferences, as well as the co-creator of the Bloomberg podcast, Trillions, and Bloomberg TV's ETF IQ. Eric is author of The Bogle Effect (2022) and The Institutional ETF Toolbox (2016). Eric holds a bachelor's degree in Journalism and Environmental Economics from Rutgers University. In today's episode, we cover... Who was John Bogle and why he is THE Superhero for American investors that most of us have never heard of? What is The Bogle Effect? Why over the long run, the biggest impact on your investment portfolio is fees. "Costs matter." What is an ETF? And what's better for investors: ETFs or mutual funds? What is the next big thing that may disrupt investing and Wall Street that investors should look out for? What does the modern investor portfolio look like? For more on FFM Book Club: https://familyfinancemom.com/finance-books-to-read/ For more on this week's guest, Eric Balchunas: https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas Get The Bogle Effect book Listen to his podcast, Trillions ___________________ Follow Family Finance Mom everywhere... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/familyfinancemom/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@familyfinancemom Twitter: https://twitter.com/financemom1 Get the weekly newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/gblbY9 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/familyfinancemom/message

In this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with researchers Neha Khanna and Nick Kuminoff about the diversity of scholars in the field of environmental and resource economics. Khanna is a professor of economics at Binghamton University, and Kuminoff is an associate professor of economics at Arizona State University. Khanna and Kuminoff discuss the gender equity of authorship in environmental economics journals, equity in tenure-track academic jobs, how diversity in a research field contributes to the advancement of scientific knowledge, the state of the community of environmental economists, and prospects for early-career scholars. References and recommendations: “New Evidence on Diversity in Environmental and Resource Economics” by Nicolai V. Kuminoff, Katherine E. Ciaramello, Hanna M. Dooley, Martin D. Heintzelman, Neha Khanna, Lea-Rachel Kosnik, Lynne Y. Lewis, and Eric Trimble; https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722907 “Don't Look Up” film; https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357 “Is Climate Change like Diabetes or an Asteroid?” by Ted Nordhaus; https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/is-climate-change-like-diabetes “The Three-Body Problem” in the trilogy of novels called “Remembrance of Earth's Past” by Liu Cixin; https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765382030/thethreebodyproblem

Texas+Water Editor-in-Chief Dr. Todd Votteler talks with Dr. Michael Hanemann about the economics of water markets and water transfers. Dr. Hanemann is the Chancellor's Professor and Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at the University of California Berkeley, and also serves as a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist and the Julie A. Wrigley Chair in Sustainability at Arizona State University. He is also the Director of the Center of Environmental Economics and Sustainability Policy at Arizona State University. Hanemann is an environmental economist who works in the areas of water economics and policy, climate change, and non-market valuation.

I'm such a huge fan of women who are just out there doing their thing to make the world a better place and secretly (because they never brag about themselves at all) are total undercover badasses. Annie Rouse is one of those women. She's transforming the Hemp industry in America, educating and correcting people about all the various products hemp produces and its benefits. She's an entrepreneur, supporting and advising other companies, and is doing all of that with degrees in economics, an MBA, and a Fulbright Scholarship. I'm excited for you to meet this badass. 

We lead our lives largely unaware of the immense effort required to support them. All of us grew up inside the so-called “Grid” — actually one of many interconnected regional power grids that electrify our modern world. The physical infrastructure and the regulatory intricacies required to keep the lights on: both have grown organically, piecemeal, in complex networks that nobody seems to fully understand. And yet, we must. Compared to life 150 years ago, we are all utterly dependent on the power grid, and learning how it operates — how tiny failures cause cascading crises, and how tense webs of collaborators make decisions on the way that electricity is priced and served — matters now more than ever.Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity, we speak with SFI External Professor Seth Blumsack (Google Scholar page), Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics and International Affairs in EME and Director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy at Penn State. In this conversation we explore the arcane yet urgent systems that comprise the power grid and how it's operated, reminding us that the mundane is ever a deep reservoir of questions.If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage. You can find the complete show notes for every episode, with transcripts and links to cited works, at complexity.simplecast.com.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentions and additional resources:Topological Models and Critical Slowing down: Two Approaches to Power System Blackout Risk Analysisby Paul Hines, Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez, & Seth BlumsackDo topological models provide good information about electricity infrastructure vulnerability?by Paul Hines, Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez, & Seth BlumsackCan capacity markets be designed by democracy?by Kyungjin Yoo & Seth BlumsackThe Political Complexity of Regional Electricity Policy Formationby Kyungjin Yoo & Seth BlumsackThe Energy Transition in New Mexico: Insights from a Santa Fe Institute Workshopby Seth Blumsack, Paul Hines, Cristopher Moore, and Jessika E. TrancikEBF 483: Introduction to Electricity Marketsby Seth BlumsackWhat's behind $15,000 electricity bills in Texas?by Seth BlumsackRTOGov: Exploring Links Between Market Decision-Making Processes and Outcomesby Kate KonschnikEnsuring Consideration of the Public Interest in the Governance and Accountability of Regional Transmission Organizationsby Michael H. Dworkin & Rachel Aslin GoldwasserElectricity governance and the Western energy imbalance market in the United States: The necessity of interorganizational collaborationby Stephanie Lenhart, Natalie Nelson-Marsh, Elizabeth J. Wilson, & David SolanUntangling the Wires in Electricity Market Planning, with Kate Konschnikby Resources RadioMatthew Jackson on Social & Economic NetworksComplexity Podcast 12Elizabeth Hobson on Animal Dominance HierarchiesComplexity Podcast 78The Collective Computation of Reality in Nature and SocietyJessica Flack's 2019 SFI Community LectureTyler Marghetis on Breakdowns & Breakthroughs: Critical Transitions in Jazz & MathematicsComplexity Podcast 67Early-warning signals for critical transitionsby Marten Scheffer, Jordi Bascompte, William A. Brock, Victor Brovkin, Stephen R. Carpenter, Vasilis Dakos1, Hermann Held, Egbert H. van Nes , Max Rietkerk & George SugiharaRicardo Hausmann & J. Doyne Farmer on Evolving Technologies & Market Ecologies (EPE 03)Complexity Podcast 84Anjali BhattTina Eliassi-Rad on Democracies as Complex SystemsComplexity Podcast 73Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-makingComplexity Podcast 9Jessika TrancikSignalling architectures can prevent cancer evolutionby Leonardo Oña & Michael LachmannThe Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles with Bryant Walker SmithComplexity Podcast 79Image Credit: Paul Hines