Podcast appearances and mentions of jennifer burney

Particulate matter is, Michael Greenstone argues, the greatest public health threat on the planet. Worse than HIV, cigarettes, and alcohol. The average person  loses about two years of life expectancy to it. In India, the figure is three and a half years. The solution to this problem has been tested, and it works, at least in high-income countries.Greenstone and his co-authors ran a randomised controlled trial in Surat, Gujarat: from 300 industrial plants, mostly making textiles, all burning coal, half were randomly assigned to a market where pollution permits could be bought and sold. The results: in the market, pollution fell 25%, compliance was near-perfect, and abatement costs dropped 12%. The cost-benefit ratio is as high as 200 to one. Many plants in the control group asked to be moved into the market.The research behind this episode:Greenstone, Michael, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India." Quarterly Journal of Economics 140 (2): 1003–1060. An ungated version is available as BFI Working Paper 2025-53.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries?" VoxDev Talk (podcast).  Assign this as extra listening: the citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Michael GreenstoneMichael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is the founding Director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC) and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. His research focuses on the costs and benefits of environmental quality, including the Air Quality Life Index, which tracks the toll of particulate pollution country by country. He previously served as Chief Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. Research cited in this episodeAir Quality Life Index (AQLI), Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. The source of the life-expectancy statistics used in this episode: particulate pollution costs the average person on Earth roughly two years of life expectancy, with India averaging three and a half years. The index tracks this burden country by country, city by city.The US sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade programme, established under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, was the canonical precedent Greenstone cited: a market that dramatically reduced acid rain in the eastern United States at costs far below pre-programme projections. He noted that the UK and EU have since built comparable CO2 markets. All have worked well. The question this experiment addressed was whether the same logic held in the developing world, where almost all the pollution now is.Emissions Market Accelerator. An independent scale-up organisation founded by Greenstone and colleagues to replicate the Gujarat model beyond the original research setting. Current pipeline: a statewide sulphur dioxide market for Maharashtra (including large power plants, not just textiles), and advanced conversations in Pakistan and Brazil. Within Gujarat, a water pollution market is also in development.More VoxDev Talks on this topicRegulating pollution in low- and middle-income countries Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan, two co-authors of the paper discussed in this episode, on the political economy of pollution regulation in developing countries: why enforcement is hard, and what makes it work.Air pollution and infant mortality Jennifer Burney on the health costs of particulate air pollution for young children, and what the evidence from Saharan dust patterns across Sub-Saharan Africa reveals about exposure and mortality.The Social Cost of Carbon Michael Greenstone's earlier VoxDev Talk, on how assigning a monetary value to carbon emissions can drive better policy decisions and make the case for action that regulation alone struggles to make.Related reading on VoxDevReducing air pollution: Evidence from payments to reduce crop burning in India How cash payments to farmers in northern India changed behaviour and cut the seasonal haze from crop fires that pushes Delhi's air quality to its worst each winter.Paying to pollute: How carbon offsets actually raised emissions in China A cautionary study on market-based pollution controls: when incentives point the wrong way, a market can make things worse rather than better.The effect of pollution on worker productivity: Evidence from call-centre workers in China Air pollution reduces cognitive performance and output, adding an economic productivity argument to the health case for cleaning the air.

Poor air quality is a danger to children's health, but most of what we know about the effects are from wealthy countries or large cities. A multidisciplinary study has estimated the impact of air quality on child health for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with surprising policy conclusions. Jennifer Burney talks to Tim Phillips.

In this week's episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Marissa Childs, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, about a recently published study that explores the prevalence and dangers of wildfire smoke in the United States. Childs discusses changes in the location and frequency of wildfire smoke, the degree to which increased prevalence of air pollution can be attributed to wildfire smoke, and the disproportionate effect of wildfire smoke on certain groups of people. References and recommendations: “Daily Local-Level Estimates of Ambient Wildfire Smoke PM2.5 for the Contiguous US” by Marissa L. Childs, Jessica Li, Jeffrey Wen, Sam Heft-Neal, Anne Driscoll, Sherrie Wang, Carlos F. Gould, Minghao Qiu, Jennifer Burney, and Marshall Burke; https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02934 “All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis” edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson; https://www.allwecansave.earth/anthology

In more than three years doing this show, there have been few things as tragic and shocking as learning more about the impacts air pollution crisis we are living in. It seems that the more we learn about air pollution the more we understand just how much worse it is than we thought and how much it's costing us - with both our lives and economies. As part of a new study, Professor Jennifer Burney joins a group that notes the impacts of air pollution on human health, economies and agriculture are wide-ranging, but differ drastically based on where on the planet pollutants are emitted. We talk to Professor Burney about the study and its findings and why this research could change how countries decide when to cut climate-changing emissions. Professor Burney is the Marshall Saunders Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research. Read the study "Geographically resolved social cost of anthropogenic emissions accounting for both direct and climate-mediated effects" here. Take part in the Day of Action for the Environmental Voter Project Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly" As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

When a little girl, Ella Kissi-Debrah, suddenly got sick and landed in the hospital, doctors were stumped. In this episode, her mom, Rosamund, takes on the fight to find out what exactly happened to Ella. And the answer has BIG implications — for us all. We'll hear from Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah and Professor Stephen Holgate. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/3z17Gdv This episode was produced by Ekedi Fausther-Keeys with help from Rose Rimler, Wendy Zukerman, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, and Courtney Gilbert. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Wendy Zukerman is the Executive Producer. Extra help from Saidu Tejan-Thomas, Nicole Beemsterboer, Kendra Pierre-Louis, and Alex Blumberg. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and SoWylie. Thanks to the researchers and experts we got in touch with for this episode, including Jocelyn Cockburn, Professor Vernon Morris, Dr. George Thurston, Dr. Lauren Zajac, Dr. Jennifer Burney, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Dr. Melissa Burroughs, Dr Wei Peng, Professor Barbara Hoffman, Dr. Michael Craig, and Dr. Wes Austin. Special thanks to Rachel Humphreys, BBC Motion Gallery / Getty Images, Jonah Delso, Jackie Llanos, The Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We often say, "Listen to the scientists and create policies based on the science." This month we hear from Jennifer Burney, Associate Professor, Marshall Saunders Chancellor’s Endowed Chair of Climate Policy and Research at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on simultaneously achieving global food security and mitigating climate change. She designs, implements, and evaluates technologies for poverty alleviation and agricultural adaptation. Skip ahead to the following sections: (0:00​) Introductions (2:42​) Dr. Burney's Presentation (22:46​) Questions From Attendees (29:45) Tribute to Sec. Shultz (​35:25) March's Monthly Actions (39:51​) Fundraiser Video Helpful Links:  Dr. Jennifer Burney's Research Page: https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/jennifer-burney.html  March Fundraiser: https://cclusa.org/donate-to-ccl  March Monthly Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/actionsheet​  Primary Ask (Leave-Behind): https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/237  March Lobby Days Training on Primary and Supporting Asks:  https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/185  CCL's March Pre-Call Video: https://vimeo.com/522668129 

The world food system comprises hundreds of millions of farmers making decisions in response to economic signals and environmental expectations. However, many of these farmers are food insecure by any number of metrics, and their production is threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Against this backdrop, what are the prospects for a world free from hunger? Using global data as well as smaller-scale studies of innovative technologies and strategies, Jennifer Burney of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy explores the potential for a resilient food system at the heart of a new sustainable development agenda. Series: "UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 30323]

The world food system comprises hundreds of millions of farmers making decisions in response to economic signals and environmental expectations. However, many of these farmers are food insecure by any number of metrics, and their production is threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Against this backdrop, what are the prospects for a world free from hunger? Using global data as well as smaller-scale studies of innovative technologies and strategies, Jennifer Burney of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy explores the potential for a resilient food system at the heart of a new sustainable development agenda. Series: "UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 30323]

The world food system comprises hundreds of millions of farmers making decisions in response to economic signals and environmental expectations. However, many of these farmers are food insecure by any number of metrics, and their production is threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Against this backdrop, what are the prospects for a world free from hunger? Using global data as well as smaller-scale studies of innovative technologies and strategies, Jennifer Burney of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy explores the potential for a resilient food system at the heart of a new sustainable development agenda. Series: "UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 30323]

The world food system comprises hundreds of millions of farmers making decisions in response to economic signals and environmental expectations. However, many of these farmers are food insecure by any number of metrics, and their production is threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Against this backdrop, what are the prospects for a world free from hunger? Using global data as well as smaller-scale studies of innovative technologies and strategies, Jennifer Burney of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy explores the potential for a resilient food system at the heart of a new sustainable development agenda. Series: "UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 30323]

Water expert John Briscoe discusses effective water management as a key element of agricultural innovation and growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Stanford research fellow Jennifer Burney provides commentary. (5/23/13)