Climate Money Watchdog

Our guest tonight is Dr. Michael S. Wong , a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He is also professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Materials Science and NanoEngineering. He was educated and trained at Caltech, MIT, and UCSB before arriving at Rice in 2001. His research program broadly addresses chemic...

Our guest tonight is Bernadette Del Chiaro, Senior Vice President at the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit working to empower people with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment. Bernadette leads EWG’s California operations, building the organization at the state level to continue its groundbreaking work on advancing critical environm...

Our guest tonight is Lew Daly, Senior Fellow for Climate and Energy Policy at Just Solutions , where he works in partnership with state and federal organizations and networks in pursuit of a just and equitable clean energy transition.  His previous 15 years work in the public policy field includes appointments such as: Director of Policy and Research and Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Equity at...

While the fossil fuel industry continues to promote "natural gas" as a relatively "clean" energy source, Dr. Robert Howarth has argued since since his seminal report in 2011 that methane (which makes up roughly 5% of "natural gas") poses a greater threat to humankind than "dirty" options like coal and oil. This is particularly true of methane produced throug...

​We’re delighted to welcome back Poppy Alexander, a founding partner at the law firm Whistleblower Partners , a law firm dedicated to representing whistleblowers reporting fraud and misconduct in: Healthcare Procurement Securities and Commodities Taxes Money Laundering and Sanctions Evasion Customs Environmental Remediation Vehicle Safety Poppy represents whistleblowers and government entities in...

We’re pleased to have as our guest Melissa Valliant , Director of Communications for Beyond Plastics, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending plastic polution. She grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and graduated from Syracuse University with a plan to pursue magazine journalism. Somewhere along the way, she became hooked on environmental conservation and discovered a love for leveragi...

Doug founded Earth Track to more effectively integrate information on energy subsidies. For the past three decades, he has written extensively on natural resource subsidies for organizations such as the International Institute for Sustainable Development , the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Sierra Club , the Natural Resources De...

Matt Renner serves as Vice President of Seneca Environmental , a tribally owned and controlled Earth-healing solutions company focused on helping commercial customers achieve ambitious climate goals while supporting the long-term well-being of the Seneca Nation and other Indigenous people. His work focuses on partnership development and customer acquisition to create unprecedented collaboration an...

Our guest tonight is Paul Blackburn of Pipeline Fighters’ Hub . Paul provides legal services on pipeline and renewable energy matters. He has worked on crude oil pipeline issues since 2008, and has experience in renewable energy policy and development. Paul represented nonprofit clients in the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission hearing on the Keystone XL Pipeline , and in the Minnesota Publi...

Our guest this episode is Erandi Trevino of Public Citizen , Houston. Erandi grew up in Houston and has been concerned about the pollution in her neighborhood since she was a young child. Before joining Public Citizen in Houston as a Climate Policy and Outreach Specialist, she was an Advocacy Fellow with the Fulbright Association in Washington, DC, where she worked on education policy, nutrition,...

We’re excited to welcome back Mark Z. Jacobson, who joined us last year to talk about a study he co-authored called “ Low-Cost Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Insecurity for 145 Countries ”. He is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the E...

In this episode we welcome Peter McKillop , the founder and CEO of our new partner, Climate & Capital Media . Peter is the founder of Climate & Capital Media. Climate & Capital Media is a mission-driven information platform exploring the business and finance of climate change. Climate & Capital delivers original reporting, intelligence and insight from our global network of journal...

Michelle Solomon is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Electricity program at Energy Innovation , working to accelerate the transition to a clean, affordable, and equitable electricity sector in the United States. We’ve invited her to talk about their recent publication of the third edition of their report - Coal Cost Crossover – which argues that over 90% of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. could...

In this climate fight will Big Fossil Fuel, it is hard and rare to have a clear-cut victory. The last time we did a podcast episode with Mike on 7/12/22 , his group was fighting to prevent a closing coal-based power plant in Farmington, New Mexico from reinventing itself to keep open using the questionable technology of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). This was described a June 29, 2022 Hig...

Kayley Shoup is an activist with the Citizens Caring for the Future , an environmental group that is affiliated with New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light in Carlsbad, New Mexico . When she moved back to her hometown, she became alarmed at the increase of pollution from the nearby expanded oil and gas fields of the Permian Basin , and is determined to do something about it. Recently, a NASA sate...

Dr. Steve McDaniel and Beth McDaniel, JD founded and run Reactive Surfaces , and intellectual property firm that develops and patents paints that do more than turn buildings attractive colors and protect them from the elements: They react to the atmosphere in intentional and desirable ways. They are currently in the running to win the most valuable X-Prize contest ever by creating a paint that cap...

Ryan Foelske a Carbon Free Electricity Program manager at RMI (previously the Rocky Mountain Institute) decided to put his money where his mouth is by buying a home in Babcock Ranch , a community designed to both reduce human contribution to climate change and to be more resilient to the effects of climate change, especially hurricanes. He tells us about his experience weathering hurricane Ian . P...

While pollution mitigation and control is vital to the environment, scientists are finding more and more problems for the humans that live near polluting corporate sites. Unfortunately in the name of jobs and profit, companies have produced pollution while ignoring or hiding the human health from their work, often producing what is known as "sacrifice zones" -- areas where the pollution...

Dr. Surinder Singh ’s distinguished career has focused on advancing and incubating technologies that address climate emergency with a focus on fundamentals of science, systems engineering, and business models. He is spearheading Relyion Energy Inc’s strategic business development to create second-life sustainable solutions for Lithium-ion batteries . Previously, Dr. Singh worked as Director of Eng...

Ethan Elkind is the Director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law and leads the Climate Change and Business Research Initiative on behalf of the University of California at Berkeley and University of California at Los Angeles Schools of Law. He taught at the UCLA law school’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic and served as an environmenta...

Climate Money Watchdog founders Dina Rasor and Greg Williams recap our first twenty episodes. We cover such issues as: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Every Dollar Spent on CCS is a Waste - Dr. Charles Harvey and Dr. Kurt House CO2 Pipelines and Carbon Capture - Kert Davies How Did DoE Waste Half a $Billion on Carbon Capture? Bob Bauman How Community Choice Aggregation can make renewable energy m...

Today we’re joined by Jenn Tenny, Communications Manager for the MCE (originally Marin Clean Energy), a relatively new kind of government organization called a CCA, which stands for Community Choice Aggregation. CCA’s allow individual consumers to choose where they get their electricity, even if it’s delivered over transmission lines that are owned by a single, monopoly utility company. As a journ...

Dr. Charles Harvey is a professor of environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Dr. Kurt House is the chief executive officer of KoBold Metals , a metals exploration company. On August 16th, they challenged the prevailing wisdom that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is key to fighting climate change in a New York Times guest essay titled, Every Dollar Spent on This Cl...

Dr. Brittany Trang recently made New York Times headlines with an experimental but extraordinarily promising method for turning dangerous "forever" chemicals called PFAS into different, harmless chemicals. Dr. Trang is a 2022-2023 Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellow at STAT News . Previously, she covered health and science at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as an American Association f...

Elliott Negin , Senior Writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists . Elliott was UCS media director from 2007 through 2011 and now writes about UCS-related topics for a range of news organizations including:. A contributing writer at HuffPost from 2011 through 2017, he has also written articles and columns for Alternet , The Atlantic , Columbia Journalism Review , EcoWatch , The Hill , Live Scienc...