Resources Radio

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Fran Moore, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. Moore discusses a paper she recently coauthored that expands the way we model the future of the climate system. The model examines how human behavior, political decisionmaking, and technological progress can interact with one another to speed or stall efforts to limit cli...

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Nadia Gkritza, a professor at Purdue University. Gkritza is leading a team that’s independently evaluating a new product developed by Holcim, a global building materials and concrete company, and Magment, a German startup that is developing wireless charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. The team envisions a world where electric vehicles can r...

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Erik Nordman, professor of natural resources management and adjunct professor of economics at Grand Valley State University, and affiliate scholar at Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop. Nordman discusses his new book, “The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action,” which introduces Ostrom’s Nobel Prize–winning eco...

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Danielle Spiegel-Feld, executive director of the Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy and Land Use Law at New York University. Spiegel-Feld discusses a paper she recently coauthored, which explores how a carbon trading system could be implemented in the buildings sector—the largest source of carbon emissions in the city—to help reach New York’s deca...

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and chair of California’s Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee (IEMAC), a body that was created by legislation to help the state of California examine and refine its cap-and-trade program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. California’s climate policy success matters on a global...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Luis Sarmiento, a postdoctoral researcher at RFF’s sister institution in Italy, the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Sarmiento recently coauthored a working paper that explores the air pollution impacts of Uber across the United States. The study aims to clarify the environmental consequences of ridesharing companie...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Glenn Hubbard, dean emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University’s business school, and a member of the board of directors at Resources for the Future. Hubbard shares insights from his new book, “The Wall and the Bridge: Fear and Opportunity in Disruption’s Wake,” which is about the role of economics i...

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Kate Konschnik, a former senior lecturer at Duke University Law School who recently joined the Biden administration. Konschnik describes RTOGov, a research initiative that aims to evaluate how decisions are made in US electricity markets and the overlooked importance of regional transmission organizations (RTOs) in the electricity sector. Konschnik and...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Kyle Meng, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Meng discusses California’s ongoing economic transition away from oil production and refining, the need for policies that reduce oil production and consumption across the state over the next couple decades, and the challenges involved in making related legislative...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Rodney Rowland, the director of facilities and environmental sustainability at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. As his job title indicates, one of Rowland’s main responsibilities at the museum is to focus on environmental sustainability. He’s helping to implement a proactive adaptation strategy for the facilities at Strawber...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Lara Aleluia Reis, a scientist at our sister institution, the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Reis and her coauthors have recently released a new study in “Lancet Planetary Health” about the connection between air pollution and climate change. The study explores how policymakers can most effectively accomplish two i...

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Jennifer Haverkamp, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan, and Sarah Ladislaw, managing director of the US Program at RMI. This week is our annual year-in-review episode, in which we talk about what happened during the past year and what we’ll be watching for in the year to come. Haverkamp and Ladislaw highlight...

What’s a better strategy for incentivizing innovation: the existing patent system or flashy, high-dollar prizes? This year, Elon Musk (Person of the Year in 2021, according to “Time” magazine) inspired heated debate when he announced a $100-million prize for novel carbon removal technologies. Some environmentalists were enthusiastic, though Zorina Khan—a professor of economics at Bowdoin College a...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Paul Joskow, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the President’s Council at Resources for the Future. Joskow has had a long and distinguished career that spans a wide range of energy and environmental topics. In his conversation with Raimi, Joskow discusses his new working paper about the challenge...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Casey Wichman, an assistant professor in the School of Economics at Georgia Tech and an RFF university fellow. Wichman and several coauthors recently published a working paper that uses a field experiment to estimate how smart thermostats and time-varying electricity pricing can help reduce household utility bills and demands on the power sector...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Colin Jerolmack, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at New York University. Jerolmack recently published “Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town”—a book that Raimi insists is one of the best on the shale revolution that’s been written to date. Jerolmack lived for several months in a ru...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Kim Stanley Robinson, acclaimed author of many books, most recently “The Ministry for the Future.” Robinson’s books vividly illustrate some of the most devastating potential consequences of climate change, but that’s not all they do—the books also offer innovation and optimism, imagining the ways in which we can prevent some of the worst impacts...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Shelie Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. Miller describes her recent research, which investigates whether reusable products like straws and coffee cups are really more sustainable than their single-use counterparts. In part because manufacturing these products and then keeping them cle...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Billy Pizer, the Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement at Resources for the Future. The episode was recorded on the second-to-last day of COP26, closing out our three-part COP-focused podcast series. Pizer joins Resources Radio live from Glasgow, where he has been RFF’s eyes and ears, to discuss how this critical negotiating session...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Suzi Kerr, chief economist at Environmental Defense Fund. Kerr’s areas of expertise include emissions pricing, climate change policy, land use, and—most relevant for this podcast episode—international climate cooperation. Kerr originally hails from New Zealand, where she helped found Motu, an economics and public policy research institution tha...

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Cleetus is an expert on the process used by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, and has been attending international climate negotiations since 2009. As this podcast episode airs, we are two days into this year’s ne...

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Boma Brown-West, director of consumer health at Environmental Defense Fund. Brown-West works on a wide range of issues related to the safety of consumer products, and she discusses some of the risks associated with packaging. Along with the well-known environmental damages from plastic pollution, Brown-West and Raimi dig into the lesser-known risks to...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Char Miller, a professor at Pomona College and a senior fellow at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation. Miller recently published a book called “West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement.” It’s a fascinating look back at how decades of environmental discrimination led t...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Inês Azevedo, an associate professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Azevedo publishes on a very wide range of topics, but the conversation in this episode focuses on her work that examines the effects of particu...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. Michaud is an expert on the power sector and economic development, and he discusses a new state law in Illinois called the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. The bill aims to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by mid-century and includes other provisions to...