Resources Radio

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with J.B. Ruhl, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School who specializes in environmental, natural resources, and property law. Ruhl provides an overview of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the landmark law that permits lawsuits against federal agencies for any actions that are perceived to affect the quality of the environment. Drawing...

In this week's episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Amy Harder, national energy and climate change reporter at Axios. Harder's reporting includes exclusive scoops and analyses of national and global trends. Previously, she covered similar issues for the Wall Street Journal and National Journal. Harder also was the inaugural journalism fellow for the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institut...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Lisa Mandle, lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project, based at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Lisa is the co-editor of a new book called "Green Growth That Works: Natural Capital Policy and Finance Mechanisms from around the World." The book presents a range of fascinating case studies from around the world, all centered around the t...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Daniel Esty, a professor at Yale University and a member of the board of directors at Resources for the Future (RFF). Dan talks about a new book he edited, "A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future." As its title suggests, the book covers a wide range of topics. Raimi and Esty's conversation focuses on an essay that Esty wrote, which outlines h...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Megan Mullin, an associate professor of environmental politics at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Mullin talks about her research, which analyzes how communities pay to rehabilitate beaches affected by erosion and how differential tax rates can affect levels of support for these beach nourishment projects. Mullin also makes clear why co...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Robert Litterman, a founding partner at Kepos Capital and a board member at Resources for the Future (RFF). Litterman recently was named the chair of a new committee that will be advising US financial regulators on the economic risks of climate change, a new position that leverages Litterman's extensive experience working on risk management in the financial...

This week's episode features a review of the year 2019 in environmental and energy policy, with two amazing guests: Susan Tierney, senior advisor at the Analysis Group and chair of the board at Resources for the Future (RFF); and Sarah Ladislaw, senior vice president, director, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, with their Energy and National Security Program....

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Nathaniel Keohane, senior vice president for climate at Environmental Defense Fund. In this episode, Keohane gives a readout on the outcomes of this year’s annual international climate negotiations, called COP25. He and Raimi talk about the goals of the conference; whether those goals were achieved; and several other issues, including conference protests, th...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Emily Grubert, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Raimi and Grubert discuss how water is used in the energy system, a subset of the topic known as the “Energy-Water Nexus.” They also talk about a 2018 paper that Grubert coauthored with Kelly Sanders—research that provides intricate detail on the life cycle of water consumption for...

This week, host Kristin Hayes talks with Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, authors of a new book released this fall by Oxford University Press, called "Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption." Hayes, Hill, and Martinez-Diaz delve into the topics covered in the book, including ten lessons for decisionmakers in building a resilient future. To introduce H...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Nathaniel Geiger, assistant professor of communication science at Indiana University. Geiger studies, among other things, how the public responds to communication around climate change. Geiger and Raimi discuss the recent history of advocacy on climate change; how recent movements like the youth-led climate strike might shape public attitudes toward climate...

On this week's podcast, Emily Wimberger talks with host Kristin Hayes about the so-called "California waiver." The waiver has flown under the public radar for decades, but it’s now getting a closer look from the Trump administration, and it’s been turning up in the headlines. In this episode, Wimberger and Hayes discuss what the waiver is; how it came to be; and why it matters for California, the...

Nicholas Z. Muller, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, recently published a paper with coauthors that measures the health damages from air pollution in the United States. The paper looks at how those health damages compare with traditional economic metrics such as gross domestic product (GDP) and describes the harm that some economic activities impose, relative to their contribution to the...

In this special episode of Resources Radio, host Daniel Raimi partners with the Energy 360° podcast from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Energy Program. Raimi and CSIS's Sarah Ladislaw interview RFF Fellow Marc Hafstead, director of RFF's Carbon Pricing Initiative. Raimi and Ladislaw talk with Hafstead about a raft of recent legislative proposals in the US Congress to price...

In this special episode of the podcast mini-series related to RFF's Candidate Tracker, host Kristin Hayes talks with Resources Radio regular Daniel Raimi, a senior research associate at RFF. Hayes and Raimi share thoughts about how the presidential candidates in this election cycle are talking about fracking. Raimi's research has primarily focused on the shale revolution in the United States, but...

Host Kristin Hayes talks with Senator Tina Smith, the junior senator from the great state of Minnesota. Senator Smith served as the 48th lieutenant governor of Minnesota from 2015 to 2018, after a career in both the private and public sectors in the state, where she has lived since 1984. Senator Smith is a member of several committees in the Senate relevant to natural resource, energy, and climate...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Judson Boomhower, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Boomhower and Raimi discuss the recent public safety power shutoffs that affected over one million people in northern California, what led to the shutoffs, the effects of the shutoffs, and...

This week, Kristin Hayes and Joseph Aldy discuss the presidential candidates’ stances on climate change. Aldy is professor of the practice of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a university fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF). Aldy worked as an RFF fellow in 2005–2008, leaving in 2009 to serve as the special assistant to the president for energy and environment, reporting through...

This week, host Kristin Hayes talks with Kyung-Ah Park, who leads environmental markets and innovation in the newly formed sustainable finance group at Goldman Sachs; she also serves on the board of RFF. Previously, Park headed the Environmental Markets Group at Goldman Sachs. As the episode title suggests, their conversation focuses on the potential to catalyze markets toward further investments...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Resources for the Future (RFF) Senior Fellow Karen Palmer and RFF Fellow Daniel Shawhan. Along with RFF Senior Research Assistant Paul Picciano, Palmer and Shawhan recently released a report called “Benefits and Costs of Power Plant Carbon Emissions Pricing in New York.” Raimi, Palmer, and Shawhan talk about this new work, which examines how a carbon price a...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ellen Hughes-Cromwick of the University of Michigan Energy Institute. Hughes-Cromwick previously served as chief economist in the US Department of Commerce. Before that, she was the chief economist at Ford Motor Company for over 18 years. Raimi asks Hughes-Cromwick about the state of play in the automotive industry, how electric and autonomous vehicles are c...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Catherine Kling, who, among her many titles, is a Tisch University professor at Cornell University and a member of RFF's Board of Directors. They talk about a recent op-ed that Kling published in the New York Times, called “Polluting Farmers Should Pay,” which focuses on nutrient runoff from agricultural land and how the runoff contributes to harmful algae b...

This week's episode pays tribute to the life and work of Harvard Economics Professor Marty Weitzman, who died two weeks ago. Host Daniel Raimi talks with Gernot Wagner, a close collaborator and friend of Weitzman’s and a professor at New York University. Raimi and Wagner talk about two of Weitzman’s seminal contributions to the field of environmental economics, how this work has shaped public poli...

Host Daniel Raimi talks with Sharon Shewmake, a professor of environmental economics at Western Washington University. Shewmake also represents Washington's 42nd legislative district in the state's House of Representatives. Shewmake discusses Washington's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the power sector to zero by 2045, other state policies that affect energy and the environment, and ho...

Host Daniel Raimi talks with Robert Bonnie, Rubinstein fellow at Duke University. Bonnie is an expert on many things, but in this episode, he talks about the role that forests play in energy, climate change, and more. Raimi asks Bonnie about the past, present, and future of wood energy in the United States and globally, and what role forests might play in helping to achieve deep decarbonization go...