Resources Radio

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Rami talks with Heather Randell, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, about dams and reservoirs that have been built on Native American reservations in the United States. Reservoirs are built by damming a river and flooding an area of land; in the United States, Native American reservations have been disrupted by the construction of reservoirs,...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Carlos Martín, a project director at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a university fellow at Resources for the Future, about housing adaptation and resilience amid climate change, using as a primary example New Orleans housing infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina. Martín argues that the resilience of housing inf...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ben Cahill, a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the Biden administration’s recent decision to pause approvals on the construction of new facilities that export liquefied natural gas. Cahill discusses the history of natural gas production in the United Stat...

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...

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 f...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Julia Haggerty, an associate professor at Montana State University and university fellow at Resources for the Future, about engaging the public in the US energy transition. Haggerty discusses public engagement in the context of US efforts to decarbonize, the opportunity presented by a transition to clean energy in terms of reducing inequities in...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Bernie Bastien-Olvera, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Diego, about the benefits of ecosystems for humans and the global economy. Bastien-Olvera discusses the types of benefits that ecosystems provide, methods that economists use to estimate these benefits, how climate change is shifting ecosystems and biomes geograph...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi reviews developments in energy and environmental policy in 2023 and previews potential developments in 2024 with Karen Palmer, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, and Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Palmer and Majkut discuss reforms that could speed up...

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced $8.2 billion in funding for selected high-speed rail projects across the country. One major rail project that is receiving support will connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles; another will connect several cities in California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. “America disinvested over the last many decades in our rail systems,” said Pete Bu...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ann Wolverton, a senior research economist at the US Environmental Protection Agency, about how the agency incorporates environmental justice in its rulemaking and its analysis of agency regulations. Wolverton discusses the history of accounting for environmental justice at federal agencies, how the availability and granularity of data affect th...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Isaac Opper, an economist at the Rand Corporation and professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School, about how natural disasters can affect education outcomes for students and the resulting stock of skills in the US labor force. Opper discusses the relationship between education and skills in the US labor force, which is known as human capital; h...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks about improving equity in urban park systems with Norma García-González, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation, and Catherine Nagel, the executive director of the City Parks Alliance. García-González discusses how data and community engagement have helped Los Angeles County increase the accessibility and quality...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with David Wear, a nonresident senior fellow and director of the Land Use, Forestry, and Agriculture Program at Resources for the Future, about the ability of US forests to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Wear discusses how US forests fit into emissions-reduction efforts, different approaches for estimating the amount of carbon d...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Temple Stoellinger, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, about state trust lands, which are public lands that states own and must use to raise revenue for public schools and other public beneficiaries. Stoellinger discusses how state trust lands historically have been used; the existing and potential uses of these lands for con...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ben Storrow, a reporter with E&E News, about recent challenges for the offshore wind industry. Storrow discusses state and federal goals for offshore wind development; how factors related to inflation, supply chains, installation capacity, and tax rules can create obstacles for wind projects; and methods for pushing offshore wind projects throug...

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 prac...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Angela Parker, an assistant professor at the University of Denver, about oil and gas production on Native American reservations. Parker discusses the history of oil production on Native American lands, the environmental and economic effects of this production, Native American perceptions of the oil and gas industry, and the current state of the...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Becky Epanchin-Niell, an associate professor at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. Epanchin-Niell discusses how climate change and human land and water use have accelerated the frequency and extent of saltwater intrusion, which is saltwater contamination in freshwater rivers, soils, and aquifers. Epanch...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Emily Browne, who has worked on wildfire prevention and suppression in Alaska with the US National Park Service. On September 27, the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission released a report with recommendations for addressing the challenges that are associated with wildfire in the United States. Browne discusses some of these reco...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Alexander Gazmararian, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, and Dustin Tingley, a professor at Harvard University. They discuss how a national transition to a clean energy system may affect communities with economies that historically have depended on fossil fuel production; the moral, economic, and political reasons for the US governme...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Will Gorman, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about the interconnection queue. The interconnection queue is the waiting list for developers that hope to connect power plants to the electric grid; regulators must first study the potential effects of connecting a plant to the grid before moving forward with a project....

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with V. Kelly Turner, an associate professor at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, about the impacts of heat on students in US schools. Heat not only affects the body but also has implications for children’s behavior and learning outcomes. Turner also discusses architectural and landscape design choices...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Victoria Sanders and Molly Robertson. Sanders is a research analyst at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, and Robertson works at Resources for the Future as a research associate. They discuss a recent report that Sanders and Robertson have published alongside coauthors about the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, a...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Milan Elkerbout about how the European Union has responded to the Inflation Reduction Act. Elkerbout will join Resources for the Future as a fellow in October, transitioning from his role as head of the climate policy programme at the Centre for European Policy Studies. Elkerbout discusses the ongoing conversation about the Inflation Reduction...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Tyler Felgenhauer, a research director and senior research scientist at Duke University, about social science issues that are associated with solar geoengineering. Felgenhauer discusses different technologies that can facilitate solar geoengineering, the risks and benefits of these technologies, how international cooperation could affect the de...