Resources Radio

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Bathsheba Demuth, an associate professor at Brown University, about the history of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska and northeastern Russia. Demuth discusses the ecosystems, peoples, and economic systems in the region and how interactions between Indigenous peoples and colonial settlers affected the local environment and social and poli...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, about technologies and natural processes that can remove carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere. Nemet discusses efforts in the public and private sectors to deploy new technologies, benefits and costs of different methods of carbon dioxide removal, and the risks and challenges o...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Yanjun (Penny) Liao, a fellow at Resources for the Future, about the effect of weather-related disasters on local government finances. Liao discusses how municipalities, states, and the federal government provide disaster aid; how these disasters can affect tax revenues and the ability of local governments to provide community services; and how...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Ana Baptista, an associate professor at the New School in New York City and codirector of its Tishman Environment and Design Center. Baptista discusses the cumulative impacts of pollution on environmental justice communities; the sources of pollution in these communities; and the groundbreaking legislation and data tools that are being employe...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Aaron Bergman and Alan Krupnick—both scholars at Resources for the Future—about the technology and policy landscape of hydrogen fuel. Bergman and Krupnick discuss methods of hydrogen fuel production, the raft of new federal policies that incentivize the production of low-emissions hydrogen and build up the regional marketplaces known as “hydroge...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Maureen Leddy, who serves as director of the Office of Climate Change at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Leddy discusses the state’s recently approved Scoping Plan, which proposes strategies for meeting the state’s emissions-reduction goals that are required by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with researchers Neha Khanna and Nick Kuminoff about the diversity of scholars in the field of environmental and resource economics. Khanna is a professor of economics at Binghamton University, and Kuminoff is an associate professor of economics at Arizona State University. Khanna and Kuminoff discuss the gender equity of authorship in environmental...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with John D. Leshy, an emeritus professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, about the history of public lands in the United States. Leshy discusses the legislation that enabled the creation and conservation of public lands, common myths about public lands, and how the government may open up public lands for mining o...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Danae Hernández-Cortés, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, about a recent study that investigates how California’s cap-and-trade program affects levels of harmful pollutants in environmental justice communities. Hernández-Cortés discusses how carbon markets can shift concentrations of local air pollutants, environmental justice...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi recaps 2022 with Catherine Wolfram, a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and member of the board of directors at Resources for the Future, and John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group. Wolfram and Larsen offer insights on the year’s biggest stories in energy and environmental policy at the state, national, and international levels, including U...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Elaine Hill, an associate professor at the University of Rochester, about a recent study that examines the effects of hazardous-waste cleanup on local communities. Hill discusses whether a particular federal cleanup program—the Corrective Action Program established under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act—benefits the residents it intend...

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Jacob Hochard, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, about a new study that explores how hurricanes affect birth outcomes. Hochard discusses why hurricanes produce negative birth outcomes, the long-term effects of negative birth outcomes, and further research and policies that could help reduce the negative impacts of tropical s...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Sarah Mills, a researcher at the University of Michigan, about rural communities in the Great Lakes region and their perspectives on local renewable energy projects. Mills and Raimi discuss how rural communities tend to receive and perceive renewables projects, why large-scale projects often face opposition, and the extent to which outside inter...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Andrew Curley, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona and a member of the Navajo Nation. Curley works on how Native nations and the US government manage water and energy resources in a complex social, political, and geographic landscape. Curley and Raimi discuss water and energy issues in the Navajo Nation where Andrew lives, and ho...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Colin Foard, a manager at the Pew Charitable Trusts, about a new report that documents how efforts to reduce wildfire risks are stressing state budgets. Foard and Hayes acknowledge that figuring out how to pay for wildfire mitigation and recovery is critical for many levels of government; discuss how local, state, and federal governments collab...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks about the clean energy transition with Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame. Grubert discusses challenges associated with the “mid-transition,” a period of the clean energy transition when both fossil fuels and clean energy infrastructure may be necessary. Grubert and Raimi examine the inv...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Kelli Roemer, a PhD candidate in earth sciences at Montana State University. Roemer discusses a small town in Montana called Colstrip, which historically has been dependent on coal mining and coal-fired power generation. Their conversation examines the importance of the local coal industry to Colstrip’s community and how local stakeholders are p...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with James Boyd, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, about the implications of recent private-sector and government investments in US forests for wildlife management, forest products markets, and forest conservation efforts. Boyd examines how these investments could affect wildfire risk, communities that rely on nearby forests, and the scale...

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 a...

This week, podcast co-host Margaret Walls joins Resources Radio for her first episode, with guest Eli Fenichel, the Assistant Director for Natural Resource Economics and Accounting in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Fenichel and Walls discuss the recently announced plan from the Biden-Harris administration to integrate the value of natural resources and the environm...

This week, host Kristin Hayes talks with Evan Michelson, a program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who oversees the foundation’s energy and environment program. They discuss the world of energy and environmental research from a funder’s perspective: how philanthropies set funding priorities, how the world of environmental philanthropy has evolved, and why research matters. References an...

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks with Billy Pizer, the vice president for research and policy engagement at Resources for the Future, about getting to a net-zero resilient economy. Pizer discusses the meaning of “net-zero resilient economy,” the existing suite of global net-zero goals and pledges, and how recent federal policy has moved the United States closer to its net-zero goals. Pizer and R...

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks about air pollution with Pallavi Pant, the head of global health at the Health Effects Institute. Pant discusses a new study that explores the prevalence of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide pollution in more than 7,000 cities worldwide. Pant and Hayes also delve into the health effects of air pollution, trends in urban air quality in reg...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks about the latest developments in nuclear energy innovation, policy, and deployment with Alex Gilbert, a PhD student and fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines and the Director of Space and Planetary Regulation at Zeno Power. Gilbert discusses the types of nuclear technologies in the development pipeline, how they...

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks about drinking water with Gregory Pierce, the codirector of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles. Pierce discusses who has and who lacks clean drinking water in the United States, what factors have contributed to differing levels of access to clean water, the potential policies and investments that can help ex...