Tag: climate change

Ep. 50 – Australian Biologist Danielle Clode on the Extraordinary World of Koalas

Ep. 50 – Australian Biologist Danielle Clode on the Extraordinary World of Koalas

Upon seeing an adorable Koala sitting on an eucalyptus branch in Australia, few would expect the beloved marsupial to emit a booming bellow to alert potential mates or rivals of its presence. But this powerful roar is just one of koalas’ many surprises, which delight and astonish in Australian biologist Danielle Clode’s new book, “Koala: A Life in the Trees.” Clode explores the enigmatic koala’s 24 million years-long saga of evolutionary adaptations, conservation triumphs, and endangerment catastrophes, and the prospects for their future following the 2019 bushfires that devastated Australia’s koala populations. We speak with Clode about the ancient ancestors, ecology, evolving relationship with humans, and uncertain fate of Australia’s bellowing marsupial.

14. Kim Stanley Robinson, Kate Raworth, and Delton Chen Discuss Carbon Currency

14. Kim Stanley Robinson, Kate Raworth, and Delton Chen Discuss Carbon Currency

Will fighting climate change require restructuring the global economy? Is a “carbon currency” the most intuitive or efficient solution to the climate crisis? In the Season 2 finale, Casey chats with Kim Stanley Robinson (Author, The Ministry for the Future), Kate Raworth (Economist and Author, Doughnut Economics), and Delton Chen (Founder, Global Carbon Reward initiative) about the pros and cons of pursuing a global currency that rewards carbon emission reduction and sequestration. Read more at pricingnature.substack.com.

Ep. 48 – Patrick Rose on the Fight to Save Florida’s Manatees

Ep. 48 – Patrick Rose on the Fight to Save Florida’s Manatees

Grazing peacefully through shallow waterways, the Florida manatee is one of the state’s most beloved creatures. Due to a multitude of compounding, human-caused crises, the last couple years have been some of the deadliest on record for manatees. Years of worsening water quality from Florida’s unfettered agricultural pollution and real estate development have resulted in increased toxic algae blooms that block sunlight from reaching the seagrass meadows upon which the manatees depend. In 2021, Florida’s manatees died in massive numbers, with a record 1,100 manatees – more than 12 percent of the state’s total manatee population – perishing. Most died by starvation. In this episode, we speak with aquatic biologist Patrick Rose, the ‘MVP of manatee protection,’ who has worked for more than four decades to propel manatees to public prominence and to translate manatees’ popularity into enforced protections for these animals and their habitat. Rose, the executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, tells us about the heartbreaking cost to these gentle giants of human derelictions, the critical importance of cleaning up Florida’s waterways, and what it is about manatees that has inspired Rose and countless others to fight tirelessly for their future.

13: Could a New Global Currency Help Avert the Climate Crisis?

13: Could a New Global Currency Help Avert the Climate Crisis?

Could an economy that directly rewards carbon emissions reduction and sequestration be the solution to the climate crisis? In today’s episode, we explore proposals for a global carbon currency: one unit of currency for one ton of CO2 reduced or removed. We’ll hear from Suzi Kerr (Chief Economist, EDF), Bill English (Professor in the Practice of Finance, Formerly on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), Vanessa Fajans-Turner (Executive Director, BankFWD; Candidate for Congress NY-22), Samuel Kortum (Professor of Economics, Yale University), Frank Van Gansbeke (Professor of the Practice, Middlebury College), and Diana Cárdenas (QOIN Foundation). Read more at pricingnature.substack.com.

12. Carbon Offsets: One Quandary After Another

12. Carbon Offsets: One Quandary After Another

Are carbon offsets a viable option for decarbonizing the global economy? What problems do they solve? What problems do they create? We hear from Suzi Kerr (Chief Economist, EDF), Brad Gentry (Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser Professor in the Practice of Forest Resources Management and Policy, Yale University), Zack Parisa (CEO, Natural Capital Exchange), Anastasia O’Rourke (Managing Director, Yale Carbon Containment Lab), Dr. Charles Canham (Forest Ecologist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies), Kristen Lyons (Fellow, Oakland Institute), Kim Hellstrom (Strategy Lead, Sustainability, H&M Group), and Alex Barron (Assistant Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, Smith College). Read more at pricingnature.substack.com.

Ep. 46 – Paleobiologist Thomas Halliday on the Animals of Ancient Worlds

Ep. 46 – Paleobiologist Thomas Halliday on the Animals of Ancient Worlds

The fossil record acts as both a memorial to life’s spectacular possibilities and as a warning to humanity about how fast dominance can become forgotten history, according to our guest, Scottish paleobiologist Dr. Thomas Halliday. Halliday’s research investigates long-term patterns in the fossil record, particularly in mammals. In his magnificent and daring new book “Otherlands: A Journey through Earth’s Extinct Worlds,” Halliday translates cutting-edge science into vivid portraits of sixteen fossil sites and their inhabitants extending back 550 million years. We speak with Halliday about his travel guide to the history of multicellular life on Earth, how an animal fossil can be read as a character description, how entire extinct worlds are reconstructed from remnants in the Earth’s crust, and the importance of realizing that our lives and the worlds we know were preceded by hundreds of millions of years of other life and other worlds, “simultaneously fabulous yet familiar.”

Welcome Back to Pricing Nature

Welcome Back to Pricing Nature

Pricing Nature is back for a second season. This year, we’ll explore carbon pricing beyond cap-and-trade and carbon taxes. We’ll cover creative ways of pricing carbon, from fees inside companies to markets for offsets. We’ll even explore a new idea for payments to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. We’ll speak with heroic local organizers, academic experts at Yale and beyond, YouTube royalty, one of the greatest living Sci-Fi authors, three commissioners of state-level climate policy, leaders at environmental nonprofits, and young advocates from around the world. To learn more, visit our website, pricingnature.substack.com.

Ep. 43 – Cynthia Barnett on our world of seashells

Ep. 43 – Cynthia Barnett on our world of seashells

From tiny cowries to giant clams, seashells have gripped human imaginations since time immemorial. In her magnificent new book, The Sound of the Sea, journalist Cynthia Barnett tells the epic history of humanity’s interactions with shells and the soft-bodied animals who make them. These stories of how we have treasured, traded, plundered, and coveted shells reveal much about who we are and who we’ve been, both good and bad. Barnett’s deep research ranges from the awe-inspiring “great cities of shell” of the Calusa people in Florida, to the use of cowrie shells as currency in the Atlantic slave trade, to the decimation of mollusk populations due to climate change and over-harvesting. In this episode, we speak with Barnett about what she describes as our “world of shell,” what shells can tell us about our past, how they have shaped our present, and how the future of shells and their animal makers is tied to our own.

ISM Fellows in Conversation: Ep. 4: Music Research and Ecological Activism in Haiti

ISM Fellows in Conversation: Ep. 4: Music Research and Ecological Activism in Haiti

The ethnomusicologist Rebecca Dirksen discusses Haiti—a nation particularly vulnerable to climate change and subject to dire injustice in the aftermath of natural disasters—and the concept of Mizik Angaje, socially or politically engaged music within the context of Voudon traditions with Ben Bond, a Master of Divinity student at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

2. What’s the Right Price for Carbon Emissions?

2. What’s the Right Price for Carbon Emissions?

In today’s episode, Naomi and Casey speak with Nobel laureate William Nordhaus (a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale), Fran Moore (an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis), Howard Shelanski (a Law Professor at Georgetown University and former White House administrator), and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (US Senator from RI). They seek to understand the theory behind the “social cost of carbon”: the economic backbone of all carbon pricing schemes.

Read more at pricingnature.substack.com.