Environment and Natural Resources

On "Resource Radio," a podcast by Resources for the Future, Catherine Wolfram, Visiting Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Rhodium Group's John Larsen offer insights on 2022’s biggest stories in energy and environmental policy at the state, national, and international levels, including U.S. climate legislation and how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected energy markets. They also look ahead to the developments in energy and environmental policy that are likely to become important in 2023.

Catherine Wolfram, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the Treasury Department, co-authored a Belfer Center policy brief explaining the recent G7 price cap on Russian oil. In an interview with Belfer Center Communications Fellow Ada Eziokoli, she explains that the novel plan keeps Russian oil on the market, but helps limit the revenues Russia gets from the oil trade to use in the war on Ukraine.

The Office of U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) today released the November episode of the Senator’s “Inside Maine” podcast, in which he and his guests discuss the opportunities and challenges of a warming Arctic. King, Co-Chair of the Senate Arctic Caucus, was joined by Fran Ulmer, Arctic Initiative Senior Fellow and former Alaska Lieutenant Governor, and President of the Maine International Trade Center, Wade Merritt. Together, the Senator and his guests laid out the local and global implications of the shifting region, including the changing environment, better shipping routes and trade opportunities, and expanded competition with Russia and China.

Ian Masters and Joel Clement assess how much time has been lost by governments in facing the looming crisis of climate change, in particular here in the U.S. where the last four years were not only wasted, but were steps backwards from the urgent challenges made clear by yesterday's alarming IPCC report.

John Holdren, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, expressed his optimism in the Biden Administration’s approach to climate policy in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

Shaughnessy and Joel Clement, Senior Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists and former Director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Interior, talk about blowing the whistle on former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for his efforts to purge the agency of government scientists working to address climate change in the Trump Administration.

The World Meteorological Organization labeled summer 2019's arctic and boreal wildland fires "unprecedented." In the first episode of In This Climate, the interviewers explore with scientists and policy experts how and why this circumpolar fire season was so significant and what we can do moving forward.

Indigenous communities are facing multiple challenges from a changing climate across the circumpolar North. In this episode, two experts with extensive experience in the American Arctic—former senior Interior Department official Joel Clement and Nicole Misarti of University of Alaska—discuss with Polar Geopolitics the array of impacts affecting native Alaskan communities, and what measures are being taken to build resilience and adapt to climate change.

John P. Holdren gives a comprehensive interview on how climate change is affecting the Arctic.