On the Environment: A Podcast Series from the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy
The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy is a joint initiative between Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and we see a lot of interesting and inspiring people come through the doors of both schools throughout the course of a year.
These visionaries will stay a few days, give a lecture or two, and then be on their way again—sometimes with very little record of their visit, the insights they’ve shared, or the passion they’ve breathed into the community inspiring action, change, and possibility.
We launched On the Environment, a podcast series hosted by Center staff and students, in March 2013 to better document these visits and, most importantly, to invite the larger community into the conversation we’re having here about key issues in environmental science, law and policymaking.
If you have comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ycelp@yale.edu.
On the Environment Episode Guide
Episode 1: Marissa Knodel, a research assistant at the Center, visits with Andrew Guzman about his new book Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change, which explores the real-world consequences of climate change.
Andrew Guzman is Professor of Law and Director of the Advanced Law degree Programs at Berkeley Law School, University of California, Berkeley. Professor Guzman holds a J.D. and Ph.D. (economics) from Harvard University. He has written extensively on international trade, international regulatory matters, foreign direct investment and public international law, and served as editor on the recently published Handbook of International Economic Law (Elgar Publishers) and authored How International Law Works (Oxford University Press). Professor Guzman is a member of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration's Academic Council and is on the board of several academic journals. Professor Guzman has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Virginia Law School, Vanderbilt Law School, the University of Hamburg, and the National University Law School in Bangalore, India.
Episode 2 (part 1, part 2): Marissa Knodel talks with Julian Aguon, a writer, activist and attorney, about his work on human and indigenous rights under international law.
Julian Aguon is a hybrid writer-activist-attorney whose work has taken the forms of polemical prose, law articles, lectures, speeches, and poetry. His work centers around human and indigenous rights under international law, with an emphasis in the rights of non-self-governing and indigenous peoples. He is the author of numerous collections of political essays focusing on people struggles in Guam and the larger Micronesian region around issues of colonization, neocolonialism, and militarism. He has also published several law articles focusing on the international law right of self-determination of peoples and the domestic jurisprudence governing the colonial relationship between the United States and its territories. Julian was chosen as a Petra Foundation Fellow in 2011 in recognition of his work on behalf of Guam and other Pacific Islander communities. Julian most recently prevailed in a motion to dismiss a challenge to the ability of native inhabitants of Guam to exercise their statutory right to self-determination before the District Court of Guam.
Episode 3 (part 1, part 2, and part 3): Aaron Reuben, a Center research assistant, talks with Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Jeff Goodell about his work, the future of environmental journalism, and geoengineering.
Jeff Goodell’s latest book, How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate, won the 2011 Grantham Prize Award of Special Merit, one of the highest awards in environmental journalism. Goodell is the author of four previous books including Sunnyvale, a memoir about growing up in Silicon Valley that was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Our Story, an account of the nine miners trapped in a Pennsylvania coal mine, was a national bestseller. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future was described by the New York Times as, “a compelling indictment of one of the country’s biggest, most powerful and most antiquated industries…well-written, timely, and powerful.” In 2012, he won the Sierra Club’s David R. Brower award for excellence in environmental journalism. He is a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. As a commentator on energy and environmental issues, Goodell has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Episode 4: (part 1, part 2): Nora Hawkins, a Center research assistant, talks with Heidi Binko, associate director of special climate initiatives at the Rockefeller Family Fund, about her career path, work with RFF, and how the philanthropic community has developed campaigns -- for coal, in particular -- addressing climate change in the absence of a federal climate bill.
Heidi Binko is the associate director of special climate initiatives at the Rockefeller Family Fund. Heidi joined RFF in 2008. In her current position, she works closely with national and regional advocates and foundations working at the nexus of climate and coal. Since joining RFF, Heidi has played a leading role in creating strategic partnerships between funders and advocates interested in helping the nation move beyond a coal-based economy. Prior to joining RFF, Heidi was the executive director of the WestWind Foundation, a family foundation based in Virginia. She currently serves as a board member of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and a co-chair of the Climate and Energy Funders Group.
Episode 5 (part 1, part 2): Joanna Dafoe, a Center research assistant, visits with Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin about his recent book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. The book, a follow-up to 2008’s The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, examines the energies that have been foundational to civilization and the energies and technologies competing to replace technologies competing to replace them, all while highlighting how energy drives global political and economic change and conflict.
Daniel Yergin is Vice Chairman of IHS and the founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He is a highly respected authority on energy, international politics, and economics, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Prize. The New York Times has called him “America’s most influential energy pundit.” His new book -- The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World -- has been hailed by The Economist as “a masterly piece of work” and “a comprehensive guide to the world’s great energy needs and dilemmas.” Dr. Yergin’s other books include Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy.
Episode 6 (part 1, part 2): Yale Environmental Law Association President Halley Epstein visits with Jedediah Purdy, professor of law at Duke University about the history of environmentalism in America, environmental ethics and his forthcoming book, The American Environmental Imagination.
Jedediah Purdy graduated from Harvard College, summa cum laude, with an A.B. in Social Studies, and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. He teaches constitutional, environmental, and property law and writes in all of these areas.
Purdy clerked for the Honorable Pierre N. Leval of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City and has been a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, an ethics fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School.
Purdy's scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review, among others. He is the author of four books, including a trilogy on American political identity, which concluded with A Tolerable Anarchy (2009), all from Knopf. He has published many essays in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Op-Ed Page and Book Review, Die Zeit, and Democracy Journal. The Meaning of Property appeared in 2010 from Yale University Press. He is now at work on The American Environmental Imagination, under contract with Harvard University Press.
Episode 7 (part 1, part 2): Center Research Assistant Sarah Wegmueller visits with Sarah Krakoff, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, about American Indian law, environmental ethics, and Professor Krakoff's forthcoming book Parenting the Planet. The book uses parenting as a frame to explore our relationship to nature in a way that does not depend predominately on individual rational self-interest to explain human motivation.
Sarah Krakoff teaches and writes in the areas of American Indian law and natural resources law. Her publications include "American Indian Law: Cases and Commentary," (with Robert Anderson, Bethany Berger and Phil Frickey), "Tribes, Land and Environment," (co-edited with Ezra Rosser) and numerous articles and book chapters. Her article examining the effects of federal law on the Navajo Nation’s exercise of sovereignty, "A Narrative of Sovereignty: Illuminating the Paradox of the Domestic Dependent Nation," received the Jules Millstein Faculty Writing Award at the University of Colorado Law School in 2006 and has been cited in several federal district court opinions. Professor Krakoff has also written about environmental ethics, public lands, and global warming. Her current projects include a book (currently titled “Parenting the Planet,”) about the different stages of the human relationship to nature.
When Professor Krakoff first came to the Law School, she was the Director of the American Indian Law Clinic, supervising students in a range of federal Indian and tribal law matters. She succeeded in securing permanent University funding for the Clinic before moving to non-clinical teaching in 1999. Before coming to Colorado, Professor Krakoff was awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship to work on the Navajo Nation as Director of the Youth Law Project for DNA-People’s Legal Services. Professor Krakoff clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge Warren J. Ferguson from 1992-93, and received her J.D. from Boalt Hall, U.C. Berkeley, in 1991 and her B.A. from Yale University in 1986.
Episode 8 (part 1, part 2): China's environmental situation is frequently scrutinized both within China and across the world. In this two-part podcast Angel Hsu, a China expert completing her PhD this May at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, offers an overview of the key environmental issues in the country, how the government is addressing them, and the way Chinese citizens are mobilizing to push for better transparency about the state of their environment.
Angel Hsu is a doctoral student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and project director of the 2012 Environmental Performance Index.
Her research focuses on Chinese environmental performance measurement, governance, and policy. Prior to coming to Yale, she was at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a non-profit environmental think tank in Washington, D.C., where she helped to develop corporate greenhouse gas reporting initiatives in developing countries and managed the GHG Protocol's programs in China. She has a Master of Philosophy degree in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge and a BS in Biology and BA in Political Science from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The full collection is available on iTunesU and SoundCloud.