2021 Year in Review: Energy and Environmental Policy, with Jennifer Haverkamp and Sarah Ladislaw

Notable Quotes

• We can confront climate change by spending on infrastructure: “The Infrastructure Bill has a remarkable number of things in it that are only really comparable to other types of stimulus funding we’ve had in the past, post the 2008–2009 financial crisis. I think it would be a mistake not to think about how very, very, very important it is that that money gets spent in the most climate-advantageous ways … It’s impactful for me because I think one of the things that is most important about our climate journey is making sure that people see the positive economic impact in their communities, and infrastructure is a big way of making that happen.” —Sarah Ladislaw (6:23)
• Let’s not forget the Kigali Amendment: “One of the very significant developments—which doesn’t get as much attention by the people who follow every move of the UN Climate Conference—is what’s been happening to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. That’s an agreement from 2016, which led to a commitment to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are a really potent greenhouse gas … Just last month, President Biden sent the amendment to the Senate for ratification so we can be a full party to that amendment. It’s significant both because of its impact but also because … [of the] bipartisan support by Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side for this policy—and you also have the industry and NGOs working closely together to make it happen.” —Jennifer Haverkamp (11:38)
• What’s next after COP26?: “I keep wondering to myself, ‘What does it look like for us to make progress between now and COP27?’ This year was so focused on ambition and goals. It was, ‘Yes, please focus on 2050 and make it very ambitious, but then please focus on your 2030 targets and make them seem actionable.’ Well, what’s to come this year? If this is the year of implementation, what does it mean to deliver against those goals in a way that’s not only credible but also exciting? They won’t look like net-zero-by-2050 targets—those are big announcements. It’ll look more like incremental progress.” —Sarah Ladislaw (24:04)
• Big potential for mitigating climate change in the aviation industry: “Global aviation is two, maybe as high as three-and-a-half, percent of annual emissions. And it’s growing rapidly, because countries need more flights internally, as well as the fact that, as other emissions areas are going down, aviation is one where it’s really hard to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s one where the industry is seized with the problem … There’s a lot of customer pressure—people who talk about flight shaming … It’s one we really have to solve, so it’s one I’m watching closely.” —Jennifer Haverkamp (29:14)

Top of the Stack

• Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
• Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now by John Doerr
• Where the Deer and the Antelope Play by Nick Offerman

The Full Transcript

Daniel Raimi: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future. I'm your host, Daniel Raimi. This week, it's our annual year-in-review episode, where we talk about what happened in 2021 and what we'll be watching for in 2022.

Our guests are fantastic: we've got Jennifer Haverkamp, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan, and Sarah Ladislaw, managing director of the US Program at RMI, formerly Rocky Mountain Institute. I'll ask Jennifer and Sarah to highlight the most significant developments in energy and environmental policy during 2021, identify some important issues that may have been overlooked, and give us a sense of what they'll be watching closely in 2022. We cover lots of ground in this conversation and even have some fun along the way. Stay with us.

Okay, Sarah Ladislaw and Jennifer Haverkamp, two friends and two really amazing researchers, scholars, and policy experts, thank you so much for coming on to our annual year-end episode.

Sarah Ladislaw: Thanks for having us.

Jennifer Haverkamp: Thanks for having us.

Daniel Raimi: It's great to have you both. Sarah is a stalwart in our annual end-of-the-year episode; this is her third year running. But Jennifer is brand new, so welcome, Jennifer. We always ask our guests how they ended up working on energy and environmental issues, whether that began as a kid or later in life. So, what drew you into this field?

Jennifer Haverkamp: Thanks for asking that. It didn't start in the womb, but it did start very early. I grew up in southern Indiana on a bluff that overlooked the Ohio River, and so I saw the natural beauty of the River Valley. The woods right outside my backyard was my playground, full of flowers, turtles, and birds. But looming over this entire beautiful view was the Clifty Creek coal-fired power plant, which, in its day, was one of the largest and most acid rain-polluting plants. It's still operating. I think this jarring juxtaposition got me interested very early on in both national resource conservation and pollution control, and I've stuck with those throughout my career.

Daniel Raimi: That's so interesting. As soon as you said “Ohio River,” I kind of knew where that story was going. That's great; thank you again for coming on the show today. So, we are beginning our holiday modes. This show is going to air in the early new year, but I want to point out that it's December 22 as we're recording it. If any monumental events happen between then and now, we will not be talking about them. Also, I want to point out that some of us are in unusual places—I am in my in-laws’ basement where there's a persistent drip, so I apologize if anyone's hearing dripping in the background.

With those administrative details in place, I want to ask both of you to reflect on 2021, keeping in mind that it's been a pretty wild year, like last year. There's been a lot of excitement around vaccine rollouts, and that's been contrasted with the terrible death toll that’s continuing to rise in the United States and around the world. We've had the emergence of Omicron and the concerns over that.

On the environmental policy front, it's been an active year, as well. We had the inauguration of a new president and a new Congress in the United States. We had the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow–which we've talked about a lot on the show—and so many other interesting developments.

When you look back at 2021—and I'm going to make you pick one thing—what's the one thing, the most significant development in energy or environmental policy, that comes to your mind and that you think you'll remember in years ahead? Let's start with Sarah. Sarah, what would you pick?

Sarah Ladislaw: Thanks, Daniel. It's a pleasure to be back. I can't tell if I keep getting invited back because I say things that are valuable in the previous years, or if you're waiting for me to do it.

Daniel Raimi: No, it's because you're great!

Sarah Ladislaw: (Laughing) There are so many things to choose from. I think the two things that I keep reminding myself of this year is that some days feel like 2021 was a year of remarkable progress, because the rate and pace of policymaking and climate diplomacy were so frenetic compared to the previous several years. There was so much to watch and track and think about. Because the theme of COP26 was ambition, everything was big. There were so many different things being done in different countries, the United States included, that were meant to be big and important and move the needle for us on the issues of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing to deal with climate change impacts that we're seeing more and more every day. And then other days, it felt like nothing was happening, because the progress we needed to make seemed so far away. So, I had an interesting rough year in the highs and the lows of it all.

When I tried to dispassionately take a look (I'm spending a lot more time thinking about the United States these days in my new job), I think that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in the United States, which was formerly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, that was signed into law is pretty important. For those of us who live and work in Washington, DC, and think about federal policy, it had been an infrastructure week for years on end, and it became sort of a running joke.

We got some fairly significant funding for some pretty important US energy policy priorities in that bill. Because we were waiting for the Build Back Better Act, which had more funding and different kinds of funding (maybe we can get into later), the Infrastructure Bill felt smaller. But the Infrastructure Bill has a remarkable number of things in it that are only really comparable to other types of stimulus funding we've had in the past, post the 2008–2009 financial crisis. I think it would be a mistake not to think about how very, very, very important it is that that money gets spent in the most climate-advantageous ways, which I think is still an open question as to whether that will happen. Obviously, it includes $20 billion or so for clean energy demonstration projects, including hydrogen and direct air capture in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS); $11 billion or so for grid resilience; $7 billion to help deliver our battery supply chain; and lots of funding for the weatherization program to help with low-income housing energy efficiency programs. It's an enormous amount of spending. Now, the US Department of Energy has got to think about how to execute it all well.

I think that we have to recognize that that is a pretty significant undertaking: how and what states, cities, utilities, and companies do with that funding is going to be a big part of the next several years. It’s impactful for me because I think one of the things that is most important about our climate journey is making sure that people see the positive economic impact in their communities, and infrastructure is a big way of making that happen. I think it is a really significant thing that happened and that could be made so much more significant if we pass the Build Back Better Act for a lot of reasons and, in fact, could not get executed as well if we fail to pass the Build Back Better Act. But in and of itself, I think we shouldn't discount how important that spending could be to the US emissions trajectory.

Daniel Raimi: Great points, especially because some of the potential impacts are further off, right? We're talking about investments in research and development, demonstration, and pilot projects, where it's hard to model the impacts of those over 10 or 20 years, but we know that they could be very significant. Great points, Sarah.

Jennifer, how about you? What would be at the top of your list?

Jennifer Haverkamp: You make it hard by saying that we are supposed to pick one thing. I'm tempted to answer by saying that what's most significant is that we swapped out the Trump administration and swapped in the Biden administration. In particular, looking at who they brought in to fill positions, there's so much experience on the teams that are working on climate and energy that people were able to hit the ground running, which has really made—when you look at it in the glass-half-full way—2021 a great year for a lot of things. Sarah's covered some of them.

On the international front, I would just think about—because of Biden being the United States president—how the United States rejoined the Paris Agreement. We had a summit in the spring. We had pedal-to-the-metal diplomacy all year long leading up to Glasgow, building up support for all these sub-agreements and getting more and more countries to raise their level of ambition for their own Paris Agreement commitment. You can go on and on with what a difference that has made, though the caveat is that so many of those are pledges and commitments, and we won't know until a few years from now—or many years from now—how many of those are actually implemented in ways that avert the dangerous climate change we're trying to avert.

I guess the other way I would've answered your question about the most significant development is what didn't happen: we do not yet have major climate legislation, whether it's the Build Back Better Bill or some freestanding climate legislation. It's really true that there is a lot of good stuff in the Infrastructure Bill, but I think Glasgow could have been different if we’d had that legislation already on the books. I worry about what will happen in the time between this year and next year, when countries are supposed to come back with even stronger commitments for the next climate Conference of Parties, and what they will do if the United States doesn't manage to pass significant legislation soon into the new year.

Daniel Raimi: Yeah. Really good points. And nicely done, squeezing two in there, but they dovetailed—so no flag on the play.

Jennifer Haverkamp: (Laughing) Oh, thanks.

Daniel Raimi: I've unfairly asked you to pick one topic that would be your headline for the year. Now, I'd like to ask each of you to pick one topic that you think hasn't received as much attention as you think it deserves—something that maybe flew under the radar a little bit. Let's start with Jennifer this time. Jennifer, what would you point to?

Jennifer Haverkamp: I would say that one of the things that's a very significant development that doesn't get as much attention by the people who follow every move of the UN Climate Conference is what's been happening to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. That's an agreement from 2016 which led to a commitment to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are a really potent greenhouse gas. The estimates are that if the agreement is fully implemented, it would avoid half a degree of warming this century. It’s a huge piece of the puzzle that needs to be done. A lot of stuff has happened in the last year, and actually, at the end of the Trump administration, they managed to put into the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act the legislative fix needed for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be able to implement the US commitments under that agreement. Under the Biden administration, the EPA wrote the regulations necessary to implement it, which is an 85 percent phasedown over the coming 15 years. Just last month, President Biden sent the amendment to the Senate for ratification so we can be a full party to that amendment. It's also significant both because of its impact but also because, unlike a lot of sectors in the climate space, you have bipartisan support by Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side for this policy, and you also have the industry and the NGOs working closely together to make it happen.

Daniel Raimi: That’s a great one, and that's one I definitely haven't followed closely enough, so I'm glad you pointed to it. Sarah, same question over to you: What's something that you think is important or interesting and maybe hasn't received as much attention as you think it should?

Sarah Ladislaw: I’m going to take a page out of Jennifer's book here and smoosh a few together—but they have a theme, so I'm hoping I don't get penalized, either. It's not terribly dissimilar from my focus on the Infrastructure Bill in that it ties together the idea of how we're going to decarbonize heavy industry.

I see the world in two ways, which is not different from the ways it's been explained to me by people who work on these issues at a technical level. We have these technologies that are ready to hit the market, and they need to do it as quickly as possible. We need to electrify as much as possible, decarbonize the electric power sector, and drive efficiency. Many of those technologies are ready, right? There's another suite of technologies that are involved in heavy industry for which—50 percent of what we're going to need to decarbonize out to 2050—those technologies aren't available yet at scale in the market. I'm super curious as a human endeavor what it would take for us to do that.

I've been really interested to see—and was quite surprised, actually—both in the context of US legislation and at the lead up to—and the end of—COP26, how many activities were designed to organize markets around introducing decarbonized, heavy industry, whether it's shipping, aviation fuels, steel, cement, or chemicals. There are all sorts of things happening to organize producers, consumers, and regulation and policy and finance around accelerating those markets. It's super interesting to watch, and I think that it's probably something people aren't paying enough detailed attention to.

One of the things I wanted to flag that seemed really important to me was that the US Trade Representative, in the European Union in the context of coming to a trade agreement about some of the tariffs we have around steel, saying, "Hey, we want to find a way to include carbon intensity and how we think about our trade arrangements going forward." Which, to me, takes the carbon border adjustment mechanism that had been introduced in Europe to try and guard European markets against emissions-intensive industries, where they have protection that would make their industries less competitive, and extends it to saying, "Hey, how about we try to find a way in which we can think about countries that are trying to reduce the carbon intensity of heavy industry and work together?" I don't know where it's going to go—there are lots of complications with how to create such a “club,” and there are critical questions about how you include China or not include China, but it is the start of a potentially important conversation. Even if it never leads to carbon clubs wherein you have countries and companies that are advantaged inside the club for reducing emissions for certain products that they trade across borders and penalties for those outside the club, it sends a pretty important signal to all of the industries out there and the folks trying to finance those industries that are trying to think, "Geez, how do we organize around this topic?" If you take that, plus things like the First Movers Coalition, which is a group of companies that decided to make advanced purchasing commitments to buy zero-emissions versions of those seven hard-to-abate sectors and direct air capture over the next eight-and-a-half years or so, or even things like the Quad, which is a security multilateral group that includes India, Australia, the United States, and Japan—they structured a green shipping alliance, and they structured a hydrogen partnership—it is amazing to me to see how much activity is going on trying to organize these future markets around an accelerated transition to products that have lower emissions. I would've told you that that would happen maybe later in the Biden administration, or a little bit further off, but it really got kick-started in a way that I don't think people realize all the different initiatives, activities, and interests that are now out there driving this space. It’s great. It's a really important and interesting development.

Daniel Raimi: Yeah, it’s a really fascinating, important topic, and it dovetails with Jennifer's comment about the experience coming into the Biden administration and how that helped them hit the ground running on a wide variety of topics, including industrial decarbonization. I'd like to open it up for a moment and allow each of you to reflect on the comments that the other has made if—either Sarah or Jennifer—something that the other person said dovetails with your interests, rings a bell, or makes you think of something new and interesting. I would invite you to comment on what the other said.

Let's start with Jennifer. Jennifer, is there anything in particular that Sarah said that you'd like to reflect on?

Jennifer Haverkamp: She had a lot of interesting comments and thoughts in that answer. I could take several of them, but one place I would note is that part of why this activity with the industrial sectors is happening is because you are seeing a lot more effort by large companies to step up and show that they are being progressive in addressing climate change. It's not a case of government action pushing them, but it’s probably consumer response, as leadership in these companies or as more and more people recognize how real the climate crisis is. I see all sorts of multinational companies taking on their own net-zero commitments, and they were doing this even before this administration. It's part of the momentum that we finally may be seeing an all-of-the-economy effort toward making a difference over the next decade. I think that the government efforts are wonderful to see happening, and it's a sign of hope.

As far as the carbon clubs, we could have an entire session on the trade issues. I think that's useful. I also think that, for the United States to have robust domestic climate legislation, we need to have a way of showing our industry and our unions that they will not be economically disadvantaged. I think that's a lot of the motivation behind the carbon border adjustment mechanism that the European Union has put forward, and it’s probably an essential part of the picture. Whether other countries outside the United States and the European Union want to join that club, or whether they want to run to the WTO to complain about it, I think remains to be seen.

Daniel Raimi: Good points. Sarah, the same question over to you: Anything that Jennifer mentioned that you'd like to reflect on?

Sarah Ladislaw: Yes, absolutely. I thought Jennifer's selection of topics for both questions was perfect. Taking the Kigali Amendment and the Montreal Protocol advancements first, I think that's been important for all the reasons that Jennifer talked about.

I've also been interested to see how Kigali and the Montreal Protocol, in general, are serving as guideposts for some of the organization we're seeing around methane. It was interesting to me that methane as a greenhouse gas has come into its moment in this year, where we've not only got a 100-plus-country commitment to reducing methane emissions 30 percent, I believe, by 2030 below 2020 levels, but also $300 million or so of philanthropic money going to try to reduce methane emissions. It's interesting to me that the model for coordinating around that—and maybe thinking about how methane has to be separated out and treated separately, and maybe we can make progress on that separately—has been patterned after some of the progress we've seen in other places, as well. I think that was one interesting thought that was going through my head as Jennifer was talking.

The other is I keep jumping ahead to what I need to worry about next, and I thought the point about the progress made in the context of COP26. I keep wondering to myself, "What does it look like for us to make progress between now and COP27?" This year was so focused on ambition and goals. It was, “Yes, please focus on 2050 and make it very ambitious, but then please focus on your 2030 targets and make them seem actionable.” Well, what's to come this year? If this is the year of implementation, what does it mean to deliver against those goals in a way that's not only credible but also exciting? They won't look like net-zero-by-2050 targets—those are big announcements. It'll look more like incremental progress. So, I completely agree about the tenor and the shift in focus for this past year. I am deeply curious at the end of this next year what it's going to look like and whether we'll be able to say, "Oh, well, the theme for this year was really implementing against those targets, and we can prove that we did it in these ways." I'll be really interested to see how that works out.

Jennifer Haverkamp: Wow. May I say a little bit in response, Daniel?

Daniel Raimi: Yes—please, go ahead.

Jennifer Haverkamp: Sarah, I thought that was brilliant. I want to elaborate a little bit on the analogy you were drawing with Kigali around hydrofluorocarbons and methane. I think not only do you see parallels because some of the same people who worked on the Kigali negotiations are leading the methane effort, but it's also the case that, in both of those, hydrofluorocarbons and methane are short-lived climate pollutants, which are incredibly potent—way more potent than carbon dioxide. There's an urgency to address both of them to buy us a little more time to address the more challenging questions around how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Daniel Raimi: Yeah. Great point. It reminds me that last year's guest with Sarah on this end-of-year episode was Barry Rabe, who's a colleague of Jennifer's and mine at Michigan. I think the new book that he's working on now is about short-lived climate pollutants. He’s definitely thinking about some of these same trends.

Well, I'm going to ask you one more question before we go to our Top of the Stack segment—but I'm going to ask you to be really quick, because we are short on time, which we always are, because there's so much to talk about—and that's to let us know what you're going to be watching in 2022. Sarah has already alluded to some of the things you'll be thinking about, but I'd like to ask each of you to point to one thing, very briefly, that you are keeping an eye on and that you're really curious about how it's going to play out.

Sarah, how about you go first?

Sarah Ladislaw: I'll keep it fast, and I'm going to have to. The first is climate finance. Last year's theme was mobilized private-sector dollars. We had investors with $160 trillion of assets under their management come forward and say, "We want to be aligned." It's a lot of money. It's a lot of capital. Now, the question is, How do you crowd it in? How do you get it aligned? How do you move it in big ways? I think that those are actually much, much trickier questions than we have led others to believe. For all the institutions that are making those pledges for international development—finance institutions—I am really curious about what progress against that goal looks like over the course of the year and what blended finance and lots of different circumstances around the world looks like, and I think it's a critically important question. So that's one.

And then the second is the Infrastructure Investment Bill. We are really bad at building infrastructure in the United States. I am hoping in this year we grapple with that, and that we, particularly as a climate community, recognize that if we're saying yes to greenhouse gas emissions reductions—and I know this is a complicated topic—we have to say yes to building some of these things that have been traditionally really tricky for us to build, and we have to do so in a way that is very inclusive and empowering for the communities where they are. That’s hard work, but we have to make progress. I am convinced if we don't make progress on those investments in infrastructure in the next two years, then we're making the rest of this challenge even harder. So, those are the two things that I'm going to be focusing on this year.

Daniel Raimi: Yeah. Great comments. We had an episode recently about expanding the electricity grid and some of the challenges that come along with that. Absolutely, Sarah, I totally agree.

Jennifer, how about you: What are you going to be watching this year?

Jennifer Haverkamp: I'm going to be watching one of the sectors Sarah mentioned before, which is aviation. There's so much going on there right now, and it's such a significant part of the climate problem. Global aviation is two, maybe as high as three-and-a-half, percent of annual emissions. And it's growing rapidly, because countries need more flights internally, as well as the fact that, as other emissions areas are going down, aviation is one where it's really hard to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions—but it's one where the industry is seized with the problem.

Just in October, the International Air Transport Association announced a “fly net zero” commitment. The United States in Glasgow announced the US Aviation Climate Action Plan. There's a Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grade Challenge. There's all this interesting work going on in terms of research and development and alternatives to conventional aviation fuel. Two days ago, Malaysian Airlines had their first flight using sustainable aviation biofuels. There's the new international agreement under the UN Civil Aviation Organization, which has entered into force and effect this year where, over time, global civil aviation is required to offset all their emissions above a 2019 baseline.

International flights are an entire sector that falls outside of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, because they're not attributable to any particular country, so they're not in their national commitments. So, it's where there's a lot of customer pressure—people who talk about flight shaming. There's a lot of innovation in the research, and there's a lot of government support for the activity. It's one we really have to solve, so it's one I'm watching closely.

Daniel Raimi: Yeah, that’s another really important, really good pick.

Well, Sarah and Jennifer, this has been really fun, and it's flown by. I wish we could talk for longer—ideally in person over drinks—but hopefully, that'll happen in 2022.

Let’s go now to the Top of the Stack segment, where we ask you to recommend something that you've been reading or watching or listening to that you would recommend to our listeners. Let's start with Jennifer. Jennifer, what's at the top of your literal or metaphorical reading stack?

Jennifer Haverkamp: Well, the top of my reading stack, which I have bought but haven't yet read, is Elizabeth Kolbert's new book, Under a White Sky. I'm very eager to read that as a follow-up to her amazing The Sixth Extinction book. What I read recently (but isn't a recent book) is The Invention of Nature, which came out in 2015 and is a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, who used to be second only to Napoleon as the most famous person in the Western world. Now, we only vaguely remember that there is a Humboldt Current. It’s a really interesting biography.

Daniel Raimi: Fantastic. Yeah, I'll put in a short plug: We actually interviewed Elizabeth Kolbert on the show about six months ago, when her book came out. It’s maybe my favorite book of the year. Definitely no offense to other podcast guests, but it was my favorite podcast of the year, too.

Jennifer Haverkamp: (Laughing) Even more than this one today?

Daniel Raimi: Except for this one, of course! This one gives it a run for its money.

Sarah, how about you? What's at the top of your stack?

Sarah Ladislaw: Literally at the top of my stack, because I haven't read them yet, are two books that I'm hoping the juxtaposition of would be helpful for my mindset. One is Speed & Scale by John Doerr, which is supposed to be the action plan of all the things that we're going to need to do to tackle the climate challenge at speed and scale, full-on with metrics of how to tell whether we're making progress or not. I find books like this to be interesting to see what the conventional wisdom of the folks who've been working on this for a long time is, and to check my own thinking about where we are relative to where we need to be.

The other one is a little weird. It's Nick Offerman's Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. I don't know too many Nick Offerman fans out there, but he's not necessarily an environmentalist by background and not certainly thinking about climate, but he’s trying to grapple with the complexity of the challenge. I find reading books that are kind of opposite at the same time is helpful to me. They seem a little bit on either end of the spectrum in the universe of challenges that we're talking about, so those are two that I'll be picking up over the next couple of weeks.

Daniel Raimi: Those books sound fascinating. I wish I had more time on vacation to read all those books and all the other things that I want to read.

This has been great. Sarah and Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're both lovely people and fantastic experts on all of these topics, and I’m so grateful for you coming on Resources Radio and spending your time with us here at the end of 2021.

Jennifer Haverkamp: Happy New Year.

Sarah Ladislaw: Thanks, Daniel. Happy New Year, everybody.

Daniel Raimi: You've been listening to Resources Radio. Learn how to support Resources for the Future at rff.org/support. If you have a minute, we'd really appreciate you leaving us a rating or comment on your podcast platform of choice. Also, feel free to send us your suggestions for future episodes. Resources Radio is a podcast from Resources for the Future.

RFF is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Our mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. The views expressed on this podcast are solely those of the podcast guests and may differ from those of RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals. Resources Radio is produced by Elizabeth Wason, with music by me, Daniel Raimi. Join us next week for another episode.