Hosted by Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions podcast series will headline issues together with the leaders whose decisions today will mold the foreign policy of tomorrow. Each podcast will tackle a different Great Decisions topic in the 2014 series, a list of which can be found here.
Tackling climate change has unearthed a number of contractions. For instance, the United States is both the largest economy and largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. But were emissions understood in relation to gross domestic product or population, does that change the United States’ ranking? And what of the debate over fracking or other new forms of extraction? Where do these new technologies and extraction techniques leave long-standing critics of America’s reliance on fossil fuels?
On this episode of the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions podcast series, Sarwar Kashmeri interviews Nathaniel Keohane, the Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund. Keohane will discuss the total “cost” of emissions, the effects of climate change on health, and the challenges new energy technologies raise for the fossil fuel industry.
Nathaniel Keohane is an economist, advocate, and expert on climate, environment, and energy issues. Dr. Keohane is a Vice President at Environmental Defense Fund, a leading nonprofit advocacy organization based in New York, where he leads EDF’s International Climate program and helps to shape the organization’s advocacy for environmentally effective and economically sound climate policy. In 2011-2012, he served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment in the National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council, where he helped to develop and coordinate administration policy on a wide range of energy and environmental issues. Prior to joining the Administration, Dr. Keohane was Director of Economic Policy and Analysis and then Chief Economist at EDF, playing a lead role in efforts to enact comprehensive cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. Dr. Keohane also holds positions as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University and a Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Global Affairs at Yale University’s Jackson Institute. Before joining EDF in 2007, Dr. Keohane was an Associate Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management. His research in environmental economics has been published in prominent academic journals, and he is the co-author of Markets and the Environment (Island Press, 2007), and co-editor of Economics of Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2009). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2001, and his B.A. from Yale College in 1993. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.
Sarwar Kashmeri is a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and an Adjunct professor at Norwich University.
