In 1953, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, “From Here to Eternity” won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. And on May 24 deep in the  education section of The New York Times, there was a short piece titled “How Industry May Change Climate.”

In the years after, scientists went from writing about the possible impacts of pollution on climate to warning U.S. presidents. And energy policy expert and scholar Jay Hakes says there’s much more to the story.

From scientists who quietly worked to address growing environmental threats, to lawmakers who deliberated in Congress and the White House over what to do about them, Jay says there’s a history that hasn’t been told. In his new book, Jay looks at these early climate change pioneers and asks about the challenges they faced.  

What was it like trying to influence the White House? What solutions did these pioneers offer? And how can their stories further our discourse around climate change today? 

This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Jay Hakes about his book “The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush.” 

Jay is a scholar and author on U.S. energy policy. From 2000-2013 he served as the director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. He also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, including a seven-year stint as director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Jay’s other books include “Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hard Choices in the 1970s” and “A Declaration of Energy Policy Independence.”

With her historic victory in Mexico’s presidential election in June, Claudia Sheinbaum will be the country’s first-ever female leader. And because of her background as a climate scientist who contributed to influential UN climate reports, many hope she will reverse Mexico’s drift away from climate leadership.

But it’s not simple. Sheinbaum is a political protégé of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In his six years as president, López Obrador was a popular leader, but failed to advance climate policy. In fact, Mexico is one of just two countries out of the G20 without a net-zero target for carbon emissions.

Even as López Obrador propped up the oil sector, the primary state-owned petroleum company Pemex is deep in debt and seeing four-decade lows in production. And Mexico’s heavy dependence on the U.S. for natural gas is a growing energy security issue for the country.

Sheinbaum has promised to boost clean energy – how effective will she be? Will she be able to address the country’s growing power demands and energy infrastructure challenges? And will she break from her predecessor’s lagging record on climate change?

This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Carlos Pascual about what a Sheinbaum presidency could mean for Mexico’s addressing the country’s energy issues, and encouraging more investment in clean energy in Mexico.

Carlos is senior vice president for Global Energy and International Affairs at S&P Global Commodity Insights, where he leads all business lines in Latin America. He was previously at IHS Markit, where he concentrated on worldwide energy issues and international affairs. 

Carlos served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2009 to 2011 and to Ukraine from 2000 to 2003. From 2011 to 2014 he was a special envoy and coordinator for international affairs at the U.S. Department of State, where he established and directed the agency’s Energy Resources Bureau. He was also a former resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia SIPA.

Global clean energy investment has risen by 40% since 2020, reaching an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency. 

The cost of wind, solar, and batteries have fallen rapidly, often competing with fossil fuels, thanks to tech innovations, manufacturing scale, and policy support. 

But the world still isn’t on track to reach its emission reduction targets. And now new forms of demand, such as data centers running artificial intelligence, are raising concerns about rising energy use and emissions. 

So how do we encourage more innovation in clean energy? How do we mobilize investment to scale-up and commercialize emerging technologies? What is the role of the private sector and what kinds of policies do we need?  

This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Arun Majumdar about some of his views on emerging technologies and energy policy. They also discuss how higher education can adapt to provide the knowledge and skills needed in the clean energy economy.

Arun is the inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He also serves as the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University and Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Formerly, he served as vice president for energy at Google. 

In the Obama administration, Arun served as founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and as the acting under secretary of energy. He also served as a Science Envoy for the U.S. Department of State and currently serves as the chair of the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

Following decades of economic integration, the cost of clean energy technologies have fallen sharply. But the rising costs of fragmentation, industry-friendly policies, and geopolitical tensions risk slowing the energy transition. 

With the recent launch of the Trade and Clean Energy Transition initiative, the Center on Global Energy Policy has prioritized navigating the tensions between climate and trade, and focused on the potential to use trade policy as a tool to accelerate the pace of clean energy deployment.

So how can the rules of trade be better aligned with climate goals and policies? How can the international trading system be modernized to tackle a challenge like climate change? And how can countries reconcile low-cost, clean energy technologies, often made in China, with concerns about economic competitiveness, security, and supply chain resilience?

This week, we return to a conversation from earlier this year between host Jason Bordoff and Dan Esty focused on Dan’s career, his recent work at the World Trade Organization, and the intersection of climate policy and trade policy.

Dan is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University and director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. He has written numerous books on environmental responsibility and economic progress, including Green to Gold and Greening the GATT. Dan also served as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.