Burning Issues is a podcast focused on the diverse issues and policy challenges of wildfires in the American West. Join University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy students Matt Kaufmann, Emily Barnett, Jonas Heim, and Mia Jiang as they explore the intersection of wildfires and policy issues such as housing, energy, and land conservation.
Additional support by Harrison Lee and Gabriele Bortolotti.
Brought to you by the University of Chicago Public Policy Podcasts
This week’s episode of Burning Issues is all about utility regulation. We learn about various utility regulatory structures with Dr. Bruce Cain, a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He also shares valuable perspectives on equity in electricity and suggestions on how to improve the electrical grid.
We also conduct a dive deep into Pacific Gas & Electric (“PG&E”), the utility behind some of California’s largest fires, regarding how they found themselves in this position and the role of regulators in pushing for safe, reliable, and affordability electricity. For this segment, we are joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Blunt, who literally wrote the book on PG&E titled, “California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and What it Means for America’s Power Grid.” (https://www.amazon.com/California-Burning-Pacific-Electric-Americas/dp/059333065X) (https://www.amazon.com/California-Burning-Pacific-Electric-Americas/dp/059333065X))
Fortunately, there are many steps being taken to make the electric grid safer broadly following lessons learned from wildfires; yet, there are still key and time-sensitive policy challenges that remain, which should have been addressed yesterday -- after all, they are burning issues!
21 Jul 2022
Episode 2 - All About Housing
This week’s episode of Burning Issues is all about housing. First, we explore fire mitigations behaviors anyone can adopt with Dan Lang, a lifelong firefighter who currently works for the California Fire Safe Council (https://cafiresafecouncil.org/) (https://cafiresafecouncil.org/)). With him, we not only discuss the dangers of the fires and the challenges of living in the WUI but also how someone can reduce the risk of losing everything with just a few easy and cost-effective steps.
Then, we move on from the individual to the community level to discuss how housing policies can lower the risk for entire neighborhoods with prof. Robert Olshansky. Unfortunately, fires will continue to be devastating, therefore, Robert also researched recovery strategies in a recent paper (https://www.next10.org/publications/rebuilding-resilient) (https://www.next10.org/publications/rebuilding-resilient)) which has some key insights we get to explore with him.
Somewhat surprisingly, there are quite a few reasons to be optimistic as Dan and Robert essentially lay out a plan to greatly reduce the burden wildfires cause every year in the context of housing. Yet, there are key and time-sensitive policy challenges that remain, which should have been address yesterday -- after all, they are burning issues!
12 Jul 2022
Episode 1 - An Environmental and Policy Perspective on Fires
In our opening episode Emily Barnett and Matt Kaufmann discuss the current environmental and man-made conditions that contribute to an intensifying fire season in California as well as the policy decisions that impact wildfire management. Wendell Gilgert of Point Blue Conservation Sciences shares with us his experiences executing controlled burns to reduce the risk of deadly wildfires. Later, we hear from Professor Allison Cullen of the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy, whose current convergence research brings together various stakeholders from the science and public sectors to develop tools to help us better coordinate wildfire management. Her work supported by the National Science Foundation's Convergence Research team has made great strides thanks to the collaboration of UW and UC Merced faculty and students, as well as climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Science.
For more information about our interviewees and their top recommendations to discover more about their work and inspirations check out the below resources:
Wildfire Research Publication:
https://www.publish.csiro.au/wf/WF20066 (https://www.publish.csiro.au/wf/WF20066)
8 Jul 2022
Teaser
The Burning Issues team introduces the podcast and what you can expect in this podcast series.
Episode 1 will be dropping 7/11
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