Fran Moore, an assistant professor in Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, works at the intersection of environmental economics and climate science. She studies the impacts of climate change from an economic and societal perspective — how to quantify these impacts, and also how people and communities adapt.

Fran grew up in London, but moved to the US for college, in part because she wanted to do “something a little bit broader” than what continuing her science-focused academic track in the UK would have allowed her to do. This desire to look at things holistically and from an interdisciplinary angle has become a hallmark of her work, in which she uses a variety of statistical methods, economic and climate models. Recently, she has even used Twitter data to understand what type of weather people think of as normal, and how that might be changing.

In this interview, Fran also talks about what is valuable in human society, and how economists try to measure human well-being. And, she and Adam get into a broader conversation about the relation between science and politics, the roles of climate scientists and academics generally in the public sphere, and whether by doing research climate scientists are really helping anyone or not.

“That was part of my motivation to move more into the social sciences. Because my view was, I think, recognizing that the big questions we need to motivate action on climate change, on the science side, have largely been answered. At least on the mitigation side. But there are still big questions, right?”

The interview with Fran Moore was recorded in September 2020. Photo credit: UC Davis