Greta's Generation

In this final episode, I invite a guest from Greta’s Generation to share her thoughts, worries, and ideas about climate change. This student is near to graduating from University in the USA, and turns the episode back on the host!

At last I, Dr. Kyle S. Herman, am on the hotseat. I talk about how my career developed through the climate / environmental space, my own trials and tribulations, and I (hope) that I provide some scope and hope to future generations about to begin their careers.

For now, Greta’s Generation is signing off. We hope to renew our funding through my new University, University of Sussex, Business School (SPRU).

Global Environmental Politics (Kuetting and Herman, 2018)

Kyle S. Herman Publications

Dr. Matteo Millone is a financial risk expert focused on ESG investment at APG Asset Management. His work focuses on the financial risk implication of climate and ESG risk. He obtained his Ph.D. from Maastricht University. Prior to his current position, he worked with the European Central Bank, and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Matteo is a unique interviewee since he has managed to straddle three careers: academia, private finance, and public institutions.

Linkedin Profile, Corporate Climate Efforts

Dr. Shanyun (Sam) Lu has recently obtained her doctorate from Jönköping University in Sweden. Her research focuses on how firms innovate to renew themselves, particularly within the context of mature manufacturing industries.

We had the pleasure to meet and research together while she was visiting SPRU, at University of Sussex. In this episode we talk about what it is like to enter, and begin to make a name for oneself, in academia and research. We eplore themes in sustainability studies, including socio-technical transitions, niche innovations, and incumbent industries (including resistance and acceptance).

Finally, we also discuss research questions, developing testable hypotheses, and how academics bring their research out of the University and into society. Sustainability Transitions Research Network, Sustainability Transitions Research, Sam Lu, Linkedin Profile

Professor Andy Stirling has spent his academic career at the University of Sussex. His research spans genetically-modified organisisms (GMOs) to sustainaility governance, socio-technical transitions. .

Andy has been a professor at SPRU since 2006, co-directing the ESRC STEPS Centre from then until 2021. He was elected a fellow of the UK Academy of Social Science in 2017. He has won a series of externally-resourced grants, including the ESRC, AHRC, EPSRC at UKRI, as well as the Wellcome Trust, businesses and charities and agencies and ministries of UK and other governments and the EU. He has also led as deupty director for the DEFRA/ESRC Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (2010-2014) and Sussex PI for the ESRC Nexus Network (2014-2017). Prior to becoming an academic, he worked for Greenpeace on international nuclear disarmament and energy campaigns.

This is an exciting episode with a new colleague of mine at SPRU, in Sussex Business School. Marc Hudson is a Research Fellow in the Politics of Industrial Decarbonisation Policy, part of the IDRIC project, which is investigating the UK’s NetZero Industrial Clusters.

Many researchers and policymakers frequently call for “a price on carbon” to efficiently drive widescale emissions. But Marc discusses how “carbon policies” have thus far stalled more rapid transition to technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency because they have, so far, led to a game of “Whac a Mole.”

While carbon markets have proliferated throughout the globe, all types of emissions continue to rise at alarming rates. In countries which have reduced their net emissions (for example in Europe), researchers have shown that emissions are largely offshored to regions and countries with much weaker policies.

His frequently updated blog also discusses a range of issues regarding climate change policy and, to put it plainly, inaction.

This inspiring podcast from a former colleague at UCL brings to light the reality that climate change—and related endeavours—mark a long journey. We might have to face some “ugly situations”, but think about our grandparents and great-grandparents, this is our “Great War”, and we must fight long and hard to ensure life on earth remains

Professor Raimund Bleischwitz acted as the Deputy Director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London (UCL), from  2013 to 2018. From 2018 to 2021 he was the Director of UCL's Bartlett School of Environment Energy & Resources. In January 2022 Bleischwitz was appointed Scientific Director at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany.

Beginning in the German Parliament during the 1980s when, indeed, caring about the environment  was still in its infancy if one can believe, he then pursued a Ph.D. because he had several burning questions which he sought to answer through research.

His research and courses focus on the “triple challenge” of dealing with the economic, the socio-political, and the environmental dimensions of using the worlds resources, especially as they become more hotly contested the world over. Quite often there is a tendency for actors to focus on only one of these dimensions, either predominantly supply-oriented (“raw materials strategy”) or demand-oriented (“resource efficiency, “sustainable consumption and production”). Last, he has done much work on a hot topic, “rare earth materials”, which are key ingredients to modern technologies, foremost among these renewable energy technologies

Gabriela Kuetting, originally from Germany, has held top academic posts in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.  Currently , she heads the department, The Division of Global Affairs, at Rutgers University.  She is widely published in the field of environmental politics and policies. This is a non-exhaustive list of her books: Beyond Regime Theory: Towards Environmental Effectiveness (2000), Globalization and the environment, (2000) , The Global Political Economy of the Environment and Tourism (2010),and Global Environmental Politics: Concepts, Theories and Case Studies. (2018).

In this episode, she details her career path: first, she worked with NGOs  and ENGOs (Environmental NGOs), before becoming attracted to academia for the research freedom. Moving into academia gave her more opportunity to write about conceptual and theoretical problems with intergovernmental climate and environmental issues.

She gives provides a coherent overview of climate change policies from the early 1980s onward. Her fluency in global and transnational climate and environmental politics is evident, as she speaks intelligently but understandably to the lay audience. This episode is a great opportunity to learn the many nuances of the Climate Change Negotiations, Ozone pollution and policies, eco-tourism, as well as environmental justice and equity (her latest research).

This is an exciting episode with a very close colleague of mine at UCL, Julia Kreienkamp at the Global Governance Institute (GGI). We have the unique connection of having the same two bosses (and the three of them published an important book on climate governance)! GGI is truly a great place to research, work, and connect with policy-makers, academics, and business leaders. It also has its own podcast, found here. She discusses details about biodiversity and climate change, and looking for nature-based solutions (e.g. not “technological fixes”, on their own), as well as the spiritual values of creating a biodiverse society—the bio-economy—which is still not valued in standard economic measures such as GDP.

Nino Jordan is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Sustainable Resources and Circular Economy at UCL's Bartlett School, Environment, Energy & Resources. Nino has been working professionally on environmental challenges since 2010, first with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and then with the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, where he is currently the Programme Lead for the MSc in Sustainable Resources: Economics, Policies and Transitions. Nino has taught Climate Policy in Comparative Perspective at master's level and used to be the dissertation tutor for the MSc in Sustainable Resources: Economics, Policies and Transitions, teaching a variety of methods and research approaches.

Currently heis the module lead for Policies for Sustainable Resources and Environmental Lifecycle Governance, part of the MSc in Sustainable Resources: Economics, Policies and Transitions. Previously, Nino studied political science and international relations at the University of Bremen. As an exchange student he studied international political economy at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires and was an assistant in research at Yale University. He wrote his PhD thesis on climate policy and the governance of embodied emissions at UCL.

This is a special episode where I speak with a current research collaborator, Yeong Jae Kim. We are finalising research on green growth data from G-7 countries (Canada, U.S., France, Germany, Italy, U.K., Japan). 

"YJ" is a junior scientist at EIEE  (the European Institute on Economics and the Environment). He has been a visiting professor at KAIST College of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy (Environmental Economics) from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master in Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University.

His main interest is in applied economic analysis, with a focus on the dynamics of innovation, technology transfer, green growth, and the economic impacts of environmental and energy policies. We address salient climate change problems surrounding green growth and competitiveness, trade, productivity, and innovation. Some of his important contributions to the researcher community include quantifying the impacts of environmental and energy policy instruments on innovation and the innovation spillovers across sectors and countries, focusing on clean energy technologies. He also explored the extent to which the dynamics of embodied emission in trade are affected by changes in the stringency of environmental policies. 

Prior to joining EIEE, he was a senior researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K. He worked on the project called SET-Nav. During the project, he operationalised a conceptual framework of energy technology innovation systems developed by Professors Arnulf Grubler (IIASA), Kelly Gallagher (Tufts), Greg Nemet (Wisconsin), and Charlie Wilson (Tyndall). He extended and developed a comprehensive set of indicators to measure influential innovation system processes and applied it in several empirical contexts.