Our guest tonight is Lew Daly, Senior Fellow for Climate and Energy Policy at Just Solutions, where he works in partnership with state and federal organizations and networks in pursuit of a just and equitable clean energy transition.

His previous 15 years work in the public policy field includes appointments such as:

• Director of Policy and Research and Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Equity at Demos
• Deputy Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute

Lew is a lifelong resident of New York State--Born and raised in Onondaga County, Central New York State, and has been based with his family in Wester Harlem, New York City, since 1999. His New York service in the field includes:

• Steering Committee member of the New York Renews Coalition from 2017-2020.
• Co-coordinator: New York Renews Policy Development Committee, supporting the development and passage of the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection act in 2019.
• Member of the New York City Offshore Wind Advisory Council in 2022 and 2023.

He has also worked internationally as a US member of the Global Well-Being Lab of the Presencing Institute and Germany's Global Leadership Academy, and as an International Advisory Board Member of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation at the University of Pretoria.

With Doug Koplow of Earth Track, Lew is the author most recently of the report, Taxpayer Costs for Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage, just out from Just Solutions and Earth Track.

In addition to his extensive policy work, Lew's commentaries and feature articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Democracy Journal, Boston Review, Grist, and many other publications.

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While the fossil fuel industry continues to promote "natural gas" as a relatively "clean" energy source, Dr. Robert Howarth has argued since since his seminal report in 2011 that methane (which makes up roughly 5% of "natural gas") poses a greater threat to humankind than "dirty" options like coal and oil. This is particularly true of methane produced through hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") Join us for a conversation about what we've now known for more than a decade, and how much more convinced Dr. Howarth is now that we should not be fracking for gas, nor otherwise be using methane as an energy source.

Dr. Howarth is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. He’s an Earth systems scientist, ecosystem biologist, and biogeochemist. He has worked extensively on environmental issues related to human-induced changes in the sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon cycles, the impacts of global climate change, the interaction of energy systems and the environment, and implementation of 100% renewable energy policies. He is the Founding Editor of the journal Biogeochemistry.

Currently, Howarth serves as one of 22 members of the Climate Action Council, the group charged by law with implementing the aggressive climate goals of New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act of 2019, often referred to as CLCPA. Howarth has published more than 200 research papers, and these have been cited in other peer-reviewed articles more than 70,000 times, making Howarth one of the ten most cited aquatic scientists in the world. In 2011, Time Magazine named Howarth as one of 50 “People Who Matter” for his research on the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas produced from hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking”.

Topics Discussed Include:

• Why methane is such a concern with regard to climate change
• Why methane emissions are greater than predicted by the gas industry
• Why Dr. Howarth believes methane is worse for the climate than coal
• How some methane leaks are accidental while others are routine, and therefore can't be eliminated
• How OGI thermal cameras are able to see methane and other greenhouse gasses

Further Reading

Dr. Howarth maintains a web site featuring many of the works he's published over the years, including the April 2011 paper on methane leaks from gas fracking.

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Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!

​We’re delighted to welcome back Poppy Alexander, a founding partner at the law firm Whistleblower Partners, a law firm dedicated to representing whistleblowers reporting fraud and misconduct in:

• Healthcare
• Procurement
• Securities and Commodities
• Taxes
• Money Laundering and Sanctions Evasion
• Customs
• Environmental Remediation
• Vehicle Safety

Poppy represents whistleblowers and government entities in qui tam lawsuits, as well as under the various agency whistleblower programs including those administered by the Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, FinCEN, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Department of Transportation. Poppy’s practice focuses on issues of international corruption and financial misconduct, with a specialty in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering cases. She writes and speaks regularly about emerging topics in financial fraud, including sanctions violations, SPACs, and cryptocurrency.
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We last spoke with Poppy back in July of 2022 when she had already established an impressive track record representing whistleblowers at Constantine Cannon. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012. She was the co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and an active participant in the Human Rights Clinic, working on issues related to corporate accountability for human rights violations in Africa and military abuses in Southeast Asia. She was awarded the Dean’s Award for Community Leadership in recognition for her contributions to the school community. Poppy has been named to the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list every year since 2016. Prior to law school, Poppy worked on election reform issues before beginning graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied political and critical theory.

We’ve invited Poppy to talk about her new work, and her new firm, Whisteblower Partners.
​
Topics Discussed Include:

• Poppy’s new law firm, Whistleblower Partners. Why Poppy left her old firm to establish this new legal partnership in March 2024. She describes a comprehensive approach to whistleblowers and not just file cases.
• The laws Whistleblower Partners uses in environmental cases and how they have changed since the episode we published in July 2023. Qui tam False Claims Act, SEC, IRS, Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), and various wildlife protection laws.
• Examples of Whistleblower Partners victories.
• Pitfalls of whistleblowing and filing lawsuits and administrative tips programs.

Further Reading / Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Mighty Earth vs. JBS in protecting the Brazilian rainforest
• The Securities and Exchange Commission’s 90th birthday

Support the show

Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!