Decouple - Dr. Chris Keefer

Latest Episodes:

The Lazard People Are Taking Over Feb 21, 2022

Show notes

Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group, explains one of the most cited yet misunderstood metrics in the energy debate: LCOE, the Levelized Cost of Electricity. What is it, what is it good and bad for, and what other metrics exist to understand the cost of electricity? Mark brings insight on energy investments, discount rates, and the conceptual differences between cost, price, and value. The most popular LCOE figures come from financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ Learn more about Radiant Energy Group: https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/ If you enjoy listening to Mark, check out his numerous other interviews on Decouple!

Romantic Agriculture Feb 14, 2022

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Iida Ruishalme, biologist and science communicator behind the blog Thoughtscapism, digs into the origins and dogmas of organic agriculture. Does the public perception of organic foods as healthier or more environmentally sustainable withstand scientific scrutiny, or is it another example of the naturalistic fallacy? Join us as we peel back the layers of the organic onion.

Read Thoughtscapism: https://thoughtscapism.com/

My Mother Explains Romanticism to Me Feb 07, 2022

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Janice Kulyk Keefer, literary theorist, writer, award-winning poet, and my mom decodes the Romantic tradition for me. Janice weaves a compelling narrative connecting Germany's founding national myths in the dark primordial forest of Herman the German to William Blake's dark satanic mills and Thoreau's Cabin at Walden pond. Through her storytelling, she helps us understand the importance of the Romantic tradition as an essential foundation of the environmental movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_Kulyk_Keefer

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5aEtsu26DfI

Read Janice Kyluk Keefer's essay on German Romanticism: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ2-iYQDTPtVZYv2N1bxUozsKoweyMLyGRokK7XcwlUTpc3w2tI5gr4pHtKjNnTQ73FvwhPI0B_csGO/pub

Keeping the Northern Lights On Jan 31, 2022

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Madeleine Redfern is an Inuit businesswoman and former two-term mayor of Iqaluit in the far northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. Redfern describes the harsh energy situation in Canada’s remote, indigenous communities, which face extreme darkness and cold, a reliance on diesel generators, limited ability to fundraise for new projects, and high costs. She assesses the merits of different energy technologies for these communities, making clear the challenge of choosing an energy path in a situation with so many constraints. Madeleine Redfern has been a prominent advisor and consultant on telecommunications, transportation, and energy in Canada, including for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. She has also been a central member and volunteer of several Aboriginal and Inuit organizations addressing issues of housing, education, and health.

A Hard Landing for Soft Energy Jan 24, 2022

Show notes

Mark Nelson joins me to discuss Amory Lovins, the man behind the “soft energy path” and the intellectual godfather of Germany’s Energiewende. Amory Lovins shot to relevance in the 1970s for advising against the prevailing model for electric utilities, which was to build as much generation capacity as possible. Lovins charted an alternate path, which focused on efficiency and distributed energy sources. Mark offers his critique of Lovins, based on what he identifies as the two main faults that have persisted in Lovins’ argument for decades: 1) the idea that the “soft” and “hard” energy paths are mutually exclusive, and 2) the supremacy of nuclear “problem.” Mark Nelson is the managing director of Radiant Energy Group. He holds degrees in mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, as well as Russian language and literature.

The Children of Chernobyl Jan 20, 2022

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Dr. Geraldine Thomas, Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank and leading global expert on the impacts of radiation, joins me to discuss the phenomenon of “radiation vacations” for children believed to have been affected by the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl Children International (CCI) has organized close to 1 million such trips for children from Ukraine and Belarus with the claim that these vacations extend these children's lives by on average 2 years. It also supports a number of orphanages and social services in Belarus. In Ireland CCI is one of the most successful charities in the country's history having fundraised over 100 million euros to date. https://www.chernobyl-international.com/ Dr. Thomas gives an overview of the science behind transgenerational effects of radiation and assesses the scientific and medical reasoning behind claims specific to Chernobyl. Dr. Thomas also explains the very real impact of thyroid cancer upon a specific age group of children exposed to high levels of Iodine 131 during a narrow time interval after the accident and what their medical treatment involves. It is estimated that 16,000 additional thyroid cancers will occur within this age group with a mortality of 1%. We discuss the harm that radiophobia is capable of causing, illustrated in part by a critique of the Academy Award winning 2003 documentary, “Chernobyl Heart” which features Adi Roche the founder of CCI. https://youtu.be/jFwGEsJg2MI

An Indigenous Woman in Nuclear Jan 17, 2022

Show notes

Tracy Primeau is a retired Shift Manager at Bruce Power who is now on the Board of Directors at Ontario Power Generation (OPG). She is a member of the Nipissing First Nation, and was the first woman to make her way to Shift Manager from the shop floor. She discusses her first hand perspective as an energy worker while Ontario transitioned from coal to nuclear, and the life quality benefits it brought to both workers and the province broadly. Primeau shares her experience of what it is like working at a nuclear plant and leading company engagement with surrounding communities, especially as an indigenous woman. We discuss the importance of nuclear energy companies engaging towns as collaborators rather than groups merely to be convinced, especially given the deep-rootedness of the “nuclear waste story” in indigenous communities. Finally, we discuss paths forward for nuclear in indigenous communities, developments underway, and the likelihood of meeting stated goals to get indigenous communities in Canada off of diesel by 2030.

Doomberg Lays Out the Global Pecking Order Jan 10, 2022

Show notes

Is the sky falling on the west? I am joined by the green chicken avatar representing the anonymous Substack: Doomberg. Doomberg is home to entertaining and insightful essays on all things energy, industry, finance, politics, and more. We touch on each of these topics in our wide-ranging discussion of the consequences of bad energy and industrial policy, the West's hopefully reversible decline, and how we understand and feel about the future. Subscribe to the Doomberg Substack: https://doomberg.substack.com Follow Doomberg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoombergT

Goodbye, Grohnde Dec 31, 2021

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Dr. Anna Veronika Wendland is a scientist at the Herder Institute and a historian of science and technology. She calls in from Germany's Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in its final 24 hours of operation. Germany has forced the political closure of its remaining six nuclear plants, three of which—Grohnde, Brokdorf, and Gunndremingen—are being lost this New Year's Eve, 2021.

Dr. Wendland conducts her research at Grohnde and has dealt heavily with the human factors of nuclear energy and nuclear safety. As we discuss these human factors, she offers exceptional insight into the on-the-ground happenings of the plant as it prepares to close, as well as how broader anti-nuclear policy in Germany will continue to play out even as public opinion shows signs of shifting away from its historically anti-nuclear paradigm.

Follow Dr. Anna Wendland on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/VeroWendland

The Wicked Problem With "Don't Look Up" Dec 31, 2021

Show notes

In this short episode, I am joined by Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute, to discuss Adam McKay's film "Don't Look Up," an overt commentary on climate change. We comment on the importance of climate communication through media and art, though critique the film's use of the common "asteroid metaphor" for climate change. To Trembath, McKay portrayed climate change as a "simple problem" as opposed to the "wicked problem" that it is. Beyond the movie, we take a moment to reflect on how climate change is often thought about and framed. Who is the most affected? The most passionate? And whose fault is it?

Read Alex Trembath's review of "Don't Look Up" in Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/18/dont-look-up-review-mckay-comet-climate-change/

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