Climate One

Josh Freed

melody — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:20:37 +0000

Josh Freed

Senior Vice President for Climate and Energy, Third Way

Josh Freed is a foremost authority in climate and energy. As the founder of Third Way’s Climate and Energy Program, Josh has pioneered strategies to grow access to clean, affordable energy in the United States.

Josh has built Third Way’s work on clean energy deployment and innovation, with a particular focus on scaling affordable electricity, reestablishing US nuclear leadership, and strengthening our transatlantic partnerships. Under his leadership, the program has become a leading voice in clean energy innovation policy, advocating for the use of all low- and zero-carbon technologies.

Josh was extensively engaged with both the Obama and Biden administrations, Congress, multiple governors' offices, and corporate leaders, contributing to the development and implementation of clean energy and climate strategies. Today, Third Way leads the push against the energy tribalism of the Trump administration and the far left, towards a pragmatic, all-of-the-above strategy.

Josh’s insights on climate, clean energy, and innovation have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, POLITICO, Axios, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He has also appeared on NPR, Fox News, The Weeds, and Political Climate.

Before joining Third Way, Josh held senior positions advising the senior leadership of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as members of Congress, including Representatives Rob Andrews and Diana DeGette. Josh holds a Master’s degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife, two children, and their dog in Washington, DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

Manish Bapna

melody — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:04:29 +0000

Manish Bapna

President and CEO, NRDC

Manish Bapna joined NRDC as president and chief executive officer in August 2021, taking the reins of one of the world’s largest and most influential environmental organizations. With more than 700 attorneys, scientists, advocates, and policy experts on staff, and three million supporting members, NRDC is confronting the interlocking climate, health, nature, and inequity crises facing the world today.
During his 25-year career before joining NRDC, Bapna’s leadership roles focused on scaling solutions at the intersection of the environment and human development. Most recently, he served as executive vice president and managing director of the World Resources Institute (WRI). Over his 14-year tenure, WRI increased its impact and reach, with staff and budget expanding sixfold. Bapna played a leading role in establishing WRI offices in China, India, and Brazil and was a key architect of several influential, multi-stakeholder initiatives, including the Global Commission on Adaptation, NDC Partnership, New Climate Economy, and the International Research Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals. He also helped launch WRI’s programs on cities, energy, finance, and adaptation.

New Nuclear, Old Challenges. What Now?

Jenny Park — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:11:44 +0000

New Nuclear, Old Challenges. What Now?

09/11/2026

Nuclear power has long been a divisive energy source – always-on, carbon-free energy – but one that carries real risks of meltdowns, weaponization and radioactive waste. New “advanced” designs are generating a lot of buzz. “But in terms of the fundamental characteristics of the technology itself, it really isn't that different,” says Denia Djokić, a nuclear engineer at the University of Michigan.

And yet growing demand for power – coupled with the increasing urgency from climate-driven disasters – has led many people, even staunch environmentalists, to rethink their past opposition to nuclear power.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has long been skeptical about the expansion of nuclear power production because of high costs, risk of accidents, and the environmental and public health impacts of nuclear waste. And yet, earlier this year, NRDC filed comments with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission supporting an early step in restarting the Duane Arnold reactor in Iowa. This filing marks the first time in the organization's 56-year history that it has actively supported a nuclear plant.

“We're living in a suboptimal world where we need to make and accept some pretty hard choices,” says NRDC President and CEO Manish Bapna. “Given the pretty dire situation that we have right now with the climate crisis, we can't take anything off the table prematurely.”

Nuclear power currently comprises about 20% of the electricity on the U.S. power grid. Josh Freed of the center-left think tank Third Way says that trying to replace existing nuclear power typically means going back to fossil fuels. “Closing down safe operating nuclear power plants has resulted in higher electricity prices, more carbon emissions, and a much steeper hill to climb to actually address the climate crisis.”

His organization supports the safe and regulated expansion of nuclear power, in addition to continued build out of renewable energy sources like solar and batteries. He frames the issue as, “How do we get more of everything that is clean online to displace fossil fuels rather than what kind of renewables or nuclear or other zero carbon do we wanna choose from?”

But the pressure coming from big tech companies to rapidly supply power to their data centers worries Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If we are going to expand nuclear power, to the extent that the hyperscalers are calling for, to both increase in magnitude but also spread it out geographically, it has to be even safer than it is today,” he says. Newer designs aren’t fundamentally different from old ones, he says. They still use uranium as a fuel for nuclear fission, which produces long-lasting radioactive waste.
“And as long as the generation of new nuclear power is divorced from a firm plan for long-term disposal of that waste, we're not dealing with the problem effectively,” Lyman says.

Denia Djokić says there are other, additional considerations around the expansion of nuclear power. “We need to foster empowered public involvement, building capacity to balance industry dominance, and require transparent evaluation of social impacts, environmental impacts,” she says.

Guests

Manish Bapna

President and CEO, NRDC

Denia Djokić

Assistant Research Scientist, University of Michigan

Josh Freed

Senior Vice President for Climate and Energy, Third Way

Edwin Lyman

Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists

The Reactor Around the Corner: Understanding Advanced Nuclear Energy Futures (stpp.fordschool.umich.edu)

How to Build an Affordable Energy Future (democracyjournal.org)

U.S. to Lend $1.9 Billion to Restart a Shuttered Nuclear Plant in Iowa (nytimes.com)

California, an Environmental Bastion, Warms to Nuclear Energy (nytimes.com)

Uranium Mining Grows as Trump Seeks to Feed a Nuclear Boom (subscriber.politicopro.com)

Download PDF of Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious.

Kousha Navidar: I’m Kousha Navidar.

Ariana Brocious: And this is Climate One.

Before we get into today’s episode, we want to take a moment to recognize and mourn for those lost in the recent catastrophic flood in Nepal and Tibet.

Kousha Navidar: The devastating force of water and debris – 30 times the flow of Niagara Falls and travelling over 100 miles an hour – killed more than a thousand people, and thousands more are still missing.

Ariana Brocious: This wasn’t a typical flood caused by heavy rain. A melting glacier, high up in the Himalayas, crashed into the valley below, setting off flash floods miles downstream.

Kousha Navidar: Not a typical flood, definitely. And yet, as the world warms due to people burning fossil fuels, glaciers that are literally holding mountains together are melting, increasing the odds that we’ll see more tragedies like this one in more places around the world.

Ariana Brocious: Events like this are becoming all too frequent, underscoring the urgency of addressing climate-changing pollution. Which brings us to today’s episode…

Ariana Brocious: Last week, operators began reloading fuel into the formerly shuttered Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. If everything goes to plan, it will be the first permanently closed nuclear plant to reopen in the US, helped by $1.5 billion from Biden’s Department of Energy.

Kousha Navidar: That’s a pretty big deal. And it’s a clear signal that the political calculus of energy is changing. Growing demand for power – coupled with that increasing urgency to slow global warming we were just talking about – has led many people, even staunch environmentalists, to rethink their past opposition to nuclear power.

Ariana Brocious: And with dozens of new, purportedly safer designs at various stages of development and construction around the world, is it time for all of us to give nuclear energy a fresh look? Manish Bapna has thoughts. He’s president and CEO of the environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Ariana Brocious: NRDC has long been skeptical about the expansion of nuclear power production because of high costs, risk of accidents, and the environmental and public health impacts of nuclear waste. And yet, earlier this year, NRDC filed comments with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission supporting an early step in restarting the Duane Arnold reactor in Iowa. This filing marks the first time in your organization's 56-year history that it has actively supported a nuclear plant. What's changed in the world that accounts for this shift in posture?

Manish Bapna: You're absolutely right. This is a pretty big deal for NRDC. It is a shift in our posture. and the reasons are largely we see that the climate crisis is accelerating. We see impacts happening here. They're happening today. We're living in a suboptimal world where we need to make and accept some pretty hard choices, and this is happening at a time when electricity growth is increasing after decades of stagnation. And in this context, our strong, strong preference is indeed for solar, for wind, for storage in most cases. But there are gonna be times when we're not going to want to take anything off the table, where we may indeed support nuclear if the costs, if the risks can be adequately addressed. And we did signal in the Duane Arnold case in Iowa, an early receptivity to restarting that plant, which would support Google in terms of powering a nearby data center, because we do believe that there is a pathway to dealing with the costs and dealing with the safety concerns, but that is still to be seen.

Ariana Brocious: And one thing I want to underscore here is that this position of NRDC is in support of restarting an existing reactor. What makes that different from building a brand new reactor, and how do you feel about the latter?

Manish Bapna: Exactly. So in part, the costs are both known and that there is a developer of the data center, Google, that will pay for the costs. And we still want to make sure that the safety and the risk issues are adequately addressed. But there is also quite a bit of local support for restarting the reactor because of the positive role it played in the community in terms of jobs and in terms of tax revenues. So that does create the conditions for us to being more open to restarting this particular project. I do think that for brand-new large scale reactors. I do think that there are significant cost and safety considerations that still need to be addressed. We will be open and we will evaluate them on a case by case basis, but that is far from championing nuclear where most of our focus remains on solar, on wind, on storage, on demand response, on transmission investments, on those types of issues that we think can both meet electricity demand and do so in ways that help us tackle the climate crisis.

Ariana Brocious: So what do you say to long-term NRDC supporters who grew up a- at a time when they experienced the Three Mile Island disaster and the Chernobyl disaster?

Manish Bapna: Look, this is a, this is a hard choice for us. I remember as a child Three Mile Island, and the impact it had in the country. Interestingly, the head of our nuclear program, a physicist, actually had to evacuate his house during the Three Mile Island incident. So when he comes back to us and he says, "Hey, we are open to this if we can get these issues adequately addressed," that carries a lot of weight with me. Not an easy choice, but I think given the pretty dire situation that we have right now with the climate crisis, we can't take anything off the table prematurely.

Ariana Brocious: You wrote an essay earlier this year in Democracy Journal where you said that the US system is, quote, "Rigged to make it easy to build dirty projects and hard to build clean ones." And in this essay, you call for faster permitting for solar and transmission. In this conversation, does that same logic apply to nuclear licensing? Do you think that nuclear licensing should be streamlined, or because of the risks that we've already discussed, should it continue to have, you know, a slower, more cautious review?

Manish Bapna: I think what is most important is that it has a very effective review because the safety dimensions associated with nuclear are profoundly different than they are for clean energy technologies. So no, I do not believe that we should reduce the importance that we attach to the safety of the reactor, understanding the impacts of the fuel cycle, looking at proliferation and how to minimize, if not eliminate that risk. So those are real things. The reason why I made the point, however, that permitting and transmission reforms are necessary is because the biggest barrier to deploying clean energy to respond to the increasing growth in electricity demand to tackle the climate crisis are often times now not about cost or price. They're about how we can actually get these projects built quickly.

Ariana Brocious: Mm-hmm.

Manish Bapna: And that is where some reform, in our view, is necessary because that will be, in our minds, the quickest way to ramp up clean energy over the coming years, over the coming decades as a way to displace carbon-intensive sources of energy generation

Ariana Brocious: And that's another point against nuclear power, additional build out of nuclear power, right? Is that it's historically taken a very long time for any of those plants to fully come online, as opposed to solar and wind, which when given the right permissions can be put online very quickly.

Manish Bapna: Exactly. And I think, I think we should quite honestly have a level playing field for different energy technologies. And under a level playing field, I actually think that clean energy is gonna win almost every time because of their cost attributes and because they're so easy to deploy. But at the moment, the current permitting system that we have, the current transmission system that we have, they're rigged. They're rigged to support large fossil-based centralized generation, not clean, smaller, more distributed generation. And that shift in how we look at the permitting and transmission system, if we could put that in place, will be a very significant step forward in our ability to tackle the climate crisis, the pollution crisis, and the environmental health crisis.

Ariana Brocious: You write that it's difficult to forecast a scenario in which the United States or any other country can cut carbon pollution fast enough without deploying more nuclear power. And yet you say you remain clear-eyed about the risks. Under what circumstances would nuclear power fit into your vision for an affordable clean energy future?

Manish Bapna: In the United States, it's important to remember that nuclear still supplies nearly twenty percent of electricity generation. And at a time when electricity demand is increasing dramatically and we need to cut carbon, I think there are open questions about how we can ensure that the existing nuclear fleet remains online in a safe way. I think there are more questions around new nuclear plants and how they can address the cost and risk dimensions in ways where they can actually become a much more significant share of the electricity system. But I think that is the job of the nuclear industry to be able to make that case. And there are these new next generation technologies such as SMR, small modular reactors or fusion, that particularly fusion that may address some of the safety concerns that we see in today's technologies but aren't likely to be commercially scalable for the next five, ten, fifteen years. But given that this is a problem not just for today, but also a challenge of how we power the economy tomorrow, I could very well see nuclear playing, uh, in twenty and twenty-five and thirty years, particularly if we're able to deal with the cost, the safety issues, a more prominent role.

Ariana Brocious: Manish Bapna is president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Manish Bapna: Thank you very much for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Nuclear power has been divisive for decades – and even this new wave of designs hasn’t changed the calculus for many opponents. I had a chance to discuss the role of nuclear power in addressing the climate crisis with two experts: Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Josh Freed, Senior Vice President for Climate and Energy at Third Way, a center-left think tank.

Kousha Navidar: So I think we all share similar concerns about climate change, and so one central question facing all of us is how can we get the most zero carbon electricity on the grid fastest? And Josh, for you, where does nuclear energy fit in, especially given other options like geothermal and with solar plus batteries?

Josh Freed: Yeah. I mean, look, we already get about 20% of the electricity on the grid in the United States from zero carbon nuclear power.The question about how we do it fastest, I think is a question that is part of the issue around decarbonization and addressing climate change, but not the whole question. The question that we've looked at is what are all of the different types of power generation that we need to provide all of the different services and provide zero carbon electricity? And what we've seen with that for the whole system is that nuclear is gonna have to play a significant part.

Renewables and batteries are playing a growing part in providing electricity, but the reality is that they rely on batteries which only currently right now have about three hours of storage. So they can provide an important transition period, when the sun doesn't shine and then wind starts picking up or for other systems, but they don't provide the whole system. And you have a whole bunch of other demands on electricity that nuclear power can provide. And so there's a really important mix that we need, and that's the question: How do we get more of everything that is clean online to displace fossil fuels rather than what kind of renewables or nuclear or other zero carbon do we wanna choose from?

Kousha Navidar: One quick follow-up since you, you brought up batteries. In 2025 alone, the US added about 58 gigawatt hours of battery capacity to the grid, mostly to store solar power when the sun isn't shining. What do you say to the argument that even if we solve all of the risks nuclear presents like radiation, waste, et cetera, that battery technology is advancing faster than nuclear technology and will-- win the race both on timescale and economics?

Josh Freed: If that happens, that's great. We frankly don't care what zero carbon electricity source or set of sources get deployed at scale across the entire electricity system. But so far, while we have an enormous amount of growth in batteries, which has been fantastic, they're still constrained as to how much electricity they can store and provide back onto the grid. And so they extend significantly the life of solar generation, so it can go well into the evening when the sun has stopped shining. But it is not the full bridge either to cover all of the time that it's dark and wind and other sources might not be providing the electricity, or for periods of time where solar is not providing even during the days because it's cloudy, because it's winter, we need, , electricity generated the whole time, which is why we currently have a really broad mix of energy sources in the United States and in other countries, and we expect that to happen into the foreseeable future.

Kousha Navidar: Ed, you and the Union of Concerned Scientists have a long history of raising concerns about nuclear energy, particularly when it comes to risks of accidents and proliferation into weapons and hazards of radioactive waste. At the same time, reactors being developed today are not the same designs as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. So what concerns do you still have?

Edwin Lyman: Well, they may not be the same, but unfortunately they bring similar risks or, the risks may look different, but overall, I don't see that the next wave of nuclear power development is necessarily going to make nuclear power any safer. And from our point of view, uh, this is still the Achilles heel of widespread nuclear deployment. If we are going to expand nuclear power, to the extent that the hyperscalers are calling for, to both increase in magnitude but also spread it out geographically, it has to be even safer than it is today.

And unfortunately, the financial pressure that nuclear power developers are under to deliver, not only quickly but also in a competitive way, there's an awful lot of pressure to cut corners to reduce safety and security standards, to reduce personnel needs, to cut back on the quality of construction and the, uh, materials that are used, and to overlook a lot of the unresolved safety issues that come with deploying any new technology. And that, that isn't a good place to be in our view for a safe nuclear power development.

Kousha Navidar: Josh, when you hear that and you think about the pressure and the incentive to, to cut corners, how would you respond to Ed?

Josh Freed: I mean, there are three things that immediately pop to mind. One is that the nuclear fleet that's operated globally to date has an extraordinary safety record. And if you look at the number of terawatt hours that nuclear power plants have operated and the incidents and deaths that result of it, it, it is a, an extraordinary track record. It is not perfect, and that is an important point that, that I think Ed and I agree upon, which is we need to ensure that all of the energy technologies that are operating are as absolutely safe as possible and that the deaths caused by any of them are minimized as much as possible. And right now, more deaths are caused by burning of coal, burning of natural gas, burning of oil by orders of magnitude than have been caused by nuclear. Now, let's get to these questions of the current plants that are being developed. the nuclear industry on its own, which we are not part of and we engage with in the same way we engage with regulators, also recognizes that, a plant that doesn't operate safely ends the industry. And so there are incentives. I would never want to trust an industry to police itself, but there are heavy incentives on the nuclear industry to be safe. And in the United States, we have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which is a very strict regulator of nuclear power plants.

Kousha Navidar: Well, Ed, a element that I also, I guess element is a either poor or great choice of word here, but an element that I wanna get your perspective on is that even in–

Edwin Lyman: Depends on the element

Kousha Navidar: Yeah. Right. They all require uranium, right?

Ariana Brocious: Coming up, even newer nuclear designs don’t solve the problem of radioactive waste from the fission process, which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Edwin Lyman: And so we're just kicking the can down the road, and as long as the generation of new nuclear power is divorced from a firm plan for long-term disposal of that waste, we're not dealing with the problem effectively.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious Help others find our show by leaving us a review or rating. Thanks for your support!

Kousha Navidar: This is Climate One. I’m Kousha Navidar. Let’s continue my conversation with two nuclear power experts: Josh Freed, of the center-left think tank Third Way, which supports the safe and regulated expansion of nuclear power, and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Ed Lyman, a physicist and noted critic of nuclear energy expansion, due to safety concerns.

Kousha Navidar: If we expand the use of nuclear power, we will need more fuel. The Trump administration recently submitted to Congress a plan that could let Saudi Arabia enrich uranium– a potentially risky prospect. I asked Ed Lyman: Do we have the means to protect the supply chain from being used for weapons as well?

Edwin Lyman: Unfortunately, the, the means aren't available right now, and that's primarily because when you're talking about a country like, Saudi Arabia, for example, which is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the body that's tasked with trying to verify that countries with nuclear power are not misusing it for weapons purposes, that IAEA, they need resources to do that. And their budget has been essentially stagnant for decades, and therefore, they're not positioned to be able to effectively apply safeguards in a world where there's rapidly expanding nuclear power, especially to countries that have had no experience with it yet and where the IAEA has little, knowledge of, of the country and its, uh, activities. So, one of the, very concerning aspects of a large-scale nuclear expansion around the world without proper attention to issues like proliferation is that it could quickly get out of control. And just looking at the example of Iran, our planet has been possibly brought to the brink of another World War, in part driven by Iran's covert nuclear program, which ostensibly was, is being carried out for civil purposes. So, so you have to respect the fact that nuclear power and especially the facilities that are used to manufacture nuclear fuel are dual use technologies, and they need to be seriously constrained if we're going to be able to deploy it safely.

Kousha Navidar: I wanna pick up on something you said, Ed, which was that it would get quickly out of control, it could get quickly out of control, and that the safeguards don't exist. Josh, how does that sit with you? Do you share any of Ed's concerns?

Josh Freed: I, I mean, I, I share Ed's support for expanded funding for the IAEA. It is a critically important agency, and it needs to get additional funding to get close to keeping pace with the prospective demand for nuclear power plants. 100% agree on that. And, and we need to do that, and we need to be more supportive of others, paying into IAEA as well. I'd be really cautious about conflating Iran, which has been attempting to obtain the ability to develop nuclear weapons, illegally and circumventing, uh, international agreements, sanctions from the United States, sanctions from other countries, with any other country that is trying to work through treaties and processes to establish a civilian nuclear, capability. They are an actor outside the system. The other thing that's important to note is that, there are a lot of countries that are going to look to China, maybe to Russia, and to other of the seven or eight states that can build civilian nuclear reactors if the United States is not engaged in it.

Kousha Navidar: I hear what you're saying about Iran being an actor outside of the system, but isn't that the risk inherently that we're talking about as supply chains get expanded? I mean, that's the risk that Ed is, is partially referring to. Isn't that fair?

Josh Freed: That's a risk that we have regardless, and I think that the desire here is to bring as many countries into a framework where there's transparency, there is US involvement in the development of nuclear power for safe civilian use, and we have a line of sight into how they are using, the nuclear fuel that they have. It's not like everyone saying to Iran, "You can't develop civilian nuclear capabilities, and you can't develop weapons" has prevented us from going down this path.

Kousha Navidar: Yeah, I wanna go back to the safety of the civilian use. Uh, I hear the argument that new reactor designs are safer, and I also hear Ed's argument that new designs are unproven. So Ed, do new designs do anything to address radioactive waste?

Edwin Lyman: Address radioactive waste? No, because any nuclear reactor that's fissioning uranium is going to generate radioactive waste as the result of the fission process, and the quantity or the, the radioactive content of that waste really just depends on the amount of nuclear power you're generating. Different types of reactors that use different fuel materials might have different waste forms. The waste may be different in terms of its volume or its mass or its chemical content, but very few of those parameters are, are really relevant when you're talking about long-term management or disposal of waste. And the fact is, in the United States, the federal government's been struggling for many, many decades to honor its commitment to the nuclear utilities that have already generated on the order of 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, to take title of that and to dispose of it in a geological repository. The U.S. government has failed at that commitment, and in fact, today, when it's promoting expansion of nuclear power, it prefers to pretend that that problem doesn't really exist. And so we're just kicking the can down the road, and, as long as the generation of new nuclear power is, divorced from a firm plan for long-term, disposal of that waste, we're not dealing with the problem effectively

Kousha Navidar: Josh, is it kicking the can down the road? I mean, you, you look at these designs all the time.

Josh Freed: No, I mean, we have, we have a path that we need policy consistency on, along with a lot of other things in the federal government right now, and , that is, consent-based siting for a geologic repository. And there are communities out there, that, would be willing to go through that process and consider hosting such a site, and, we need to get back into that process that the Obama administration and the Biden administration both looked at, and move forward with that. And the risk is the kicking of the can for a repository, for how do we handle the spent fuel which has been safely stored on site for generations now, becomes an excuse to say we shouldn't build any more nuclear power plants rather than an imperative to solve.

Kousha Navidar: Ed I just wanna get your response to that because it sounds like what I'm hearing from Josh at least is that we have the playbook, we just need to keep developing the way we already are. Ed, how do you take that?

Edwin Lyman: Right now there is no process in the federal government for any realistic or viable process for restarting the siting process for a repository. And yes, it is true that spent nuclear fuel can be stored safely above ground if it's properly managed and regulated, uh, for quite some time. But the material does remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years and ultimately the only way to address that long-term risk is to sequester it in a repository where there's a lower risk of it eventually corroding and entering the groundwater. but ever since the, process for developing a repository was ended actually in the Obama administration at Yucca Mountain, there has been no effective replacement, and what the Trump administration is trying to do now is a very cynical, Trojan horse almost, where they've proposed to, a variety of states that they're willing to support those states for hosting what they call nuclear life cycle innovation campuses, which would be, stocked with all sorts of activities related to nuclear power, you know, nuclear reactors, fuel production plants, spent fuel reprocessing plants, and oh yes they may have to take a geological repository, but that's been played down. This is just a, a another way of essentially trying to find the price that a state will accept to take a geological repository, and I think it's a pretty cynical effort, and I feel that once more people in the states who have expressed interest in these projects understand that what it really is about is finding a new repository site, there's going to be backlash.

Kousha Navidar: I wanna turn from risks to regulation. Ed, for you, I'm wondering, is your critique fundamentally when it comes to nuclear about the technology's inherent risks or about regulatory and industry trustworthiness?

Edwin Lyman: It’s a combination because there are certainly ways to design nuclear power to make it safer, but, that has to be demonstrated And the problem is that, again, because of the cost pressure nuclear power is under, if a developer comes up with an innovation that they feel makes the design fundamentally safer, instead of trying to increase the overall safety of, of the plant, they look for ways to cut costs elsewhere because they wanna take credit for the inherent design safety. So for instance, many of the, new reactor designs that are being licensed today are proposing not to have the same kind of containment structure that the operating fleet in the United States and most other countries around the world have, and that containment is a reinforced concrete, pressure-resisting and almost leak-tight structure, which is a last resort if you do have a core melt accident. I mean, we've seen how effective containment can be, for instance, in, at the Three Mile Island disaster in the US where the containment effectively blocked the release of a large quantity of radiation. Even in the Fukushima disaster in Japan 2011, the containment structures largely held, and that accident could've been a lot worse if they weren't there. So fast-forwarding to now, it's, astonishing that so many reactors are actually trying to get away with not having containment, and they base that argument on mostly paper studies where they show that they can do a calculation that indicates they can still meet, the regulatory limits in terms of exposing the public to radiation, without a containment. But those studies have lots of uncertainties. They haven't been validated. They may have some technical flaws, and you need a regulator who's really willing to, to critically examine those claims , because not having a containment is a big issue.

Kousha Navidar: I find this point important because you're saying that you need to find a regulator who is willing to put long-term safety front and center. And Josh, I feel like this might be a place where you two agree because you yourself have criticized the administration for prioritising short-term headlines over durable success. So can you unpack that for me? Does the administration move even faster than you want to?

Josh Freed: Well, I, I think what the administration wants to do and what the regulator is doing are two separate issues, and we still have an independent regulator at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Fascinatingly, the commissioner that was appointed by the Trump administration even has stood up to the Trump administration and said that they are going to operate at their own speed. They are gonna make decisions based on what the NRC, its commissioners, and its staff deem is in the best interest of public safety and the mission of, of the regulator as opposed to, , what this administration may or may not want. And what we are looking for here is the regulator to evaluate any application, including application for new and novel designs, and to answer the question: Does the design meet the safety requirements as the regulator is evaluating it, as its staff is evaluating it, to get deployed?

And in the real world experience we've had where, uh, nuclear reactors have been shut down because of policy decisions, what we've seen is that in many cases, it's been replaced by fossil fuels. And that's happened in Vermont, it's happened in California, it's happened in New York State, it's happened in Germany. And these are real world examples where closing down safe operating nuclear power plants has resulted in higher electricity prices, more carbon emissions, and a much steeper hill to climb to actually address the climate crisis, which is what led, you know, my organization to decide we need to keep the existing nuclear fleet open in the United States, and we need to find a pathway to develop new reactors that can displace fossil fuels and meet demand.

Edwin Lyman: I, I really need to push back on, on Josh's confidence that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still an independent regulator. In May 2025, President Trump issued four executive orders. One of them was, EO 14300, which ordered the NRC to reform, and it contained a lot of directives, including imposing a, an 18-month timeline on most licensing actions, including approval of new reactor applications. That's an arbitrary timeline, and the NRC has shown no indication of pushing back on that. In fact, the chairman, appointed by Donald Trump, has said that he believes the NRC, its, its role is really to move in lockstep with the administration and they have, indicated they, believe that the directives of the executive order are essentially the law that they have to follow. And so what I see is a commission where the commissioners, those who may have their own views that may differ from what the Trump administration wants, are afraid of being fired if they express those views. You have the staff which, wants to do the right thing, but is again worried about their professional future if they defy political directives. And that, that's not an environment that we think is conducive to the kind of, , fair technical evaluation that prioritizes public health and safety above political goals.

Kousha Navidar: So one key difference of opinion I'm hearing is how fast we should be implementing new designs. So I wanna ask each of you, given that it sounds like you agree about the urgency of climate change, What are the pros and cons of moving fast versus slow? Ed, can we start with you.

Edwin Lyman: Yes. Well, I don't think you can compromise on the safety of evaluating new designs. In many cases there are simply technical questions that are very complicated and that take a long time to fully understand. In many cases they actually require experimental testing to validate, which is not something you can rush. And just one example is a plant that's under review by the NRC, a four-unit, advanced reactor, called the XE-100 which is proposed to be built in Seadrift, Texas. That's a high temperature gas-cooled reactor. And the fuel itself, which is known as TRISO fuel, is often held out as this wonder fuel that's indestructible and in fact many of the advanced reactor designs are planning to use it. But the fact is it's not indestructible and how badly it can go wrong is still not well understood under certain, uh, conditions. So that requires more testing, yet the company's going ahead with its application without the data it needs to actually support the safety of the fuel. And so the testing is, is going on at the same time as the review of the construction permit application. And in my view it really needs to be sequential because there are design decisions you have to make including a real containment that depend on that fuel behavior that we don't even know yet.

Kousha Navidar: So not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like for you, the, the cons of moving fast are a price that nobody should be willing to pay because things should be moving sequentially and safety cannot be compromised on. Is that a safe summary?

Edwin Lyman: Right, the industry can't afford to make a mistake. A Fukushima-type accident here is going to essentially burst the bubble of, of, uh, this nuclear renaissance for many years to come. So it's in everyone's best interest, uh, to make sure that decisions aren't made without the necessary technical information to support them

Kousha Navidar: So Josh, that framing seems reasonable to me. Is that how you think through the reasoning? 'Cause I'm sure that you must every day you're thinking about pros and cons of moving fast versus slow

Josh Freed: Yeah, I, I, but I, I don't think moving fast versus slow, is the right frame. I think the issue that we have right now is that, the regulatory system across government, is encouraged to not make decisions rather than to make a decision that goes either way. And the question that we have and that we need to face is- What is a reasonable set of steps that we can take to evaluate this technology to determine whether any of these individual applications can move forward to the next step and the next step so that the designs can be approved, construction can be approved, fuel can get licensed and be approved, and they either get built or they don't get built. Otherwise, we get trapped in a regulatory cycle where it's always waiting for the next step, waiting for the next evidence. Nothing here gets built,

Kousha Navidar: So that leads me to the final bottom line question that I wanna hear from both of you about, because inherent in both of your responses, I hear there is a need to understand and develop this nuclear technology. The way that we do it is contentious, So how should we balance the need for new nuclear energy against the risk of developing new nuclear energy? Ed, I'll go

Edwin Lyman: I wouldn't say-- I think where we differ is that we don't believe... You don't start out with a proposition that we need nuclear come hell or high water and, and everything we have to do, should validate that or try to make that belief happen. That's going to your pr-problem with a preexisting bias. We think nuclear could be a part of a low-carbon energy system, but it still has to be proven, and it's not at all a given. And given the many liabilities that nuclear power has compared to renewable energy, you have to proceed with care. Nuclear power needs to prove itself, and then, I just wanna push back against the notion that it's the regulator that's really been the problem in slowing down nuclear power. What it really is, is the lack of financing and the reluctance of the private sector to open their pocketbooks for the many hundreds of billions of dollars it would take to really build out even a fraction of this dream of the renaissance. And the, the experiment we're seeing now is if the regulator has its hands tied, is that going to give the private sector more confidence in investing or not? But, ultimately it has to thrive or fail on its own merits.

Kousha Navidar: Josh, I saw you chuckle at a certain moment during Ed's response. What, what was going through your mind?

Josh Freed: Yeah, so I mean, we got involved in nuclear power because Senator Harry Reid of Nevada posed a question to us in 2008, which was Can we address climate change and replace all of the coal that was a majority of the fuel being used for electricity then, to get to zero carbon? And, at that time, in two thousand eight, two thousand nine, two thousand ten, we were told, "Renewables are too expensive. You're never gonna be able to deploy them at scale." And it was the combination of government policies, including significant subsidies, that thankfully helped get renewables to scale in the United States so that they could be competitive and help us displace coal. We hear the same arguments now, from the Trump administration around offshore wind, where they have started to cut off, or they've cut off, uh, funding for offshore wind, canceled projects saying, "It's never gonna be economic. It's unproven technology." And the, the reality is that we need to have a smart set of policies and regulations that allow us to get these suite of technologies, offshore wind, advanced nuclear, additional existing nuclear power plants, more battery storage across a number of different sizes, and geothermal, to all scale so we have the mix that we can get to displace fossil fuels, and get to net zero.

And so the case that we're making is let's continue to move forward with everything. Let's continue to refine the regulatory structures for all of this so that we can build and build safely. And then let's see how these technologies prove out, particularly on the economics and the technological performance. But right now, the current fleet of nuclear power plants that are operating, operate at a higher capacity, they spend more of their time online producing more electricity than any other source that we have domestically. And I think that's a really important part of a broad multi-technology, multi-fuel system for us and for the rest of the world to address climate change.

Kousha Navidar: Well, it's clear that these are hard, complex issues with high stakes, and obviously one conversation can't suffice to go through all of it. But I do appreciate both of you trying to show the framing of how you're considering these technologies. Edwin Lyman is director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. And Josh Freed is senior vice president for climate and energy at Third Way.

Kousha Navidar: Coming up, a nuclear engineer gives a reality check on the actual role of nuclear power in meeting AI’s booming energy demand:

Denia Djokić: These data centers are going up essentially overnight. The promise narratives revolve around building an advanced reactor or an SMR also overnight to meet these energy demands. That is just physically impossible.

Kousha Navidar: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious. Part of what spurred us to discuss nuclear energy this week is the proliferation – excuse the pun – of new reactor designs. Denia Djokić is a nuclear engineer and research scientist at the University of Michigan. She helped me understand what’s new and what isn’t when it comes to nuclear energy technology, and what larger aspects of the industry we should consider.

Ariana Brocious: There's a lot of discussion right now about so-called advanced nuclear reactors, and, and maybe our listeners have heard of some of these new designs, things like sodium-cooled fast reactors, molten salt reactors, high temperature gas-cooled reactors, small modular reactors, microreactors. Like, the list just keeps seeming to go on. without getting into the weeds of what each of those means, to what extent are these new designs meaningfully different from what my parents' generation grew up fearing?

Denia Djokić: It's important to start off with, saying that advanced reactor designs have actually been around for a very long time. They just haven't been deployed at commercial scale. What has been deployed at commercial scale for the past many decades have been large light water reactors. And advanced nuclear reactors differ in various ways, in size, in modularity, in materials for fuels, in materials for coolants, and also, a material in the reactor called a moderator that's used for controlling the neutron speed that you need to sustain a nuclear chain reaction inside the reactor. So there's a lot of different variables, and you can kind of...mix and match and come out with a bunch of different reactor designs. But we still need to worry about things like safety, and a lot of these advanced reactor designs do have passive safety systems that our parents' reactors did not.

But in terms of the fundamental characteristics of the technology itself, which includes the supply chain, it really isn't that different. We're still using uranium as a fuel for these reactors. So those supply chains, won't look that different with one notable exception, which is that the enrichment levels of these advanced reactors often depend on something called HALEU, which is high assay low-enriched uranium, which currently is only commercially produced in Russia, which has geopolitical implications for the uranium fuel. But fundamentally, when you zoom out, you're still needing to mine uranium, and that has environmental and social implications.

Ariana Brocious: You touched on passive safety there, and I want to return to that. Passive safety, from how I understand it, are things where essentially if something goes wrong with the reactor, the unit may shut down without humans having to do anything. Is passive safety a real thing?

Denia Djokić: Yes, passive safety is absolutely a real thing in terms of reactor design. Nuclear engineers have designed these advanced reactors to incorporate passive safety systems that rely on the laws of physics, where you can, in an emergency event, just walk away and the reactor will shut itself down.

Ariana Brocious: Do these things make you feel safer as a nuclear engineer?

Denia Djokić: That opens up a rabbit hole of, of things actually because the, the answer is not yes, but the answer is not no either. Your question opens up a whole lot of other questions that don't have to do with just technical features that address the safety issue of a reactor design. They open up questions around regulatory frameworks and who's enforcing these reactor designs, who has oversight, how well is that oversight enacted? and these are questions that are especially pertinent right now when we're in a moment where the Trump administration is rolling back a lot of regulatory oversight. I don't necessarily trust that safety characteristics on paper will keep us safe. We need a whole governance framework to keep us safe.

Ariana Brocious: So if I may, maybe a parallel would be like food safety regulations in a restaurant or a kitchen where, yes, there are established practices for how things are should be done, but without health inspectors, we can't guarantee that that's actually happening.

Denia Djokić: That's a really good way of putting it.

Ariana Brocious: What's the difference between the large light water reactors that make up the vast majority of, of nuclear plants operating today, and the small modular reactors, often called SMRs, or microreactors that the Trump administration is pushing?

Denia Djokić: There are some small modular reactors that look very similar to large light water reactors. they're just slightly smaller, both in size, but more so in capacity, so electricity output. And they have passive safety features. However, large advanced light water reactors can also have passive safety features. So it gets a little bit blurry. I think the narratives that are used are there are evolutionary designs, which are very similar to the conventional light water reactors, and then there are revolutionary designs, which are some of the reactors you mentioned earlier, such as sodium-cooled fast reactors and molten salt reactors. So, so those are very, very different. but they don't necessarily have much to do with size per se. The term small modular reactor or even advanced nuclear reactor is, is very capacious and gets blurry depending on which reactor design you're talking about.

Ariana Brocious: So I think that someone can hear “small modular reactor" and think of it almost like a plug and play style energy source the way that, let's say, a small collection of solar panels could be. But solar panels are essentially inert. There's no nuclear reaction happening. They're collecting energy, turning it into power, and that's it. So, distributed solar can be very appealing, can work in a lot of cases, and I think I've been getting the sense that there are people who wanna make the same argument for small modular reactors, but they just are not the same. We're talking about completely different kinds of technology that carries a whole system of considerations that you've been laying out in terms of supply chain, environmental harm, justice, risk, things that are just do not go along with, say, plugging in some solar panels.

Denia Djokić: That's absolutely correct. It is not a plug-and-play technology. Maybe, maybe, maybe that is the case for a microreactor, which is a reactor that is really truly a baby reactor with less than 10 megawatts of capacity, I think it is. And that can be remotely deployed to a remote community, mostly it is the military that is interested in those microreactors because for the military it is kind of a plug-and-play operation. You just ship it out to a remote base and you plug it into the base's grid. But a small modular reactor, which I think the cutoff is maybe 300 megawatts, it's just a small version of a large nuclear reactor. You still need transmission infrastructure. Like you said, it's a very active, complex system. You're constantly monitoring and controlling a fission reaction

Ariana Brocious: right. So, you briefly mentioned waste, and I think that remains a important consideration anytime we talk about nuclear energy. To my understanding, these newer designs may handle some aspects of, the generation differently, But are there any end result differences in terms of generating spent fuel?

Denia Djokić: Advanced reactors could alter the composition of, spent nuclear fuel as we know it now, and it could introduce some new technical challenges. But if you zoom out far enough, it does not fundamentally change the radioactive waste burden. We still, in the end, will need a long-term/permanent solution to the nuclear waste problem. We cannot engineer our way out of generating nuclear waste, unfortunately.

Ariana Brocious: So nuclear energy doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to getting projects done, developed online quickly. Now we're talking about introducing new designs that need to be proven at scale. We're really in a race against the clock in terms of trying to decarbonize our economy while staving off the worst climate change impacts. How does advanced nuclear fit into this need to replace fossil fuels as fast as possible?

Denia Djokić: The timeline issue is, is real. The pace at which we would need to deploy nuclear energy in general, not just advanced nuclear energy, is not fast enough to replace all the fossil fuels. And even if we were building nuclear reactors at a very, fast pace, what it's looking like right now is that the phenomenon is mostly additive and not replacing fossil fuels. and this is especially salient given the data center boom and the great energy demands of data centers right now. And what we're seeing is that there is a lot of promise that advanced nuclear reactors and/or SMRs, They will step in and save us from needing to build more fossil fuel energy infrastructure to power these data centers. But let's just say that we could power all these data centers with advanced nuclear reactors. These data centers are going up essentially overnight. The promise narratives revolve around building an advanced reactor or an SMR also overnight to meet these energy demands. That is just physically impossible.

Ariana Brocious: Not to mention that, these data centers and hyperscalers are so eager to get online that they aren't even waiting to get plugged into the grid. Or in some cases, the, the, you know, the time it takes to build their own solar and batteries, they are doing methane turbines because they wanna literally just have the power immediately. So yeah, there's no patience there

Denia Djokić: That's right. so it's interesting that advanced nuclear reactors are being promised, when they're really not a feasible solution for the timescales that the tech industry needs to power the data centers. So, there's a lot of hype about advanced nuclear being able to meet these demands very fast, which is also related to the Trump administration's deregulatory push and, basically accelerating the licensing process for these advanced reactors, making, categorical exclusions for, uh, environmental impact assessments for advanced nuclear reactors. I mean, the, the regulatory environment is so favorable right now to getting these things online fast, and yet it's never going to happen at the timescales that big tech is talking about. In the meantime, all this hype is generating a lot of private interest and private investment and a lot of startups are making a lot of money off of the hype. It's as simple as that. I think it's really important to understand the role of capital and private investment, and who's, who's not only enriching themselves off of the hype and the promises, and people putting hope in this technological fix to the problems of old nuclear, but also questions of who is in the room when making these decisions. Why are we not involved? And by we, I mean the public. why is that whole tech ecosystem making decisions about our energy futures that really should be, a more democratic process?

Ariana Brocious: So a lot of this conversation is in the tech space, as you're saying, and kind of about, if and how we can continue to innovate in nuclear power. There's also the question of whether we should, and I know you have a lot of concerns around community impacts and justice. What are you most worried about? What are we not considering?

Denia Djokić: if I may, I would love to point listeners to a report that was recently published out of the University of Michigan called "The Reactor Around the Corner: Understanding Advanced Nuclear Energy Futures." In this report, we explore the potential implications of advanced nuclear reactors, which are much broader than the issues that we have been talking about. For one, we need to foster empowered public involvement. So set standards for collaboration, fund community engagement, be okay with and protect the right to dissent and protest, because that's all part of a healthy democratic system. building capacity to balance industry dominance, require transparent evaluation of social impacts, environmental impacts. We also found that if we don't have those governance frameworks, we will intensify environmental injustices. The industry will not necessarily deliver on its promises of community empowerment and development. The industry won't necessarily listen to local and indigenous knowledge in, building and siting nuclear facilities, not just power plants, but also, waste storage facilities.And lastly, but not leastly, there are also geopolitical dimensions that we don't talk about enough, which are being enabled by the hype and the hope.

Ariana Brocious: If you could distill our conversation down to one or two key ideas that you think listeners should leave with around the role and impact of advanced nuclear right now, what would that be?

Denia Djokić: I would say widen the political debate beyond just whether or not advanced nuclear reactors will solve the problems of old nuclear reactors. That's one. And then two, look at the systemic impacts. Widen the political debate to look at the systemic impacts of advanced nuclear reactors. We have to consider equity and justice issues. We have to consider, democratic processes. We have to consider regulatory robustness.

Ariana Brocious: Denia Djokić is a nuclear engineer and research scientist at the University of Michigan. Thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Denia Djokić: Thank you so much for having me.

Kousha Navidar: And that’s our show. Thanks for listening. Talking about climate can be hard, and exciting and interesting -- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. Or consider joining us on Patreon and supporting the show that way.

Ariana Brocious: Climate One is a production of the Commonwealth Club. Our team includes Jenny Park, Austin Colón, Megan Biscieglia, Brad Marshland, and Kousha Navidar. Our theme music is by George Young. I’m Ariana Brocious.

Highlights:

02:30 – Manish Bapna explains the shift in posture on nuclear power

07:45 – Why permitting and transmission reforms are necessary

12:00 – Ed Lyman and Josh Freed share concerns about climate change but differ on the role of nuclear energy

16:15 – Ongoing risks of nuclear energy

20:30 – Supply chain concerns

25:00 – Discussion of radioactive waste handling

31:30 – Role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its independence under the current administration

40:00 – Where nuclear fits into a carbon-free future

43:00 – Denia Djokić on how new advanced designs differ from older reactor designs

49:30 – SMRs are not plug-and-play

53:30 – New nuclear can’t meet the speed demands of AI

55:30 – Additional considerations around nuclear energy

57:30 – Climate One More Thing

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Denia Djokić

Jenny Park — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:55:03 +0000

Denia Djokić

Assistant Research Scientist, University of Michigan

Denia Djokić is an assistant research scientist at the Fastest Path to Zero Initiative in the department of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan. Her interdisciplinary research engages with the social, political, equity, and environmental justice dimensions of nuclear energy and radioactive waste management, ranging from local infrastructure siting processes to the broader systemic impacts of nuclear technology development and use.

Djokić holds a PhD and MS in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BS in physics from Carnegie Mellon University. She received postdoctoral training in nuclear policy and science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School and was a Levenick Resident Scholar in sustainability leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has also served as a science, technology, and innovation policy advisor for the Republic of Ecuador.

Melody White

melody — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:03:40 +0000

Melody White

Communications Manager

Melody White is a journalist turned communications expert with a varied background in digital and interactive story telling. She's worked for tech giants like Salesforce and scrappy startups you've never heard of, as well as clean energy and healthcare nonprofits.

In her free time she runs a competitive karaoke league in Oakland.

Rev. Richard Cizik’s Route from the Altar to K Street to Lyft Driver

Jenny Park — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:53:24 +0000

Rev. Richard Cizik’s Route from the Altar to K Street to Lyft Driver

Tuesday October 20 2026 | 06:00 PM

October 20, 2026

5:30 p.m. check in
6:00 p.m. program

Also know: The speakers and audience will be videotaped for use on YouTube, and audience questions may be included in the radio and podcast versions of the show.

In-Person Ticket

Join Climate One, in partnership with The Redford Center, for a screening of the short film In Earth We Trust, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker, the film’s central figure, and other faith leaders.

Fifteen years ago, Reverend Richard Cizik had the attention of 30 million evangelical Christians and was generating momentum for a faith-based moral obligation to care for the planet. This idea of “Creation Care” was controversial, but Rev. Cizik became a media darling – the face of the more reasonable modern-day evangelical – until his outspoken ideals led others to force his resignation. This is the story of how a man, set on changing the world, went from vice president of one of the biggest religious organizations in America, and one of TIME Magazine's top 100 influential people, to becoming a part-time Lyft driver; the story of how he continues to influence hearts and minds when it comes to the environment; and ultimately, a story about finding common ground in a polarized world.

Following the film screening, Climate One Executive Director Jenny Park will be joined by the film’s director Sophie Morgan, Reverend Richard Cizik, Rabbi Josh Weisman, and Regina Banks, Director of the Lutheran Office of Public Policy California, for a lively conversation exploring the role faith leaders play in addressing the climate crisis and building common ground in an increasingly divided country.

Add to Calendar

Location

110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco CA 94105

Regina Banks

Director, Lutheran Office of Public Policy California

Richard Cizik

Executive Director, Evangelicals for Democracy

Sophie Morgan

Director, In Earth We Trust

Josh Weisman

Rabbi, Temple Beth Sholom; Co-Founder, Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest

Team

Jenny Park

Executive Director

Josh Weisman

Jenny Park — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:49:18 +0000

Josh Weisman

Rabbi, Temple Beth Sholom; Co-Founder, Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest

Rabbi Josh Weisman organizes, writes, and speaks at the intersection of Judaism, climate, and justice. Trained as a grass-roots organizer, he is co-founder of the Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest and other climate- and justice-oriented events and initiatives. As rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom, an independent synagogue in the Bay Area, he brings his passion for Jewish climate justice together with his love for community building, learning and teaching Torah, music, and pastoral care. He loves connecting with people and helping them find their own personally relevant ways for Judaism to add joy and meaning to their lives, build community, and repair our world. He lives with his wife, Pella Schafer Weisman, a professor of Drama Therapy, and their two children, Erez and Amaryah.

Sophie Morgan

Jenny Park — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:46:28 +0000

Sophie Morgan

Director, In Earth We Trust

Sophie Morgan, senior creative producer at Sound Off Films, is the producer and director of many award-winning science and nature projects. Morgan's credits include the BAFTA-nominated TINY WORLD - REEF (Apple TV+), narrated by Paul Rudd, OUR OCEANS for Netflix, narrated by Barack Obama, BAFTA and EMMY award-winning series BLUE PLANET II (BBC), and the award-winning BBC/PBS Natural World special MIRACLE IN THE MARSHES OF IRAQ about one man’s fight to save an ecosystem in a war zone.

In 2021, Morgan joined Sound Off Films where she has been developing original factual multi-genre concepts and working across entertainment and brand work. This has included video game projects including the award-winning 'Rooted Together' campaign for Minecraft/Xbox about mangrove conservation, Emmy-nominated digital southern nature series WILD WILD SOUTH for SCETV/PBS and various impact-driven social and environmental shorts. She is the director of the Redford Center-funded film “In Earth We Trust,” a short documentary on Reverend Richard Cizik that, through his story, aims to bridge the gap between the science and faith communities. Morgan is a pro-active conservationist and filmmaker who uses original storytelling techniques and impact strategy to inspire people to care about the natural world.

Richard Cizik

Jenny Park — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:41:04 +0000

Richard Cizik

Executive Director, Evangelicals for Democracy

Reverend Richard Cizik is a lobbyist, writer, clergyman and activist. As executive director for Evangelicals for Democracy (E4D), he is responsible for guiding the campaign and overseeing the program’s strategy, content and initiatives to build a community of evangelicals across the political spectrum who champion democracy as an act of Christian faith.

Cizik also serves as president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (NEP), a faith-based organization he founded in 2010, where he has spent the past 12 years advancing a “New Evangelical” agenda where democratic principles are at the core of public policy. Before founding NEP, Cizik was vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) where he advocated on behalf of evangelicals before Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. During this time, he authored "The High Cost of Indifference" and organized the landmark document, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." He was forced to resign from his position at NAE in 2008 after 28 years for publicly supporting civil unions, and for his advocacy on climate change.

Cizik was named to the “TIME 100” in 2008 for his work with Nobel Laureate Eric Chivian in bringing people of faith and scientists together to address climate change.

His life story, detailing his climate change advocacy work, is profiled in the short documentary “In Earth We Trust.” The documentary hopes to reach hearts and minds on opposing ends of the aisle, to come together to support the environment.

Regina Banks

Jenny Park — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:38:01 +0000

Regina Banks

Director, Lutheran Office of Public Policy California

Regina Q. Banks is a womanist climate activist and professional advocate for economic, social and political justice. She serves as the director of the Lutheran Office of Public Policy California and on the boards of Lutheran Social Services of Northern California and California Interfaith Power and Light. Banks is a proud alumna of Valparaiso University School of Law and Lincoln University (MO). She lives in her hometown of Sacramento and in her spare time she works on several social justice issues including housing security and ending the deep childhood poverty in California.

Climate One

Josh Freed

Josh Freed

Manish Bapna

Manish Bapna

New Nuclear, Old Challenges. What Now?

New Nuclear, Old Challenges. What Now?

Guests

Manish Bapna

Denia Djokić

Josh Freed

Edwin Lyman

Send a voice message to Climate One

Geothermal: So Hot Right Now

What’s the Future of Nuclear Power?

John Doerr and Ryan Panchadsaram: Speed & Scale’s Reality Check

De-Hyping Hydrogen

Artificial Intelligence, Real Climate Impacts

Let’s Talk Dirty to Clean Energy

The Nuclear Option

Two Voices on Climate That Will Surprise You

Denia Djokić

Denia Djokić

Melody White

Melody White

Rev. Richard Cizik’s Route from the Altar to K Street to Lyft Driver

Rev. Richard Cizik’s Route from the Altar to K Street to Lyft Driver

Regina Banks

Richard Cizik

Sophie Morgan

Josh Weisman

Jenny Park

Josh Weisman

Josh Weisman

Sophie Morgan

Sophie Morgan

Richard Cizik

Richard Cizik

Regina Banks

Regina Banks