Flooding Fort Berthold: The History of Three Native American Tribes and One Dam, with Angela Parker
In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Angela Parker, an assistant professor at the University of Denver and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Cree Tribes. Parker recently published a book on the history of the Three Affiliated Tribes—the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara—who live on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. This land, situated along the Missouri River, became the site of the Garrison Dam, a project built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s and 1950s that flooded parts of the reservation and forced roughly 90 percent of the Native population to relocate to higher ground. Parker discusses the cultural and ecological significance of the Missouri River to the Three Affiliated Tribes, the efforts of community members to resist the dam’s construction, and the lasting negative impacts of the dam.
References and recommendations:
“Damming the Reservation: Tribal Sovereignty and Activism at Fort Berthold” by Angela K. Parker; https://www.oupress.com/9780806194615/damming-the-reservation/
Image of George Gillette signing a contract for the sale of Fort Berthold land; https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-weeps-at-land-sale-washington-dc-george-gillette-news-photo/515360260
“The Effects of Dams on Tribal Lands, with Heather Randell” episode of the Resources Radio podcast; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/the-effects-of-dams-on-tribal-lands-with-heather-randell/
“The Pitt” television show; https://www.max.com/shows/pitt-2024/e6e7bad9-d48d-4434-b334-7c651ffc4bdf
“Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams; https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250391230/carelesspeople/
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35:38
Economic Effects and Public Concerns from Cloud Seeding, with Jonathan Jennings
In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Jonathan Jennings, a meteorologist at the Utah Division of Water Resources and president of the Weather Modification Association. Jennings’s work focuses on cloud seeding, a technology that can reduce hail and increase rainfall or snowfall by introducing chemicals into clouds, yielding more water for agriculture, aquifers, and bodies of water. Jennings outlines the chemistry and physics behind cloud seeding, how much additional precipitation the technology can elicit from clouds, and the scale at which cloud seeding is used. He also speaks to public concerns about modifying weather and shares insights on how experts can better communicate the goals, methods, and impacts of this technology to the public.
References and recommendations:
“Economic Impacts of Cloud Seeding on Agricultural Crops in North Dakota” by Dean Bangsund and Nancy Hodur; https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/291806
“A Benefit-Cost Analysis of Texas Weather Modification Activities Resulting in an Additional One Inch of Rainfall Across a Region” by Jason L. Johnson; https://perma.cc/ERJ6-HGLZ
“Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River” by Patrick Dearen; https://www.oupress.com/9780806152011/bitter-waters/
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33:19
Survey Says: Searching for Common Ground Amid Partisan Divide, with Brian Kennedy
In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Brian Kennedy, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. Kennedy focuses on science and society research, studying public attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs about science—including energy and environmental issues. Kennedy and a coauthor released survey results about US public opinion on climate change and related issues at the end of 2024. Kennedy discusses how the survey was conducted and shares his insights on the survey’s findings, such as differences in public attitudes toward the clean energy transition; how partisanship is a powerful predictor of views on climate change, climate policy, and even perceptions of extreme weather events; and points of overlap at which Democrats and Republicans share support for certain climate and environmental policies and objectives.
References and recommendations:
“How Americans View Climate Change and Policies to Address the Issue” by Brian Kennedy and Alec Tyson; https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2024/12/09/how-americans-view-climate-change-and-policies-to-address-the-issue/
“What the data says about Americans’ views of climate change” by Alec Tyson, Cary Funk, and Brian Kennedy; https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
“Climate Insights” survey series from Resources for the Future; https://www.rff.org/climateinsights/
“Religious Landscape Study” from Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/
“Surveying American Public Opinion on Climate Change, with Jon Krosnick” podcast episode from Resources Radio; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/surveying-american-public-opinion-on-climate-change-with-jon-krosnick/
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27:59
How Environmental Groups Influence Policy, with Laura Grant
In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Laura Grant, an associate professor at Claremont McKenna College. Many environmental nonprofit groups have been working to influence policy, but relatively little research has demonstrated how the efforts of these groups shape policy outcomes, and how some groups may support, catalyze, or even substitute for government action. In this episode of Resources Radio, Grant discusses new research that aims to better understand the work of environmental nonprofits, including various methods that environmental groups use to advance progress on key environmental issues, from headline-grabbing protests to litigation and research.
References and recommendations:
“The Roles of Environmental Groups in Economics” by Laura Grant and Christian Langpap; https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730902
“Orwell’s Roses” by Rebecca Solnit; http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/orwells-roses/
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29:36
Connecting Climate Change to the Weather We See, with Emily Theokritoff
In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Emily Theokritoff, a research associate at Imperial College London. Theokritoff specializes in climate damage attribution—the emerging science of connecting human activity and climate change to extreme weather events. Theokritoff breaks down this evolving field of study, how research that attributes extreme weather events to climate change is conducted, the challenges posed by a lack of historical data in parts of the world, and how scientists deal with uncertainty in determining the causes of past and future events. She also shares her perspective on how scientists in the field of extreme weather attribution are adapting research and communication methods to provide the public with faster, clearer insights in the face of increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events.
References and recommendations:
“Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world” from Carbon Brief; https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-studies/index.html
Resources Radio is a weekly podcast by Resources for the Future. Each week we talk to leading experts about climate change, electricity, ecosystems, and more, making the latest research accessible to everyone.
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