Interviews / Q&As

YSE Professor Yuan Yao discusses the environmental costs and benefits of artificial intelligence.

YSE and Yale faculty experts discuss the potential impacts of the Supreme Court's recent Chevron decision — on environmental regulations, ESG, and efforts to combat climate change.

In an op-ed published in The New York Times over Memorial Day weekend, “America’s Trails Are a Wonder, and They Need Our Help,” Professor Justin Farrell and master’s student Steven Ring ’25 MEM highlighted the need to better maintain neglected and often deteriorating public trails in the U.S.

Tagan Engel, resident fellow at CBEY, talks with YSE News on the challenges facing the food system, the lab’s progress, and its goals.

Now, in its fourth year, the Carbon Containment Lab founded by Dean Takahashi, former senior director of the Yale Investments Office, has collaborated on dozens of projects — both within Yale and externally — aimed at supporting carbon containment strategies with large-scale implementation potential. Recently, CC Lab, formerly based at the Yale School of the Environment, spun off from Yale

Yale School of the Environment Professor of Economics Matthew Kotchen discusses the viability of Africa’s call for a global tax on carbon.

For the past 15 months, Professor Daniel Esty has been co-leading the Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future Project at the World Trade Organization. In advance of Climate Week NYC, he discusses how international trade can, in fact, be remade to support sustainable development and the transition to a low-carbon future.

In the face of increased drought, floods, and rapid population growth, combined with the burgeoning water demands from the agriculture, industry, and energy sectors, how can we ensure access to clean water and adequate supplies? Yale School of the Environment Professors Jim Saiers and Shimi Anisfeld offer some thoughts on potential short and long-term solutions.

How to balance shared stewardship, co-management, and tribal sovereignty to protect and sustain more than 100 million acres of Indigenous lands in the U.S.  is a fundamental question in conservation. Pat Gonzales-Rogers, a former director and current consultant for the Bears Ears Coalition, has brought his deep experience on these issues to the Yale School of the Environment this year. 

As the debate about healthy forests, logging, and climate change gets more heated, The Forest School's Mark Bradford and Joe Orefice explain why cutting trees, when done appropriately, can lead to more resilient forests while yielding renewable forest products.

From clean electricity investment credit to funding to restore coastal ecosystems, YSE faculty offer insight into how the Inflation Reduction Act may help us meet urgent environmental challenges — and where there’s still work to be done.

YSE’s Rob Klee, former Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, examines the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision limiting the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. 

Recently elected to one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies, YSE Professor Karen Seto talks about how cities can be a catalyst for generating solutions to climate change, what she is hoping to bring to the academy, and her role in developing the new Yale Center for Cities and Climate Solutions.

For Earth Day, Dean Indy Burke joined Yale University President Peter Salovey on his monthly Yale Talk podcast for a conversation covering a wide range of environmental issues.

The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, gives a stark of the effects of climate change globally and is a clarion call for action. Professor Daniel Esty discusses the key messages.