The Brussels Report Podcast Episode 31 – with Rod Richardson
The Brussels Report Podcast
BrusselsReport.eu
0.0 • 0 Ratings
🗓️ 16 June 2023
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rod Richardson is a philanthropist who serves as the President of the Grace Richardson Fund (GRF), which is the leading private foundation pioneering free market climate policy. He is also co-founder/co-chair of the Climate & Freedom International Coalition Meeting, co-facilitated in collaboration with Americans for Tax Reform Foundation/Tholos Foundation.
GRF pioneers new free market solutions to emerging 21st century challenges. Their free market climate policy consists of a set of new proposals rooted in the observation that the key solution for climate change, poverty and the evils that follow, is one and the same thing: more freedom, noting that “all the tools in the free market toolbox — free trade, competition, property rights, supply side tax policy, democracy, and rule of law, etc. — can be combined in novel ways to powerfully accelerate not only the innovation and deployment of ever cleaner solutions, but the expansion of freedom itself — and with that, the eradication of global poverty. As a hybrid private foundation / think tank, GRF follows a strategy of collaborative policy innovation. It convenes scores of fellow think tanks and hundreds of scholars and experts, to brainstorm and develop new freedom-expanding solutions to the pressing problems of our time.”
In this this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses the following topics with him:
- Why taxing carbon and the punitive approach to deal with climate change is simply not working
- What could be an alternative, more functional approach?
- The role of the non-Western world in the context of climate policies
- Nuclear power and liberalisation of energy markets
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Brussels Report Podcast |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, my name is Peter Clapper. I'm the editor of Brussels Report Report and this is a new episode of the Brussels Report. I'm the editor of Brussels Report and this is a new episode of the Brussels Report podcast. |
| 0:24.5 | I'm very happy to have with me as my guest today, Rod Richardson. |
| 0:30.2 | Rod is the president of the Grace Richardson Fund and he's also the co-hosts of the Climate and Freedom International Coalition Meeting, |
| 0:39.5 | which is being hosted together with Americans for Tax Reform. So welcome, Rod. |
| 0:46.1 | Thank you very much, Peter. |
| 0:48.4 | Well, Rod, you're one of these people, I would say, that is looking at climate and energy policy from a free market perspective. |
| 0:57.1 | And one of the reasons I thought it was great to interview you is that you are basically, |
| 1:04.3 | you know, promoting a project that is going beyond the classical divides, you know, between, let's say, climate zealots, |
| 1:15.9 | if we can call them like that, that only want to have sort of more carbon taxation and things like that. |
| 1:24.2 | And climate denialists, people that always try to you know discuss the |
| 1:31.1 | science behind it which obviously is incredibly complex and try to make the |
| 1:35.8 | point that it's all fake or not such a problem so so what I find interesting is |
| 1:41.2 | that you're sort of trying to make free marketeers more relevant in the debate. |
| 1:48.4 | And my first question is, so what precisely and why precisely do you think that the current approach that we see both in the United States, but certainly in Europe, of taxing carbon. Why is that so undesirable? |
| 2:04.3 | Well, let me just go back for just a second and address your point about the divide between, |
| 2:14.1 | you know, the alarmists and the deniers and you know the place of the free |
| 2:20.4 | marketeers this artificial divide is is completely you know wrong and wrong-headed |
| 2:29.1 | because you know Peter you are I, in favor of free trade, correct? |
| 2:36.0 | Absolutely. |
| 2:37.0 | You're in favor of competition, right? |
| 2:40.0 | Absolutely. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BrusselsReport.eu, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BrusselsReport.eu and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.