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Climate One

When Climate Work Comes at a Cost: Dispatches From the Upside Down

Climate One

Climate One

News, Social Sciences, News Commentary, Science, Earth Sciences

4.7583 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Human-caused climate change is fueling extreme floods, wildfires, rising seas, and record-breaking heat all around the world. At the same time, some of the most senior U.S. government officials and other powerful actors are actively defunding climate programs, dismantling research institutions, erasing decades of environmental data, and launching direct attacks on climate professionals. This week’s episode is about what it’s like to be a climate scientist, researcher, or environmental professional trying to do meaningful work in a country with a government that increasingly doesn’t want it. Many have faced harassment, threats, or dismissal — or live in fear that their funding will be frozen or cut. How does it feel to do climate work not just in an era of climate denial, but of deliberate climate erasure?  Episode Guests: Rachel Rothschild,  Assistant Professor, University of Michigan Law School Brent Efron, Senior Manager for Permitting Innovation, Environmental Policy Innovation Center J. Timmons Roberts, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, Brown University **For show notes and related links, visit ⁠climateone.org/podcasts.⁠ Highlights:  00:00 – Intro 03:00 – Brent Efron on how he got into climate work 05:30 – Efron relates a casual date he had in DC 08:00 – Efron is contacted by Project Veritas, who plans to release a video they recorded of his comments about his work at the EPA during the date 11:00 – Hate and public backlash following his remarks, as well as the EPA 13:00 – Efron is contacted by EPA investigators and the FBI 17:30 – His new job in climate policy and how it feels to be doing that work again 21:30 – Rachel Rothschild explains climate superfund laws 25:00 – An organization uses FOIA to request Rothschild’s emails with environmental groups, then filed a lawsuit 32:00 – Personal and professional toll it has taken on her 37:00 – Needing to have threat monitoring 41:00 – How she thinks about her work as a teacher 42:30 – J. Timmons Roberts explains his work on links between offshore wind opposition groups and entities tied to fossil fuel interests 48:00 – Marzulla Law sends a letter to Brown University demanding Roberts’ work be redacted 52:30 – Universities in vulnerable position right now 58:45 – Why uncovering climate obstruction work is so important 59:45 – Climate One More Thing *** Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on ⁠Patreon⁠, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. ⁠Sign up today⁠. Ad sales by ⁠Multitude⁠. Contact them for ad inquiries at ⁠multitude.productions/ads⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

So this week's episode is called When Climate Work Comes at a Cost, Dispatches from the Upside Down.

0:06.6

And I think some listeners might appreciate knowing what is the upside down?

0:11.2

Yeah. So the Upside Down is a reference to the show Stranger Things.

0:15.2

And for the uninitiated, it's basically this alternate mirror dimension of the real world, but one that is kind of like underground and very dystopian.

0:26.6

It's dark. It's scary. It's like decaying. There's like electric storms and really scary monsters.

0:33.6

But it's also, it is like a mirror image of know, image of the world that the characters live in.

0:39.1

And so that felt apt to the moment that we're living in a little bit.

0:44.2

Yeah, especially for a lot of people who are working in climate right now, it can feel like

0:49.5

a bizarro world where you start out as a scientist and now you're getting attacked for your research.

0:56.2

And, you know, it's not fantasy.

0:58.1

It's real scary situations.

1:00.9

Indeed.

1:01.8

I'm Ariana Brocious.

1:03.0

I'm Kushanavidar.

1:04.0

And this is Climate One.

1:08.6

It is a really tough time to be working in fields like climate and the environmental sciences.

1:14.6

Honestly, when I read the daily headlines, it just feels kind of like a deluge of disaster.

1:19.1

There's a lot of bad news out there.

1:21.2

Yes, and it's worth mentioning that climate work isn't completely stalling out,

1:25.0

but it's hard to see all of these rollbacks and cuts and

1:28.2

canceled projects when we should be making progress. And climate in particular has kind of seemed to become almost a taboo realm because of the opposition and outright denial and attacks that are coming from many parties, including our own government. It reminds me of having a scientist come on to a pre-interview for this show,

1:49.8

and they were in tears, and they said they couldn't risk being on a show called Climate One right now,

...

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