Climate Money Watchdog

Our guest tonight is Dr. Michael S. Wong, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He is also professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Materials Science and NanoEngineering. He was educated and trained at Caltech, MIT, and UCSB before arriving at Rice in 2001. His research program broadly addresses chemical engineering problems using the tools of materials chemistry, with a particular interest in energy and environmental applications ("catalysis for clean water"). He has received numerous honors, including the MIT TR35 Young Innovator Award, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Nanoscale Science and Engineering Young Investigator Award, Smithsonian Magazine Young Innovator Award, and the North American Catalysis Society/Southwest Catalysis Society Excellence in Applied Catalysis Award. He is research thrust leader on multifunctional nanomaterials in the NSF-funded NEWT (Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment) Engineering Research Center. He is chair of the ACS Division of Catalysis Science and Technology (CATL), and serves on the Applied Catalysis B: Environmental editorial board. Previous experiences include chairmanship of the AIChE Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum and Chemistry of Materials editorial board membership.
The focus of this podcast is recent work led by Dr. Youngkun Chung, one of Dr. Wong's postdoctoral research associates, which describes a new approach to filtering PFAS from water at 1,000 times the efficiency of methods such as activated carbon. Better still, the captured PFAS can be removed from this new filter medium in a process that renders it safe, and the medium ready for reuse.
Topics covered include:
Description of PFAS chemicals are
How they get into the environment
Limitations of existing filtration approaches
Details of the new technology
How Dr. Wong's team at Rice University collaborate to develop technlogies that use chemical engineering to make our environment cleaner.
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Our guest tonight is Bernadette Del Chiaro, Senior Vice President at the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit working to empower people with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment.

Bernadette leads EWG’s California operations, building the organization at the state level to continue its groundbreaking work on advancing critical environmental and public health priorities, through innovative policies, enhanced transparency and improved accountability of government agencies.

Del Chiaro has 30 years of experience building non-profit organizations focused on the goals of  clean energy and a healthier environment. Most recently, she served as the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association. Under her leadership, it became the nation’s largest clean energy business association focused on consumer-facing solar energy solutions.

Prior to that, she worked for nearly two decades for environmental non-profit organizations, including Environment California, where she championed the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, and the Toxics Action Center, where she helped neighborhood groups fight for their right to a clean environment.

Del Chiaro has authored several reports on a variety of energy topics and has been widely quoted in many national, international and local media outlets.

In tonight's episode we discuss the following:
Despite the known negative health effects of "forever chemicals" known as PFAS, they are still legally used as pesticides on food grown throughout the United States, with a few exceptions, such as in Maine.
In a March 2026 EWG study involving 930 samples of non-organic California-grown produce, 37% were found to be contaminated with PFAS-based pesticides.
EWG is supporting legislation such as AB 1603, which would ban the use of PFAS-based pesticides in California by 2035.
In the meantime, EWG recommends continuing to consume produce, favoring organic produce when feasible, and using proper washing techniques.
Risks associated with PFAS exposure can be further reduced by favoring produce on EWG's "Clean Fifteen" list, and avoiding the "Dirty Dozen".

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Our guest tonight is Lew Daly, Senior Fellow for Climate and Energy Policy at Just Solutions, where he works in partnership with state and federal organizations and networks in pursuit of a just and equitable clean energy transition. 
His previous 15 years work in the public policy field includes appointments such as:
Director of Policy and Research and Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Equity at Demos
Deputy Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute 
Lew is a lifelong resident of New York State--Born and raised in Onondaga County, Central New York State, and has been based with his family in Wester Harlem, New York City, since 1999. His New York service in the field includes:
Steering Committee member of the New York Renews Coalition from 2017-2020.
Co-coordinator: New York Renews Policy Development Committee, supporting the development and passage of the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection act in 2019.
Member of the New York City Offshore Wind Advisory Council in 2022 and 2023.
He has also worked internationally as a US member of the Global Well-Being Lab of the Presencing Institute and Germany's Global Leadership Academy, and as an International Advisory Board Member of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation at the University of Pretoria.
With Doug Koplow of Earth Track, Lew is the author most recently of the report, Taxpayer Costs for Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage, just out from Just Solutions and Earth Track. 
In addition to his extensive policy work, Lew's commentaries and feature articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Democracy Journal, Boston Review, Grist, and many other publications. 
Support the show
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While the fossil fuel industry continues to promote "natural gas" as a relatively "clean" energy source, Dr. Robert Howarth has argued since since his seminal report in 2011 that methane (which makes up roughly 5% of "natural gas") poses a greater threat to humankind than "dirty" options like coal and oil. This is particularly true of methane produced through hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") Join us for a conversation about what we've now known for more than a decade, and how much more convinced Dr. Howarth is now that we should not be fracking for gas, nor otherwise be using methane as an energy source.
Dr. Howarth is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. He’s an Earth systems scientist, ecosystem biologist, and biogeochemist. He has worked extensively on environmental issues related to human-induced changes in the sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon cycles, the impacts of global climate change, the interaction of energy systems and the environment, and implementation of 100% renewable energy policies. He is the Founding Editor of the journal Biogeochemistry.
Currently, Howarth serves as one of 22 members of the Climate Action Council, the group charged by law with implementing the aggressive climate goals of New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act of 2019, often referred to as CLCPA. Howarth has published more than 200 research papers, and these have been cited in other peer-reviewed articles more than 70,000 times, making Howarth one of the ten most cited aquatic scientists in the world. In 2011, Time Magazine named Howarth as one of 50 “People Who Matter” for his research on the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas produced from hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking”.
Topics Discussed Include:
Why methane is such a concern with regard to climate change
Why methane emissions are greater than predicted by the gas industry
Why Dr. Howarth believes methane is worse for the climate than coal
How some methane leaks are accidental while others are routine, and therefore can't be eliminated
How OGI thermal cameras are able to see methane and other greenhouse gasses
Further Reading
Dr. Howarth maintains a web site featuring many of the works he's published over the years, including the April 2011 paper on methane leaks from gas fracking.
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​We’re delighted to welcome back Poppy Alexander, a founding partner at the law firm Whistleblower Partners, a law firm dedicated to representing whistleblowers reporting fraud and misconduct in:
Healthcare
Procurement
Securities and Commodities
Taxes
Money Laundering and Sanctions Evasion
Customs
Environmental Remediation
Vehicle Safety
Poppy represents whistleblowers and government entities in qui tam lawsuits, as well as under the various agency whistleblower programs including those administered by the Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, FinCEN, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Department of Transportation.  Poppy’s practice focuses on issues of international corruption and financial misconduct, with a specialty in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering cases.  She writes and speaks regularly about emerging topics in financial fraud, including sanctions violations, SPACs, and cryptocurrency.
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We last spoke with Poppy back in July of 2022 when she had already established an impressive track record representing whistleblowers at Constantine Cannon. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012. She was the co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and an active participant in the Human Rights Clinic, working on issues related to corporate accountability for human rights violations in Africa and military abuses in Southeast Asia. She was awarded the Dean’s Award for Community Leadership in recognition for her contributions to the school community. Poppy has been named to the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list every year since 2016. Prior to law school, Poppy worked on election reform issues before beginning graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied political and critical theory.

We’ve invited Poppy to talk about her new work, and her new firm, Whisteblower Partners.
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Topics Discussed Include:
Poppy’s new law firm, Whistleblower Partners. Why Poppy left her old firm to establish this new legal partnership in March 2024.  She describes a comprehensive approach to whistleblowers and not just file cases.
The laws Whistleblower Partners uses in environmental cases and how they have changed since the episode we published in July 2023. Qui tam False Claims Act, SEC, IRS, Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), and various wildlife protection laws.
Examples of Whistleblower Partners victories.
Pitfalls of whistleblowing and filing lawsuits and administrative tips programs.
 
Further Reading / Topics Discussed in this Episode:
Mighty Earth  vs. JBS in protecting the Brazilian rainforest
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s 90th birthday

Support the show
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!