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Amy Harder

Executive Editor

Cipher

June 21, 2024
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Ep 116: Amy Harder - Executive Editor, Cipher
00:00 / 01:04

Host [00:00:57] Welcome back to the Energy Impact Podcast. Today, I'm here with Amy Harder, a veteran energy journalist and the Executive Editor of Cipher. Amy, it's great to have you with us.

Amy Harder [00:01:06] Thank you so much for having me on.

Host [00:01:08] Well, let's just start with some first-person questions. Tell our audience a little bit about where you grew up, where you went to school, and how you ultimately ended up in a career in journalism.

Amy Harder [00:01:20] Yeah, happy to. Well, thanks again for having me on. So, I grew up in a tiny town... Actually, on a cattle ranch in eastern Washington State. Growing up on a ranch and living in a rural area I think really helps me have a broader understanding of some of the challenges that we all face in the world, and particularly on energy and climate change.

Amy Harder [00:01:43] So, it's a very small town in eastern Washington State, where I grew up. And then, I went to school. I went to university at Western Washington University, a regional public university here in the state. We're actually working on a publishing partnership with Western, which is focusing more on energy and climate issues recently, so that's great.

Amy Harder [00:02:04] Although I'm from Washington State and I now reside in Washington State, I've actually spent most of my adult life in Washington, DC; the other Washington, as I often say. 12 years of my life... I really moved there right after college. And I had always known I wanted to do journalism and dabbled in a lot of different things in DC until I fell into energy.

Host [00:02:29] And so within all of this, was your realization that journalism was the career you wanted to pursue... Was that something that happened in college when you moved to DC, or was that literally all the way back when you were growing up?

Amy Harder [00:02:42] It was in college when I crystallized my focus on journalism. I always enjoyed writing. I did some pretty fascinating fiction writing when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. But it was in college when I realized I wanted to do journalism. I was on the school newspaper and really learned a lot from those experiences. The Western Front is what it was called. One of my first big scoops was using this new website called The Facebook to find a source. So, I'm definitely dating myself when I say that.

Amy Harder [00:03:17] Yeah, so I loved journalism at the time. And even though Western had at the time... And still does, an environmental magazine called The Planet and the Huxley School of the Environment, I wasn't really into that at the time, which is unfortunate; I could have learned a lot more. But now Western is doing a lot more on this front. They have an Institute of Energy Studies, really digging into a lot of these important points of the energy system.

Amy Harder [00:03:41] So, I kind of just fell into it later on the energy front, but journalism was something I've always known I wanted to do. And specifically, the part where you get to learn every single day of your life. And when you get out of college and into the real world, you get paid to learn, when usually it's the opposite, right? You pay a teacher to to teach you, but in journalism it's the opposite. And I really love that.

Host [00:04:07] Yeah, most professions, it seems, are not ones that actually reward you for taking the time to research, to talk to other people, to become more knowledgeable about a variety of domains. There's only a handful of careers I can think of that that fit that description.

Host [00:04:24] Drilling down a bit further on the ultimate focus in energy journalism, talk a little bit more about what some of those early journalism jobs were. And then, when specifically was the pivot to energy issues in particular? Was that something that happened very suddenly with a particular role? Was that something that sort of just happened gradually over time with a variety of stories? Just help contextualize how you ultimately found yourself in this particular focus.

Amy Harder [00:04:51] Well, I initially thought toward the end of my college days that I wanted to be a legal journalist, which meant I actually took the LSAT and had planned to move out to DC just for a year or so to work at a nonprofit supporting legal rights of journalists. It seems silly now to go through all that debt of law school to just go back to writing and journalism, which isn't exactly known for making a lot of money. So needless to say, I did not go to law school, and I'm happy about that. But journalism is sort of... It's a different type of deliberation, so I see similarities in them.

Amy Harder [00:05:31] I mention that because one of my first big assignments... A DC-based publication called The National Journal was covering the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. And I was in the room during her confirmation, and it was a really incredible experience. But once you're done one of the Supreme Court nominations, you've kind of done them all. Although, there have been some interesting ones as of late. But needless to say, it wasn't my cup of tea covering strict politics.

Amy Harder [00:05:59] And so, around 2009, 2010, there was a desire and a need for more support on the energy beat at National Journal. And my editor said, "Hey, why don't you do that?" And I fell into it and I never really looked back. It's partly because it's such an important beat and it's relatively unappreciated. And going back to the learning point, I am learning. I learn about so many things, whether it's rural America and the climate impacts of cows, or if it's geopolitics of liquefied natural gas, or the promise of fusion and hydrogen. The sky is, quite literally, not even the limit, actually, when it comes to this beat. And so, that's when I started. And it's crazy that it's been more than 15 years now.

Host [00:06:51] You've alluded to geography a bit. And you said that you lived in DC for a long time. I currently live in DC. Obviously, DC is a very particular type of place to live. What are some of the energy or environmental or climate blind spots that people in DC press-policy circles, the intelligentsia... What are certain blind spots that folks like that might have that folks in rural Washington State, who have a very different day-to-day lived reality... What are some of those differences in perspectives, to the extent there are any, that you've noticed in your career between people in DC and then people living in places like rural Washington?

Amy Harder [00:07:37] Yeah, how long do we have? I had a colleague and a friend at the Wall Street Journal who I won't name because this isn't a flattering comment I'm about to make. But the person made a comment and said that they had never been outside of a city and have known nobody who lived in a rural part of the country or even the world. And that to me is a real shame, because we live in a symbiotic relationship.

Amy Harder [00:08:00] Here in Washington State, like many states, there's a rural component and a city component. The cows that my family raises, most of that steak is shipped all over the country, but it often just winds up in the Whole Foods at Bellevue. Bellevue, Washington, just across Lake Washington from Seattle. The rural Americans need the city dwellers to operate. And so, understanding that larger ecosystem, I think is really important.

Amy Harder [00:08:30] And another thing that is certainly much more transcendent than just a conversation about energy and climate change, this idea that we need to be humble about what we don't know about the people that we're talking to. The county that my family lives in, Lincoln County, is actually debating some solar and wind farm proposals within the county limits. And I tuned in remotely to the recent hearing. And it was really... There's concern about the impacts of wind turbines on wildfire reaction, for example. So, I think having some humility about the concerns that these people have is really important.

Amy Harder [00:09:10] I also think understanding that what works for somebody in DC is not going to work for somebody in the tiny town that I grew up in. It's called Sprague, Washington, for anybody who wants to go learn about that tiny little town. For example, I listened to a podcast. Again, I won't name names, but the podcast speakers were talking about how they were so surprised hybrids are doing so well around the country. Conventional hybrids, mind you. The Toyota Priuses... Disclaimer, I drive a Toyota Prius. People are so surprised that hybrids are doing well as opposed to fully electric or plug-in hybrids.

Amy Harder [00:09:52] I have known for a very long time why hybrids are doing well. It's because it's so much easier than having to worry about plugging in. And that's just the way... So, I think having this sense of like, "I'm just not respecting what other people's lived experiences are," is really important. And that helps to try to get at some of the acrimony and division that we have in our country, which is much larger than this podcast. But I think it applies to the energy and climate space.

Host [00:10:24] Well, let's pivot to Cipher, specifically. Tell our listeners what Cipher is, when it was founded, the problem it's trying to solve, and why you specifically ended up joining.

Amy Harder [00:10:35] Yeah, great. Well, Cipher News is a relatively new publication. We launched as a newsletter form in September, 2021. Expanded to a full website in September, 2023. We're currently financially supported by Breakthrough Energy. That's the clean energy organization founded by Bill Gates; many of your listeners, I'm sure, are familiar with Breakthrough.

Amy Harder [00:10:58] I often use the example of Kaiser Health News... Formerly called Kaiser Health News, now called KHN News, as a model for what we're doing. And of course, it's in the health care space. But for your readers who may be familiar with KHN News, it's been around since 2009. It was founded and is currently still partially funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation to support explanatory journalism on health care. It's been wildly successful with partnerships all over the country, with NPR and others. And that's really what we're trying to do with Cipher News and climate technologies and climate solutions, more broadly.

Amy Harder [00:11:39] So, Breakthrough Energy is supporting us to really help support the broader ecosystem of teaching the world, and in particular, the leaders who have to make big decisions on climate technologies, teaching them about what these technologies mean, the impacts that they can have, the pros and cons. We're not here to take sides on which technologies should win out and which shouldn't. We're here to really be arbiters of, what I've called the "wild and wonky new world we're living in," where we're all interacting with these new technologies, thanks in part to several different factors. But one, of course, is the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest US climate bill in history, and arguably the world. Probably outside of China, though; I should have that asterisk.

Host [00:12:25] This will probably be self-evident to many of our listeners, but when you say climate technologies, maybe talk through specifically what are some of those, at least the more prominent climate technologies that you guys are tending to focus on? I realize they're not all made equal, but you mentioned pros and cons. What, fundamentally, are the reasons to be bullish or optimistic about the future of climate technologies in the United States just in terms of their adoption and success? And what are reasons for concerns, or just challenges or vulnerabilities, that many of these technologies face, partly because so many of them are still in their nascent phases?

Amy Harder [00:13:01] Let me take that from the back to your first question. So, we focus on technologies largely because... Love or hate the existence of technologies, a problem as large as climate change will almost inevitably need to be answered and solved through technology. I think one great but unfortunate example of that is the Covid-19 pandemic, where we ultimately, largely, but not completely, solved the pandemic once we had the vaccines, which is a form of technology innovation. And so, we saw the challenges that the pandemic put on our lives. Climate change is a centuries long problem. There's no way that we're going to sacrifice or change our lives for a problem that's not going to go away in our lifetimes. Therefore, we need new and better technologies to solve the problem of climate change.

Amy Harder [00:14:00] And an example of that, to get to your first question about some of the things that we cover... We cover the whole gamut of all climate solutions. I think most people think about, most frequently, electric cars. So, I often use this as an example. Electric cars is what I call sort of the "gateway drug" to all climate technologies, because it's something that is becoming more and more recognizable. Also, it's becoming more and more controversial. We've been seeing that in the presidential election. But take an electric car, and you can tell the whole climate tech story.

Amy Harder [00:14:32] Where does the steel come from? Steel is an extremely emissions heavy process. There are some automakers that are using greener steel. Where does the electricity come from that can power that electric car? What's the cement that the car is driving on? Is that green cement, or is it the dirtier kind? All of those stories are all wrapped up in this car that most people can easily recognize. So, that's something that we often talk about when we cover a lot of the technologies. We try to remind people, "Well, this is how it matters to you, and how it matters to the bigger picture."

Host [00:15:13] Obviously, one technology that is top of mind at the moment is artificial intelligence, partly because artificial intelligence is sort of uniquely capable of augmenting, or at least affecting, all of these other domains around it. What, in your view, is the state of AI as a tool or supplement for clean technologies? Is AI the sort of tool that's already being adopted by the companies, the entrepreneurs, the innovators you have in mind? Or, is AI still a long way off from actually being implemented into many of these different technologies?

Amy Harder [00:15:54] I think it's definitely already being implemented across the board. I know there's been a lot of research done, sort of on the double-edged sword impact. I say that because, yes, the potential impact is literally exponential.

Amy Harder [00:16:10] One thing that's really intriguing to me... And Cipher has run what we call Voices articles, which is our version of op-eds. We've run Voices articles on this topic where AI can literally speed up the innovation process. So, for something like to discover, "How can we make fusion work better?" Machine learning can actually speed up the process that humans can go through to determine how to do these things better. That's really exciting because I think many of us who work in this space realize that time is of the essence.

Amy Harder [00:16:44] But the other side of the coin... My colleague, Cat Clifford, wrote a really great article about this recently, are the big energy impacts and energy requirements of AI. AI is being lumped in with other data center energy demands, such as cryptocurrency, and just the internet, generally speaking. And that's a concern. I think right now it's a small one or two percentage of the overall electricity demand in the entire world. That's for all data centers, but that's concerning at a time when we should be reducing emissions and energy demand, not actually creating wholly new categories.

Amy Harder [00:17:31] So, I think the pros probably outweigh the cons here in the energy space. I'm no expert to talk about the pros and cons outside of it, but the energy demands need to be managed. And I think it's no coincidence that a lot of the leading tech companies, Microsoft, Google, and others who have historically been leaders on, for example, renewable energy procurement and making investments in new climate technologies, they're also leading on AI. And they know that they need to make sure that they are using clean energy to power their AI operations.

Host [00:18:10] It's also one of the reasons why many of the large tech companies have expressed a bullishness about nuclear energy, specifically because, like you said, they sort of have a two-fold challenge. There are sheer power needs, which as you said, are already considerable. But those are going to only skyrocket as things like AI and crypto become more commonplace. But then, they still have a carbon problem at the same time to worry about because of how energy intensive those sorts of things are.

Host [00:18:35] And so, from our point of view anyway, nuclear energy is uniquely poised to check both of those boxes. Providing energy abundance and energy security, but it obviously being clean energy at the same time. The challenge is making nuclear development sufficiently affordable so these companies can afford to finance projects and so forth, and that they actually get online in time.

Amy Harder [00:18:59] Definitely. Another story that we had in Cipher recently was just about the increasing demands on electricity, generally speaking. We're entering an era where we're asking the electricity grid, in the US, and around the world, to not only power our homes and buildings, which it's been doing, but also our cars and our heating and our industrial emissions. And all of that added up is increasing electricity demand in a way that we haven't seen in decades. And so, one thing that we're going to be looking at more and more is what kind of resources can we ramp up that can provide steady power?

Amy Harder [00:19:42] And there are not a lot of options there. Of course, wind and solar are ramping up a lot. The challenge of long-duration energy storage is a big one that will enable wind and solar to be steady. Nuclear... Existing nuclear power plants is one big category that... And in my mind, I separate out a little bit, but with a dotted line that connects them, existing nuclear power and future advanced nuclear power.

Amy Harder [00:20:11] The importance of the existing nuclear power fleet, sort of the big plants that are not really being built anymore today... Keeping those operating for as long and as safely as possible will be really important. At the same time, we have to play the long game, and advanced nuclear technologies are also being researched and developed all over the country. And I think that's really important.

Amy Harder [00:20:35] Then, of course, the last one, carbon. Being able to somehow install technology onto, say, a natural gas plant that can capture the carbon emissions from that gas plant. That, in theory, seems like a really nice solution. It's typically very expensive, and you still have the environmental impacts of the upstream gas development, which is concerning for some folks from an environmental perspective. But finding reliable sources of electricity will be really important.

Amy Harder [00:21:09] And that's one reason why nuclear power has, over the last 5 to 10 years since I've been in this field, it's really come back to... Or, not come back; it never really was. But it's come into the fray as a climate solution. And it wasn't always there.

Host [00:21:26] I'd be curious to get your thoughts on the intersection of two variables here, technology and policy. As we're recording right now, it's April, but this year is obviously a huge election year across the globe. Like, literally billions of people are voting. And I wonder to what extent that affects the near-term future of clean technologies.

Host [00:21:47] I ask because... For instance, AI. Going back to that example, there's an argument that irrespective of what policymakers may or may not do, AI is already a runaway train. There's just no stopping big tech, investment banks, all these different entities from continuing to sort of put the pedal to the metal with AI R&D.

Host [00:22:07] I wonder if you think clean technology is basically the same way, or, if for instance, all these elections that happen this year could somehow dramatically change the trajectory of clean technology, X, Y, or Z? I just wonder what you think the relationship is between the future of this general space and the impact of elections and politics.

Amy Harder [00:22:32] I think the clean energy transition is so clearly happening that no election will press rewind completely. That said, politics and elections have consequences. And depending on how they go here in the United States and elsewhere around the world, things can be slowed.

Amy Harder [00:22:52] I think at this point in the transition, we're talking about pace, not direction for the long term. And this is something that I come back to again and again. Because you and I and politicians, we think of our lives in terms of years and months. And politicians think of their lives in two and four and six-year cycles.

Amy Harder [00:23:17] But the planet, which is 4.5 billion years old, it thinks of its life as much longer term than that. So, I think in a hundred years, people... Hopefully we're still around then. In 100 years, they'll look back and they'll see this as a time period when we really began to shift towards clean energy. But we could very likely go slower depending on how the elections go, and that's definitely a concern and something that we'll be watching carefully.

Amy Harder [00:23:49] At the same time, I do think it's important to have some nuance around this conversation of the pace of the transition, depending on where you are in the world. And I don't think it's fair to ask a country in Africa to not use propane, natural gas to heat their meals because we need to get off fossil fuels. That's not fair to them. And I think that type of nuance is important. That's separate from the elections, but I suspect conversations like that will be happening as these elections are underway.

Host [00:24:23] Actually, to that end a little... And we've been circling around this a bit throughout this conversation, but what are some of those other nuances or just maybe misconceptions or misunderstandings within the energy transition debate that stand out to you? What are particular question marks that you think need to be further explored or better understood between different people who care about the energy transition?

Amy Harder [00:24:47] One thing that we grapple with or contend with at Cipher is sort of bridging the gap between what's important and what people care about. Those are often not the same things. So, people care about electric cars. So, I often talk about electric cars because it's an easy thing to relate to. But at Cipher, we don't do a ton of electric car coverage because it's so saturated in the other media that people can get their electric car fix, and particularly their Tesla fix, in other outlets.

Amy Harder [00:25:16] What's important is industrial manufacturing emissions, which by the way, actually account for the largest share of emissions in the world. You don't think about that, but that's pretty surprising. I suspect if you polled an average 100 people in Times Square, I can almost certainly say that they probably wouldn't know that industrial emissions are even a thing, let alone the largest thing. Which is not me trying to judge people in Times Square for not being knowledgeable on this, it's just the fact that it's complicated, boring stuff. And so, trying to bridge the gap between boring and interesting and important and finding the nexus in those three things is really important.

Amy Harder [00:25:58] And also, realizing that we don't live in a black and white world. Climate change and energy forces us to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, meaning we have to accept that two conflicting things are true at the same time. That fossil fuels are providing an extremely important service to us right now, and, "Oh, by the way, they also are heating up our planet in an unacceptable way, and we need to find a new way to power our lives." Those two things are difficult to accept sometimes.

Amy Harder [00:26:32] Also, that large parts of Africa might be developing natural gas to power their industrial sector, while here in the United States, we should be trying to get off natural gas for our industrial sector. And I think sometimes our debate is very black and white because that's easier and it's simpler and it's certainly where politics lives. But we live in the gray world at Cipher, and I think that's something that we're constantly trying to convey to the broader world in an interesting, digestible way.

Host [00:27:04] Back to a more media-driven question, how has coverage of climate change changed, if it has at all, since you've been covering it? I'm trying to think of another example and nothing's coming to mind immediately, but this has obviously been such a front-and-center topic in the public domain for a long, long time. And as any listener can tell from this conversation, there are entire organizations devoted to covering this issue. How has that coverage changed in your time in this arena.

Amy Harder [00:27:36] It's changed dramatically. I think about this a lot, because the very existence of Cipher is a result of how the debate has changed. There are now a couple of different... Including Cipher, a couple of different outlets solely devoted to covering climate solutions. That's incredible, and a positive development.

Amy Harder [00:27:56] At the same time, there have been a lot of layoffs. CNBC laid off it's climate team. Cat Clifford, one of our reporters, came from CNBC. So, we don't want to see that. So, there have been ups and downs there.

Amy Harder [00:28:10] In terms of the beat itself... I remember in then-President Obama's 2011 State of the Union speech, he extolled the benefits of shale natural gas, the economic benefits and the carbon emission reductions of natural gas. Can you imagine President Biden doing that today? It's laughable. It's almost really hard to think about.

Amy Harder [00:28:35] Another example... Back when there was the debate about the rise of natural gas, the natural gas industry considered mounting a lobbying defense fight against the coal industry. Nobody really talks about coal in the United States anymore. That's because it's on the dramatic decline. But it's very much alive and operating in Southeast Asia and China and lots of other places in the world, so it's obviously extremely important. But the way the energy system has evolved, especially in the US, has been dramatic over the last 10 years.

Amy Harder [00:29:15] And also, the growing urgency of climate change itself. I was at the Wall Street Journal for three years during the Obama administration, and then I was among the first to work at Axios. And my first harder line column at Axios coincided with then-President Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. And that's when climate change really became something corporate executives talked about. Everybody from Larry Fink to ExxonMobil began talking. Larry Fink, of course, is the CEO of BlackRock.

Amy Harder [00:29:51] Corporate America started caring about climate change when then-President Trump came into office. And so, I think an open question is if the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, wins again, will there be a similar urgency among climate organizations and climate leaders to be, "Oh, no, we need to do something to keep action moving?" There may be. I would like us to be moving forward ahead aggressively regardless of who's in office. But politics obviously plays a role in expediting some of the urgency.

Host [00:30:31] I guess I don't know if you consider yourself a finance expert or if you've covered finance issues within your career, but ESG comes to mind in light of what you just said. How do you assess the future of ESG just as a general trend and force in society? It's become a significantly more controversial word in the last couple of years than I think it was probably five years ago, even though it was still relatively popular, or well-known anyway, five years ago. What's your general take on the state of ESG?

Amy Harder [00:31:03] ESG is one example of just sort of the constant roller coaster that we're on in any news beat, but particularly, energy and climate. And so for a while, ESG was just sort of a sleepy environmental metric for investing. And then, Trump was elected, the pandemic happened. Climate became a top issue. Larry Fink wrote about it in his 2020 letter, I believe, to his shareholders.

Amy Harder [00:31:31] And then, like so many things, it became very politicized. I don't think ESG in and of itself is inherently political. I'm convinced that anything that gets into the public debate could very well become politicized. It's not the original thing that's politicized, it's the conversation. Anything can be politicized, in my non-expert opinion, when it comes to politics. But from the energy perspective, that's how I see it.

Amy Harder [00:32:03] So, you've seen Larry Fink retreat a little bit on that, and you've seen others as well. And I think we'll continue on this roller coaster. For me, I go back to the long game that we're playing.

Amy Harder [00:32:17] We're also seeing a roller coaster with electric car sales. They went up and then they went down, sort of similar to the ESG. I think there was a big push in a lot of climate... Everything climate funding went up in 2020 and 2021, and things have since come back down. I'm convinced that we're going to level out and things are going to find, maybe, a middle ground. But if Trump wins in November, we could be in for another roller coaster ride.

Amy Harder [00:32:44] So, going back to one of the things I said about being humble, I'm just trying to be humble because I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen. I just know that I'll probably be wrong in some respects, and I'm going to remain humble about what might happen.

Host [00:33:02] Well along those lines, looking forward then... Is there a particular story that you want to write or edit or otherwise contribute to looking forward. And maybe a spin-off of that question... Is there a particular person you would be dying to interview in the future if you could?

Amy Harder [00:33:21] I want to answer that question, but I want to say one more thing about ESG from a substantive perspective. I know there was a lot of controversy... I think at one point, Tesla was considered not ESG. And some oil company, it might have even been Exxon, somehow was considered ESG. And that's because ESG, Environmental, Social, Governance, doesn't just represent environmental, although I think it took on that, mostly.

Amy Harder [00:33:45] I think it's an important thing to emphasize that Tesla has done an amazing leadership role on pushing electric cars into our markets, but it has a pretty shoddy track record on a lot of other things that represent social and governance. It has a lot of lawsuits pending in terms of labor rights and things like that, that has made it so it wouldn't be classified as ESG. And I think this is the type of nuance that was definitely lost in the debate about ESG. But I think it's important.

Amy Harder [00:34:18] The environment, climate change is obviously an extremely important problem, and it is probably the grandest problem, but it's not the only problem. I often say, "If you have cancer and you're in a car crash, you have two problems. You have cancer, and now you have a car crash." So, those are two different problems, but they're both urgent and important in different and both tragic ways. So, I just wanted to share that as an additional layer of depth on the ESG conversation.

Amy Harder [00:34:48] In terms of stories that we want to write and people we want to interview, we have so many amazing ideas and only enough time and reporters to devote to it. On the people front, we're really trying to find sort of unsung heroes, super secret rock stars. People who are doing big things on climate tech who people don't know about. Whether that's because they're not posting on LinkedIn constantly...

Amy Harder [00:35:20] Which isn't to say that's bad. I mean, we all have to do it; I do it as well. Although, John Oliver on Last Week Tonight made a joke about how nobody goes on LinkedIn, and I suddenly felt like an incredible nerd, along with the rest of us. But finding the people who are really moving the needle on these things, and it takes a lot of time to find those people. So, that's one thing that we're looking at. If anybody has any ideas, please reach out; my email is all over the internet. So, if you can't find it, you need to just look a little bit harder.

Amy Harder [00:35:53] And then in terms of one area, two trend areas that I would like to focus on but I don't have as much time to report on these days... One is really looking at sort of the psychology of people and how we interact with new technologies. We've seen sort of the collapse of alternative protein companies. I think the food and agriculture space. I'm obviously biased; I grew up on a cattle ranch. I disclose that when necessary.

Amy Harder [00:36:21] I think it's really interesting. How will we feed ourselves in a climate constrained world? It doesn't look like people love the alternative protein, lab-grown meats. But maybe there's more innovation to be had there.

Amy Harder [00:36:36] And then, the other one is just... The growth of clean energy is extremely important. Just as importantly, or if not more importantly, is the reduction of fossil fuels. I often say, which I wasn't the first to say this... I got it from John Kemp at Reuters. He may have been the first to say it... That we're not actually in an energy transition yet, we're in an energy addition. We're just adding clean energy on top of our fossil fuel system. So, how can we transition both the system of fossil fuels and the people of fossil fuels to clean energy? Telling those stories is also really important.

Host [00:37:13] Yeah, all very, very interesting. Well, thank you so much for your time. Finally, for those wondering, tell our listeners where they can find your work, your team's work, and keep up with everything you guys are working on.

Amy Harder [00:37:28] Yeah, you can go to ciphernews.com, to our website and sign up for our coverage there. You can find us on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter. We're on Threads. And you can find more about our publication on our website and follow our reporters. We have a small but mighty team covering, really, the whole world, because this is a global problem.

Host [00:37:56] Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Amy. Really, really appreciate it.

Amy Harder [00:38:00] Yeah, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me on.

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