Since accepting its first graduate students in 1975, the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley has inspired generations of physicists, economists, engineers, social scientists, and ecologists to reframe ecological and resource issues by incorporating methods and approaches from numerous traditional disciplines. As ERG celebrates 50 years of impact, founders John Harte, John Holdren, and Dick Norgaard participated in oral history-style interviews in summer 2024 to share fascinating stories of ERG’s early years, including some close encounters with Jerry Brown and Dick Cheney. Read their conversations below (transcripts have been edited).
John Harte
Professor John Harte trained as a physicist and became an ecologist, conducting consequential research on acid rain, climate change, and complex systems. He began his Berkeley career at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, eventually moving to appointments shared between ERG and CNR. He is also an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute and has authored eight books and more than 250 articles. He is an elected
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Ecological Society of America. He has won numerous awards and honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a George Polk prize in investigative journalism, and the Leo Szilard prize from the American Physical Society. He has mentored ERG students from its earliest period of teaching and helped develop ERG’s core courses.
John Holdren
Professor Holdren was on the UC Berkeley faculty from 1973 to 1996, and then moved to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He served as President Obama’s science advisor and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for eight years and is also president emeritus of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, the independent environmental research organization formerly known as Wood’s Hole. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, with numerous notable affiliations, publications, and awards. At the time of this interview, he was one of only three living original members of the group that launched ERG.
Richard Norgaard
Professor Richard Norgaard joined the Berkeley faculty in 1970 in agricultural economics and soon joined early cross-disciplinary lunches held by the young Energy and Resources Committee. He was a faculty affiliate of ERG at its formal start as a graduate group, and later joined its core faculty. He is a fellow of the AAAS, with numerous publications and awards. Prof Norgaard is among the founders of ecological economics. He served as the second president of the International Society for Ecological Economics, and received the Society’s Kenneth Boulding Award. At the time of this interview, he was one of only three living original members of the group that launched ERG.