Can you put a price on nature? Or maybe the better question is, should you put a price on nature?

It may sound like a bizarre concept, but it’s one that renowned environmental economist Ed Barbier says could be key to saving the planet.

Barbier is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at Colorado State University, as well as a Senior Scholar in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. His main expertise is natural resource and development economics and the interface between economics and ecology. He’s also the author of several books, including “Economics for a Fragile Planet: Rethinking Markets, Institutions and Governance,” which offers a blueprint for a greener and more inclusive economy.

In that book, Barbier writes that managing an increasingly delicate ecosystem requires us to rethink the “underpricing” of nature, and to decouple wealth creation from environmental degradation through business, policy and financial actions aimed at better stewardship.

Barbier recently spoke with CSU's The Audit about what a green economy looks like and how he believes we can get there.

There are lots of different types of friends. Best friends, work friends. Facebook friends, even frenemies. Each has an important role in our lives that has been shown to impact our mental and physical health.

Now the American Friendship Project, a new program co-led by Colorado State University communication studies researcher Natalie Pennington, provides one of the most complete looks at this highly critical — but rarely studied — relationship. In this episode of CSU's The Audit podcast, Pennington spoke about the project's findings, how we view friendship and how we can stay better connected.

Despite its landlocked location, Colorado State University is well known all along the Atlantic coast for its seasonal hurricane forecasts. Each spring, these forecasts predict the total amount and potential strength of storms for the upcoming hurricane season.
The forecasts were first developed and shared by pioneering atmospheric science researcher William Gray, and are frequently used by media, officials and community leaders to inform the public and make planning decisions. Today, Gray’s former grad student Phil Klotzbach leads the effort to inform communities up and down the East Coast of the dangers the upcoming season presents.

Klotzbach is a senior research scientist for the Department of Atmospheric Science within the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, and along with a team of students, faculty and research staff, has authored the forecasts since 2006.

In late June, Klotzbach spoke to CSU’s The Audit about the University’s role in developing hurricane research, the increase in hurricane activity and destructiveness over the years, and what we can expect in terms of size and scale for future hurricane seasons.

In March, a New York state judge ruled that a lawsuit could go forward against several social media companies alleging that the platforms contributed to the radicalization of a gunman who killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York in 2022.

The lawsuit claims companies like Meta, Reddit and 4Chan “profit from the racist, antisemitic and violent material displayed on their platforms in order to maximize user engagement.” However, the platforms say they are instead merely message boards containing third-party content and should not be held liable for what others post.

While the case itself won’t likely see the inside of a courtroom for years, it has sparked a debate on just how culpable - and calculating - social media platforms really are.

Hamed Qahri-Saremi is an Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems in Colorado State University’s College of Business. He recently collaborated on a new theory that social media misinformation might actually be taking a page from Shakespearean tragedies.

Methane is odorless, colorless, and invisible to the naked eye. But it's also one of the most damaging greenhouse gases impacting climate change.

Colorado State University biology professor Joe von Fischer researches how humans, plants, soil and soil microbes influence greenhouse gas emissions, including methane. Today, we're talking with Von Fischer about how methane compares to the more notorious carbon dioxide, his research into ways we can better measure methane emissions, and why measuring and reducing methane is a critical opportunity in the climate fight.

Accounting may not be the sexiest topic but in the early 2000s everyone was talking about it after the energy company Enron was found to have committed widespread accounting fraud. Hiding billions of debt, Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Anderson misled Enron's board of directors and its shareholders, who eventually filed a $40 billion lawsuit against the company.

In addition to causing the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the fallout from the Enron scandal sent shock waves through the financial system, leading to calls for new regulation to ensure better accuracy and accountability in financial reporting for publicly traded companies. And so, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX Act for short, was enacted.

More than 20 years later, Colorado State University assistant accounting professors Eric Lohwasser and Michelle Draeger have researched the effectiveness of the SOX Act, as well as some of its unintended consequences.

On the second floor of Colorado State University’s Morgan Library, there are hundreds of boxes and stacks of books all dedicated to just one topic — water.

There’s a copy of the Colorado River Compact, the landmark document that governs how the seven states that make up the Colorado River basin allocate its water. There are letters regarding Elwood Mead — Lake Mead’s namesake — who developed the country’s first irrigation engineering class while a faculty member at CSU before going on to oversee the construction of the Hoover Dam.

There are also documents that point to the destructive power of water, such as photographs of the damage from the 1997 Spring Creek flood, which put much of CSU’s campus under several feet of water and caused more than $140 million in damage to the campus.

Each marks a moment in Colorado’s long and complicated water history. And it's all just a part of CSU’s Water Resources Archive.

Created in 2001 as a joint effort of the University Libraries and the Colorado Water Center, the archive features historic documents related to Colorado's water resources. Patty Rettig has been the head archivist for the program since it began, building the collections that, at last count, totaled an estimated 3 million items — from maps and photos to meeting minutes and contracts.

Rettig recently spoke on CSU’s The Audit podcast about her role and the importance of preserving the state’s water heritage.

Wearable health trackers monitor everything from how many steps we take in a day to how well we sleep at night. But does this technology actually encourage better health? Does hearing that little voice declare "exercise ring closed" actually motivate people to work out?

That's the question Natalie Pennington decided to answer. An assistant professor of communication studies at Colorado State University, Pennington looks at interpersonal communication and the use of communication technology. Pennington spoke to CSU’s The Audit about her recent research on how motivating wearable health trackers really are, and the role technology can play in helping or harming our health.