I found the attribution model that was discussed in the context of determining the economic impact of the Northwest Pacific bark beetle on tree stands to be very interesting to learn about. Initially, I thought the process of finding out the economic impact would be easy. However, when combined with the added factor of climate change and its effects on the environment and figuring out those environmental effects affected the bark beetle population, how the bark beetle population affects the quality of the tree, and how the quality of the tree affects the timber industry, and etc, it becomes much more complex. There seem to be a lot of running variables to consider and the attribution model does a good job connecting these different factors to find the wanted answer.
If I were to conduct the interview, I would want to learn more about the quantitative data that was found about the economic impact of climate change. There were mentions of how fixing infrastructure to anticipate climate change will be more costly than ameliorating climate change, and other economic impacts of climate change. I would ask more specifically what is the quantitative data surrounding that. Is the economic impact significant enough to force politicians to spur action against climate change? This would be quite interesting to learn more about especially if the data was compelling enough.