An Eminent Economist Talks About Climate Change

In my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations over the past four years with a significant number of truly outstanding economists who have carried out important work in the realm of environmental, energy, and resource economics, and have been real leaders in the profession.  In my most recent podcast, we topped that, because I was joined by someone who has made important contributions not just in the realm of environmental and resource economics, but has been a global leader in the discipline of economics broadly, across numerous sub-fields, and has ventured and published well beyond economics in seemingly disparate realms, ranging from contract bridge to Italian Rennaisance painting.  All in all, he is the author or editor of 14 books and more than 300 scholarly articles. 

I am, of course, referring to my Harvard colleague – and good friend – Richard Zeckhauser, the Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Public Policy and Management, and the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis.  Beyond that, I want to acknowledge that he is celebrated at Harvard and beyond as a marvelous classroom teacher, and a valued mentor to generations of students and faculty colleagues.

Near the beginning of our conversation, Richard laments a phenomenon he terms “the pumped equilibrium,” in which people hold exaggerated expectations about confronting the challenge of climate change if we do not drastically increase our efforts.  

“People started at least three decades ago saying, ‘Climate change is a terrible problem, but we can control it by cutting back on our greenhouse gases, and this is the last decade that we can do that. If we don’t do it this decade, we’re dead.’ And then, the next decade they said … the same thing. And this decade they’re saying … the same thing. And they keep telling us that we’re going to be able to [limit the global temperature increase to] two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, or even more recently, 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. I think that’s unrealistic.”

Richard maintains that instead a realistic assessment of the current state of climate change requires new approaches to make an impact.

“The United States has done a so-so job of cutting our emissions by about 10 percent over a number of years, but at the same time, China has increased its emissions by 13 percent, and you can expect that countries like India will be growing much faster in its emissions [levels],” he remarks. “So, I think that we should take a sober look at these problems and say, ‘What else can we do?’”

Climate adaptation, Zeckhauser states, holds the potential for greatly reducing the impacts of climate change. He cites one example in which scientists have proposed building a 100-foot-tall berm around a fjord in Greenland where warm water currently flows in and melts the ice sheets.

“This is very speculative. Will this work? I sure hope so. It’s within our realm of technological capability, but I think we should be looking for many solutions like this that could enable us to deal with … what I consider to be [the] catastrophic track that we’re on,” he says. Other potentially effective adaptation measures, he states, include increasing the alkalinity of the oceans and enforcing smarter logging policies to protect mature trees.

When I question Richard about the distributional implications of climate change, he remarks, “I think dealing with climate change and reducing its impact will automatically have very beneficial distributional consequences.  The places that are currently suffering the most from climate change are the hottest places in the world, which are both suffering under [rising] temperatures and having their weather patterns shifted. So, you would be doing God’s work in restoring or preserving the planet, and you’d be doing work that’s to the benefit of the most affected people in the world.”

He also refers in this context to the challenges posed by massive migrations of people who want to escape rising temperatures in the south by heading north.

“Those [migration patterns] are very uncomfortable for the people in both places – the people who have to do the migration, which is frequently very dangerous and expensive, the people who are still trapped in the old place because they don’t have enough resources, and the people whose areas are being affected by the new people who are coming.”

Zeckhauser says that ultimately, it is up to policymakers around the world to confront the climate change challenge.

“This is a political problem on a global scale. So, even if you didn’t want to worry about it, as a political actor, as the president of the United States has to be and our climate envoy has to be, and the UN has to be, you have to pay serious attention to it.”

My conversation with Richard Zeckhauser is the first episode of 2024 and the 57th episode over the past four years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunesPocket CastsSpotify, and Stitcher.

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A Different Perspective on What Happened at COP-28

A few days ago, I posted at this blog my personal take on what happened at COP-28 in Dubai (and what didn’t happen).  Feedback from readers indicates that some people found my assessment helpful and realistic, but it’s conceivable that some found it insufficiently enthusiastic.  So, today, I’m pleased to offer some potential balance.  It comes from my most recent podcast interview, which was with Amy Harder, the founding Executive Editor of Cipher News, who expresses her pleasant surprise with the outcome from the recent 28th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 28) in Dubai during a special post-COP episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”   The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Listen to the interview here.

Amy Harder notes, “I think the results [of the COP], although not perfect, and certainly not as strong as some delegates had wanted, it’s certainly stronger than I had anticipated. I think this line in the… agreement about transitioning away from fossil fuels, this will be cited in every protest, and probably lawsuits in the coming years, decades, and centuries. And that’s a big deal. Even if it wasn’t a phase out or phase down, it still was stronger than I had thought was possible.”

Harder recognizes that it will be challenging to wean the world off fossil fuels, considering that aggregate energy consumption has continued to rise over the past three decades.

“We call it the energy transition, but we actually have only added clean energy on top of oil, natural gas, and coal. We actually haven’t even begun the process of displacing fossil fuels with clean energy. That’s because of growing energy demand, and a lot of other factors that we can get into. But those two goals – tripling [the production of] renewable energy, and [enhanced] energy efficiency… those can happen even while we continue being dependent upon fossil fuels.”

Harder also expresses surprise at the ease with which negotiators reached agreement on the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, which is intended to help support developing countries suffering severe impacts from climate change.

“I think it was interesting and very strategically smart on behalf of the UAE government to come out of the gate on basically the first day of COP in Dubai with an agreement on loss and damage,” she says. “That was really set to be a controversial point that was really taken off the table relatively quickly in a positive way.”

Harder and I agree that the number of private companies and entrepreneurs at the COP continues to grow every year as they become more and more aware of the need to build awareness around clean energy technologies.

“We need… two to three different ledgers of climate action, and one is over time reducing fossil fuels, but two, commercializing the technologies that will replace them. And that’s what we saw in Dubai, and that’s really significant,” she remarks. “We can expect to see climate entrepreneurs attending COPs much more in the future now, and I think that’s significant, and we will only see that more as the Dubai consensus percolates into our society.”

She and I also agree that the lack of agreement at the COP on carbon markets (Article 6 of the Paris Agreement) was a significant disappointment.

“It really comes at a pivotal time for this industry, which has been facing… a lot of questions about the efficacy of carbon offsets and the markets themselves,” she says. “Hopefully at the next COP, with the Global Stocktake and the statement about fossil fuels in not only the review mirror but in motion… negotiators can really focus and get more resolution on the carbon markets question because it really is an essential part of managing carbon effectively in the decades and centuries to come.”

My conversation with Amy Harder is the 14th and final episode of 2023 in the Environmental Insights series.  Click here if you wish to subscribe to the Cipher News weekly newsletter.  

Finally, I hope you will listen to this 56th episode of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunesPocket CastsSpotify, and Stitcher.

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What to Expect at COP-28 in Dubai

With just a few days remaining until the start of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), COP28 is the focus of this blog post and my most recent podcast.  In the podcast, I engage in conversation with environmental economist Nathaniel Keohane, the president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).  Nat will be leading the C2ES delegation at COP28.  I’ll also be at COP28, with our group from the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.   So, at the end of this blog post, I provide a list of Harvard activities at COP28.

This is a special pre-COP episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” which is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Listen to the conversation here.

Keohane, before becoming president of C2ES, was Senior Vice President for Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and before that served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment.

In our podcast conversation, Nat explains that the “Global Stocktake” will play a prominent role at COP28 in Dubai beginning later this week.  In fact, he expresses considerable optimism that the Global Stocktake will provide incentives for participating nations to step up their collective efforts to slow the rise of global temperatures.

“What we’re looking for coming out of this COP is to highlight a handful of those high-level political signals coming out of this global stocktake. Things like a commitment to triple renewable energy globally by 2030. Things like slashing methane emissions. You can imagine a handful of others on land use and carbon sinks, on adaptation and global finance, a handful of things that can define an action agenda for 2024 and then can inform what countries do when they set those more ambitious targets in 2025. That’s the real centerpiece of this COP,” he says. “The goal is to catalyze action and collaborative cooperative action in 2024, looking ahead to 2025, not just simply to say, ‘Well, gee, we’re off track. That’s too bad’… We need to catalyze action going forward.”

Keohane remarks that the controversial issue of “Loss and Damage” will also play a prominent role in the negotiations this year as the concept of providing financial support to the nations hardest hit by climate change becomes more widely accepted. 

“I think we’ve come a long way with the recognition that there are damages that the most vulnerable countries are going to suffer, are suffering already, that go beyond simply the investments in adaptation and climate resilience, and that there needs to be some way to address those. And I think we’ve made a fair amount of progress, even though it’s not going to be satisfying to everybody right away,” he says. “I think it’s the first step towards an institution over time that can grow and build and become something more important.”

We discuss how the recent COPs have grown larger with a growing contingency of participants from the private sector, NGOs, and multi-lateral organizations that are dedicated to advancing the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“[The COP] really becomes a magnet, a draw for everybody working on climate. And the fact that all those side events have become so big I think reflects the fact that climate is now central to the decisions that policymakers are making, not just in a Climate Ministry or an Environment Ministry, but in the Treasury and in Finance Ministries and in Energy Ministries and so on. Climate is [also] central to what businesses are doing and how they’re making plans,” Nat says. “I’ve always been of the view [that if] we didn’t have the COP already we would have to invent it because we need that kind of focal point for people to come and gather talking about what I think is the most existential issue of our time.”

For this and much more, I encourage you to listen to our complete conversation in this 54th episode of the Environmental Insights podcast series.

As I noted at the outset of this blog post, both Keohane and I will participate in COP28 events in Dubai.  So I close this special pre-COP edition of my blog with a description of some of our own – that is, Harvard – activities at COP28.

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Linked with my current role as director of a Harvard-wide initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, which I’ve described in detail in previous essays at this blog, much – but not all – of our focus at COP28 will be on methane and related public policies.  Indeed, efforts around and impacts of global methane-emissions abatement will be our focus in our official Side Event on December 6, at COP28.

Reducing Global Methane Emissions: Imperatives, Opportunities, and Challenges

This panel will feature several leading scholars and climate policy experts who will discuss current research and practice on technology, policy, and international cooperation, drawing in part on Harvard’s major new methane initiative supported by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. I will moderate the discussion.

The other panelists will be: 

  • Stephen Hammer, Chief Executive Officer, New York Climate Exchange, and former Methane Lead, World Bank;
  • Claire Henly, Senior Advisor for Non- CO2 greenhouse gases, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate; 
  • Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Harvard University and global expert on satellite-based methane detection and attribution; 
  • Helena Varkkey, Associate Professor of Environmental Politics and Governance, Universiti Malaya and Principal Investigator, UM-CERAH-EDF initiative on methane emissions in Malaysia

Time, Date, and Location:  December 6, 2023, 3:00 – 4:30 pm local time, Side Event Room 4, COP-28, Expo City, Dubai

(Note: All official side events are within the “Blue Zone” at COP-28; registration for the COP and a badge are required to enter)

For questions and further information about this and the other COP28 events that follow below, please contact:  Jason Chapman (Jason_chapman@hks.harvard.edu).

Some other speaking engagements of mine at COP28 include:

Net Zero in Action: Showcasing Decarbonization Technologies

December 5, 10:00 – 11:30 am, panelist at IPIECA event: “Net Zero in Action: Showcasing Decarbonization Technologies,” Pavilion of the International Emissions Trading Association, Blue Zone. 

Transforming High Global Warming Potential Sectors through Carbon Markets

December 6, 9:00-10:30 am, panelist, where RNS will make a presentation on “The Promise and Peril of GHG Markets for Reducing Global Methane Emissions,” Asian Development Bank Pavilion, Blue Zone

Application of Low Emission Development Strategies and Progress of Global Energy Transition

December 6, 1 – 2:30 pm, Robert Stavins is a panelist at Ninth Global Climate Change Think Tank Forum. The event is hosted by China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation. Theme: “Application of Low Emission Development Strategies and Progress of Global Energy Transition,” China Pavilion, Blue Zone.

In addition to Professors Stavins and Jacob, the Harvard delegation in Dubai will include several leading scholars from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and others from around Harvard.

HSPH is sponsoring two events at COP-28: 

“Linking Agendas of the UNFCCC and the World Health Assembly – Regional perspective,” 3 – 4:30 pm, December 6, Guatemala Pavilion, Blue Zone.

 “Linking Agendas of the UNFCCC and the World Health Assembly – Global perspective,” 9:30 – 10:45 am, December 12, WHO Pavilion, Blue Zone.

For more information on the HSPH events, contact Liz Willetts (ewilletts@hsph.harvard.edu).

I hope to see many of you at one or more of these events, and/or other meetings, in the hallways, or elsewhere at COP28 in Dubai!

Finally, I want to remind you to listen to this 54th episode of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunesPocket CastsSpotify, and Stitcher.

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