The prominent U.K. economist Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment at the London School of Economics, is featured in the second episode of our new podcast, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” You can listen to the interview with Professor Stern here.
In hosting these podcast episodes, I have the pleasure of interviewing interesting and accomplished people who are working at the intersection of economics and environmental policy. Our first episode, which appeared last month, featured my interview with Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (who is leaving Harvard to become President of the Natural Resources Defense Council).
In this second episode, Nick Stern discusses his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change.
It was more than a decade ago that Nick – working on behalf of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown – directed the landmark Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006. In our interview, Nick notes that it was his appointment to that position that truly sparked his intense interest in the topic.
“I wasn’t a specialist before we began, but I went to the best scientists in the world and educated myself quickly from them. I did know something, of course, like any informed social scientist should about climate, but it hadn’t been a specialty. And once you start thinking about this, you can’t stop. And I haven’t stopped since then.”
My interview with Stern is the second episode in the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to appear once per month. The podcast is hosted on SoundCloud, and also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
