I’m very pleased to announce that we have launched a new webinar series from the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements – “Conversations on Climate Change and Energy Policy,” which features presentations, interviews, and other engagements with leading authorities on climate change and related energy policy, whether from academia, the private sector, NGOs, or government.
I think it is fair to say that Professor O’Sullivan is the quintessential Harvard Kennedy School faculty member, because in addition to her extensive and relevant scholarly research, she has had abundant experience in the policy world as a practitioner, including work in policy formulation and negotiation as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush.
On location in the Middle East during the Bush 43 administration
The webinar begins with Meghan’s presentation on “The Geopolitics of the Global Upheaval in Oil Markets,” in which she touches on the recent impacts on global oil markets of both price competition and the demand shock associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Following her presentation, I pose some questions, drawing – in part – on ones submitted by webinar participants.
In conversation at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2011 with Richard Haass, former State Department and National Security Council official, and President, Council on Foreign Relations
Again, a recording of the webinar with a complete transcript is available here. I hope you will check it out.
In my conversation with Dick Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he reflects on his many years working on environmental policy in public service and in academia. Abundant insights arise, including important lessons for current climate policy deliberations in the United States, Europe, China, and other countries.
Professor Schmalensee was Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management for 10 years, and Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research for 12 years. Before and during those years, his research and teaching were in multiple areas of application of industrial organization, including antitrust, regulatory, energy, and environmental policies.
Professor Schmalensee in his home study in Boston, 2020
In this latest Podcast episode, our conversation begins with Dick’s upbringing in a small town in southern Illinois, his move east to college and graduate school at MIT, his dissertation research, and the professional path that took him after receipt of his Ph.D. degree, first to California, and then back east to MIT’s Sloan School of Management. We turn to his career in regulatory economics and policy – both his scholarly research and his close involvement in policy development and implementation, where he was “in the words of ‘Hamilton,” in the room where it happened.”
Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, 2020
You won’t be surprised that we take time to focus on: the pathbreaking cap-and-trade program launched by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990; and political changes in the United States that have moved environmental policy from being a truly bipartisan issue to a partisan one in today’s highly polarized politics. Much of our conversation is about the current state of climate change policy – and policy research – both domestically and globally.
Delivering Keynote Address at the Toulouse School of Economics, 2017
Throughout the interview, Dick is at home in his disarming style of candid conversation, with no punches pulled. He terms current U.S. climate change policy “a disaster,” saying it was a mistake “walking away from Paris, walking away from any sense that it’s important that we deal with our emissions and indeed walking away from the potential federal role in helping states and localities adapt to change.”
My conversation with Dick Schmalensee is the eleventh episode in the Environmental Insights series. Previous episodes have featured conversations with:
David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
Scott Barrett, professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
We have just released the newest episode of our podcast, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” In this latest episode, I engage in a conversation with Joseph Aldy, my Harvard colleague, and an individual with considerable experience at multiple levels and capacities in the U.S. government, including in the White House during the Obama Administration, with the common theme in Joe’s government service being substantial focus on the economic dimensions of energy and environmental policy.
Professor Aldy worked in the White House during the first two years of the Obama Administration, helping direct the administration’s climate change policy while serving as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment. In this new podcast – which I very much hope you’ll check out – he remarks that, “the most challenging aspect of the job was recognizing that your to-do list at 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning may get wiped out by something unexpected that happens later that day.” As an example, he references the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in April 2010, which eventually resulted in new government regulations designed to reduce the risk of such accidents in future years.
In addition to reflecting on Joe’s experiences in the Clinton and Obama administrations, much of our conversation also touched on what can be expected from today’s international climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, and from the U.S. government today and in future years.
In the international domain, Aldy characterizes the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 as providing a solid framework for significant international cooperation and progress. “It says something that we have every country in the world or virtually every country in the world pledging to do something to reduce their emissions,” he says. “I think that is a great first step.”
Turning to domestic U.S. efforts to address climate change, Joe is considerably more skeptical, given the current political context: “Until there are members of Congress or Senators who fear that by being silent on the issue or actively opposing taking action to combat climate change, until they see real political cost at the polls, I think it’s hard to imagine there being a bipartisan future.”
