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 with a significant number of outstanding economists, who have carried out important work relevant for environmental, energy, and resource policy, including by serving in important government positions. That inevitably brings with it the reality that many of the people I’ve spoken with have been senior leaders in the profession, with the emphasis on the word “senior.” I’m very pleased to say that in my most recent podcast, I’ve broken that mold with someone who is a young, rising star in the world of environmental economics, particularly in the realm of analyzing the causes and consequences of changes in land use. I’m referring to my colleague, Charles Taylor, a relatively new Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. You can listen to our complete conversation here.
Taylor’s research often uses satellite data to address policy questions associated with land use, and at the beginning of our conversation, he explains that he first got interested in land use issues during his time spent as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, following his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia.
“I got to go work abroad in Qatar, Brazil, and Europe, and get a lot of exposure to these big climate change and land-based initiatives that governments and the private sector were doing. And I got really excited by that, and also very quickly learned I didn’t want to be a consultant,” he says. “I felt that I wanted to get more either skin in the game at that time or more in depth into the issues, and that prompted my journey into more of the entrepreneurial world.”
Charles soon connected with David Tepper, a former banker who shared his passion for land use issues, and together they co-founded Earth Partners, a private company that provides land restoration and bio-energy services intended to help rebuild soils, habitats, and other critical ecosystems.
“How do we restore ecosystems to meet all the challenges we’re facing, from water to food security to pollution to climate change, and how do we do that at scale? [The idea was to] start a company [dedicated to] next generation land management,” he remarks. “A lot of the challenges we’re facing as a society directly or relate to land management, and looking around, I didn’t really see any companies or organizations taking that head on.”
Charles notes that he decided to pivot from his entrepreneurial venture into academia once he realized the limits of what can be accomplished with capital alone.
“We had great small-scale investors who wanted to do good things, but you still had to get their money back in a few years and that limits the scope of what you can do if you really want transformational change,” he explains. “So, that made me say, okay, what if I went back to the research side and found some way I could contribute to these problems on the other side while keeping one foot or at least half my brain in this world of how this … on the ground world works?”
Much of Charles Taylor’s current academic research relates directly to environmental economics associated with land use decisions, and is intended to inform lawmakers and other stakeholders of the benefits of specific policy choices.
“Humans have touched nearly every acre of non-barren land on earth. We’ve transformed it. We farm it for our food. We take its water. We shape its rivers for reservoirs, for irrigation. We use the wood for forests. We build on it for housing… We get our energy out of it, increasingly for renewable energy. We need a lot of it for siting wind and solar. And then climate change interacts with all this,” he says. “So, there’s all these questions I am really curious about [and am interested in] quantifying and using some of the empirical tools we have [to do that].”
Taylor references a recent paper he co-authored with Caltech Assistant Professor Hannah Druckenmiller that examines land use regulation under the Clean Water Act.
“You might see this spurious relationship between where wetlands are lost and more flood damages, for example, to think of one of the benefits of wetlands. And that paper was just trying to find an empirical way to uncover that and give an estimate of the value of wetlands that then could be used by the EPA in measuring the cost and benefits of these types of regulations, which are super important and cover almost all land use decisions and where you’re going to build in the U.S.,” he explains.
For this and much more, please listen to my podcast conversation with Charles Taylor, the 62nd episode over the past five 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:
- Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Nick Stern of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
- Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
- Paul Watkinson, Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- Jos Delbeke, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium, and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Climate Action
- 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.
- Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Kelley Kizier, Associate Vice President for International Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
- David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
- Vicky Bailey, 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector.
- David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
- Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk at the The New York Times.
- Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times from Washington.
- Spencer Dale, BP Group Chief Economist.
- Richard Revesz, professor at the NYU School of Law.
- Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University.
- William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
- Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
- John Graham, Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
- Gernot Wagner, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
- John Holdren, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Larry Goulder, Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
- Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
- Sheila Olmstead, Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
- Robert Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
- Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
- Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
- Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
- Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
- Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
- Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
- Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
- Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
- Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
- Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
- Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
- Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future.
- Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
- Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
- James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
- Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
- Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
- Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
- Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley.
- Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
- Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
- Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
- Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
- Nathaniel Keohane, President, C2ES.
- Amy Harder, Executive Editor, Cypher News.
- Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Kimberly (Kim) Clausing, School of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
- Hunt Allcott, Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
- Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
- Robert Lawrence, Albert Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.
“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
