Obama’s Science Advisor Speaks Out on Biden’s Climate Policy

John Holdren, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, expresses his optimism regarding the Biden Administration’s approach to climate change policy in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

You can hear our complete conversation in the podcast here.  

In these podcasts, I converse with very well-informed people from academia, government, industry, and NGOs.  John Holdren fits very well in this group, with significant experience in academia, government, and the NGO world.

            John Holdren is a Research Professor, and until recently was the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard.  He took an extended leave of absence from Harvard, from January 2009 to January 2017 to serve in the Obama administration as the President’s Science Advisor and as Director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, and was the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in the history of the position.  Before coming to Harvard, he was a long-time faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded the Energy Resources Group.

During his time as the President’s Science Advisor, the Obama Administration unveiled its ambitious Climate Action Plan (June 2013), and in 2015, nearly 200 countries signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement.  In our conversation, John Holdren tells me that those were two of the high points during his time in Washington. 

“The biggest low point I would say is that we were not able to get the budget increases for research and development that President Obama had committed himself to at the very beginning of his administration,” Holdren remarks. “We didn’t get there, not from lack of interest, but from lack of ability to persuade the Congress to boost those budgets.”

While his work in Washington was rewarding, it was also very high-pressure:

“It was 24/7/365,” he says. “When you’re what is called a commissioned officer of the president, you are on duty all the time. You can never be out of touch. You can’t go anywhere without having a way for the White House to reach you immediately if the president wants you, and there is such a continuing flow of issues that need your immediate attention.”

Assessing the Biden Administration’s early efforts to shape climate policy, Holdren says he would give it a grade of A-, complimenting the President’s selection of respected officials for key positions, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander, and Deputy Director for Climate and Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Jane Lubchenco.

“[President] Biden has put together just a superb team. I think it’s by far the strongest team on climate change that’s ever been assembled in a government,” Holdren says. “And when asked what’s the most important thing in achieving success in science and technology policy in government, or indeed any other domain of government activity, I always answer the single most important thing is people. The single most important thing is having an absolutely top-flight team in terms of relevant competencies and their ability and willingness to work seamlessly together. That is what President Biden has put in place.”

When I ask Holdren what he expects from U.S. climate policy over this decade, Holdren surprisingly predicts that the United States will institute a significant carbon tax by 2024.

“It will happen for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the impacts of climate change are now so conspicuous that it is becoming impossible for people to, with any credibility at all, deny that this is an immense challenge to well-being on the planet,” he remarks. “People are coming to understand in larger and larger numbers that this is a challenge that society must rise to meet. And I think the deniers and the wafflers are in retreat. And that’s one of the reasons I think we will get at least quite a lot of what we need in the next few years.”

My complete conversation with John Holdren is the 25th episode in 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 iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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A Blast from the Past: U.S. Climate Policy Then and Now

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe is a Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  At Harvard, he is also the Faculty Chair of the Regulatory Policy Program in the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, a Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, and co-founder with me – when he was working full-time at Resources for the Future – of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.

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.”

All of this and much more is found in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” Listen to this latest discussion here, where, by the way, you can also find a complete transcript of our conversation.

My conversation with Joe Aldy is the seventh episode in the Environmental Insights series.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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A Firsthand Account of European Carbon-Pricing Evolution

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 Jos Delbeke, currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium.

Professor Delbeke is probably best known for his long service at the European Commission, including as Director-General of the Commission’s DG Climate Action from its creation in 2010 until 2018.  Even before that, he was very heavily involved in the development and implementation of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), and for several years was the European Commission’s chief negotiator at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of the Parties. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this new episode of our monthly podcast, Jos Delbeke recounts the evolution of carbon pricing in Europe and around the world, and comments on the current state of international climate change negotiations.  You can listen to the interview here.

Recalling his early days working on climate policy in Europe, Delbeke says that “emissions trading was an alien idea at that time … As an economist, I followed very much how the United States was developing the sulfur experiment.”

Delbeke maintains that the EU-ETS has been very successful.  “The latest statistics show that between 2005 when we started, and today … the emissions reduction is 29%, and that is for all the installations in Europe, all big installations, and the energy and the manufacturing industry.  So, 29% down in less than 15 years, I think is quite remarkable when we compare it to emissions from transport that are roughly 20% up,” he states.

Delbeke believes that the emerging Chinese ETS could be transformative in the global effort to combat global warming.  “Once the Chinese have their act together, I think that may serve as a source of inspiration for a lot of other nations,” he says.

Delbeke’s interview is the fifth episode in the Environmental Insights series.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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