Governance

Renowned environmental economist Kathleen Segerson, who in addition to her academic and scholarly research and teaching has served on numerous state, national, and international advisory boards, expressed her frustration with the political polarization of climate policy in the latest 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.

Visionary environmental regulator Mary Nichols, whose groundbreaking work as Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) helped pave the way for many of the nation’s current environmental laws and regulations, shared her perspectives on her California and Washington D.C. experience during the latest 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.

In order to fully appreciate the global climate-change challenge that the Biden administration will face, Robert Stavins reflects on the history of international negotiations that brought us to this point.

This paper considers the treatment of co-benefits in benefit-cost analysis of federal air quality regulations. Using a comprehensive data set on all major Clean Air Act rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency over the period 1997–2019, the authors show that (1) co-benefits make up a significant share of the monetized benefits; (2) among the categories of co-benefits, those associated with reductions in fine particulate matter are the most significant; and (3) co-benefits have been pivotal to the quantified net benefit calculation in nearly half of cases.

Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, shared his thoughts on carbon pricing, the post-pandemic economic recovery, and green economy transition during a virtual forum on September 8 sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, and hosted by Robert Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School.

Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management Emeritus and Dean Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, reflected on his many years working on environmental policy in public service and academia in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” 

Every day that the EPA quietly ticks off another item, the social and financial consequences are being shifted from polluters to at-risk communities.

The 1970 Clean Air Act established the basic architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system: It was the first environmental law to give the federal government a serious regulatory role, and it became a model for many subsequent environmental laws in the United States and abroad. In this article, the authors describe the evolution of air pollution control policy under this legislation with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used.

In a new essay published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, HKS Professor Robert Stavins and MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Emeritus Richard Schmalensee argue that economists and policymakers alike will need to re-frame their thinking for addressing the nation’s current environmental challenges, including climate change, to overcome the tremendous political hurdles that now exist.

In this interview, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy discusses her many years of experience in community health, statewide government, and at the EPA, where she focused on initiatives relating to public health and the environment, including work on domestic climate policy, and the historic 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, in which more than 150 countries committed to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.