CAMBRIDGE MA. – Economic historian Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard, lauded the efforts of young scholars to discover local solutions to mitigate the impacts of global climate change 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. Listen to the interview here.
Hosted by Robert N. Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Environmental Insights is intended to promote public discourse on important issues at the intersection of economics and environmental policy.
Professor Rothschild, who serves as director of the Harvard Joint Center for History and Economics and a faculty contributor to the Visualizing Climate and Loss project, has devoted much of her academic career to research and teaching at the intersection of history, economics, and the environment, where she sees growing opportunities to impact thinking about climate change.
“One of the things that makes me very optimistic now about my field is that so many people interested in economic history are now seeing that the environment and climate [are] part of economic history and vice versa,” she stated. “I've been… struck by how many of the top [academic job] candidates this year actually have either environmental papers, climate papers, or history papers as part of their portfolios, and in many cases, both actually. I just think the PhD students are kind of understanding this much faster than perhaps the educational establishment.”
In recent years, Rothschild has focused much of her scholarly pursuits around the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, credited for helping originate study of the classical free market economy. Specifically, Rothschild says she has become intrigued by why some people are blaming Smith for today’s global climate change problem.
“I became interested in the question, ‘Well, did he say anything that could conceivably have led people to think this? And what did he, to the extent that we can discern this, think about the origins of the industrial revolution in relation to a more plausible, causal story about how industrial growth of the late 18th century actually did lead to contemporary climate change?,’” she said. Rothschild has written a series of papers about Smith to gain a deeper understanding of “the ways in which Smith's ideas can be of interest in thinking about the discordant times in which we now live.”
Rothschild is also deeply involved in the Methane In 1,800 Histories project, designed to promote discussion and research on the 1,800 local sites of severe methane emissions around the world.
“This project came about really opportunistically when I saw a very good article that was the cover piece in Science a little over a year ago by some French climate scientists who were actually able to map almost 1,800 sites of ultra methane emissions worldwide. A lot of this has been done for the U.S. and for other countries. They were able, using satellite data, to give a literally worldwide overview of where the largest methane emitters were,” she stated.
“And this turned into a collaborative project,” she continued. “We'd done a big visualization of all the sites. And the aspiration is that young historians [and] young economists will actually investigate each of these sites and thereby contribute to an understanding of the history of why climate change is happening. And, of course, thereby in turn, start to think in a practical and local way about what can be done about the sites.”
Rothschild argues that local solutions to climate change may seem more plausible to people who are daunted by the enormity of the challenge.
“Part of what's so difficult about climate change is that the instruments, mainly global policy change, seem so beyond the capacity of individuals or groups to affect,” she remarked “Climate change is really immediate to people in their early 20s or late teens thinking about their own lives and thinking about, ‘What can I do with all the knowledge I'm acquiring, all the skills that I have, to do something?’”
Rothschild’s interview is the 11th episode of 2023 in the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.
“Environmental Insights is intended to inform and educate listeners about important issues relating to an economic perspective on developments in environmental policy, including the design and implementation of market-based approaches to environmental protection,” said Stavins. “We speak with accomplished Harvard colleagues, other academics, and practitioners who are working on solving some of the most challenging public problems we face.”
Environmental Insights is hosted on SoundCloud and is also available on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, and Spotify.
LINK TO PODCAST: https://on.soundcloud.com/NXMyo