CAMBRIDGE MA. – The Harvard Environmental Economics Program is pleased to announce the launch of a new podcast intended to promote public discourse on important issues at the intersection of economics and environmental policy. “Environmental Insights: Conversations on policy and practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program” is 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.
“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 will speak with very accomplished Harvard colleagues, other academics, and practitioners who are working on solving some of the most challenging public problems we face.”
The inaugural guest for the podcast is Gina McCarthy, professor of the practice of public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Listen to the interview here.
The interview with McCarthy touches on her many years of experience in community health, statewide government, and her years at 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.
“The reason why I believe that it was so pivotal was because it really brought every country to the table recognizing that every country had responsibility,” McCarthy reflected on the Paris Agreement. “It was a wonderful accomplishment, but the trick is that it's got to be continued and there's got to be U.S. leadership in order to really continue to make it real.”
McCarthy emphasized the pressing need to continue national and international efforts to address climate change.
“We need to broaden the engagement around climate. We need to talk about how good the answers are on climate, and how much better the world would be if we think about aggressively moving. And it's better for us. It's better for our health. It's better for our kids' future,” McCarthy remarked during the interview. “I've always thought that health was important, but the economy is too. And the interesting thing about climate change is you can have both, and that's what we should demand.”
McCarthy also discussed her work at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“We try to use real science, the science developed at Harvard School of Public Health, to re-look and coordinate the challenges that we see between air pollution and health, between nutrition and health, between population science and health,” she said.
Environmental Insights is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on PocketCasts and Stitcher. It will also be available soon on iTunes.
A complete transcript of the interview is available here.
 | Gina McCarthy interview transcript | 140 KB |