“So, what brought you to DC?” The Lyft driver merrily inquired.
“I’m here for work. A conference, actually.”
“That’s cool. And what do you do for work?”
This is where I’d pause. There are two directions in which this conversation would go. When I say I’m an economist (true), the remainder of our ride would be filled with the driver’s endless frustrations with the economy and the government: nobody has good jobs anymore, housing prices are through the roof, the Feds are going to screw us all,
When I say I’m an environmental scientist (vaguely true), there is a high chance that the ride would be smooth, with the driver enthusiastically talking about how he loves taking his family to national parks and how we should all protect our nature.
So, what is it that I do anyway?
I am an economist with expertise in environmental and natural resource economics.
Environmental economics, I’ve been told by many, sounds like an oxymoron. Surely something that is good for the economy must be bad for the environment and vice versa. Here, depending on whom I’m conversing with, I either smile and let it go or get to burst the myth: There is this lesser-known discipline within economics that is not just obsessed with growing GDP.
Environmental economics uses economic principles to ask and solve environmental problems. A product of environmental economics is the carbon tax.
The environmental problem? There is too much carbon in the air. Carbon dioxide emissions are considered a negative externality, a jargon term for the cost to society that is not captured in markets. When I get in the car and drive, I pay for the gas, but I don’t pay for the carbon that driving emits.
The economic solution? If you don’t like it, put a tax on it.
Carbon tax is a form of carbon pricing that attempts to internalize the externality. It makes polluters pay for part of the carbon emission they generate. It becomes more expensive to pollute, which discourages people and firms from polluting. Furthermore, it encourages firm to invest in low-carbon alternatives and decrease reliance on fossil fuels.
Natural resource economics, on the other hand, uses economic principles to manage natural resources. Management is needed to ensure that the use of these resources is sustainable so that they provide the most value to current and future generations. This can range from providing optimal extraction timeline for nonrenewable resources such as coal or oil to renewable resources such as fishery and forestry. In recent years, resource economics is also used to inform policy that restore entire ecosystems, which further shows the discipline is not only about extraction but also revival.
Take the example of Alaska salmon fishery. Overfishing once nearly led to stock collapse in the mid-20th century. Economic models are used and data analyzed to determine the sustainable level of catch, as well as management practices that would prevent overfishing. Currently, measures are put in place to ensure that stocks are sustainable not for our consumption today but also for future generations.
In a nutshell, I use economics as a tool to solve environmental problems. Since our world is so fraught with a plethora of environmental problems, each one more urgent than the next, I can be sure that I will keep being busy working on pressing and interesting problems. I’m just getting started.