Rational Environmentalism

Spending my formative years in California--a state endowed with natural beauty and tremendous natural resources--instilled in me an appreciation for the environment, but it was my training in economics at UC Berkeley that gave me an appreciation for the role of motivated citizens and their elected officials in preserving the environment. I call myself a “rational” environmentalist in order to both acknowledge my training as an economist and distinguish myself from other environmentalists who reflexively oppose human impacts on the natural environment. I believe we can be good stewards of nature and still take advantage of the many services nature provides.

I credit a former boss for really getting me interested in environmental policy. I took a one-year break from school between my undergraduate coursework and my graduate studies during which time I had the opportunity to work in the Cabinet Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The office is responsible for developing and carrying out the Governor’s policies,and I was responsible for conducting policy research and preparing briefings for the Governor. I had the good fortune of working for Terry Tamminen, who moved from his post as Secretary of Cal EPA to be the Governor’s Cabinet Secretary. I got to travel around the state with Terry as he promoted the Governor’s environmental priorities, and I heard him speak of how California would lead the world with forward‐leaning policy and technology development.

My work in the Governor’s Office spanned a variety of topics. I am perhaps most proud of promoting a cap and trade program to reduce air pollution at California ports and of drafting the executive order for the San Joaquin Valley Partnership, which developed an inter‐agency task force to address economic and environmental challenges facing residents in the San Joaquin Valley.

In addition to pursuing my PhD in agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley, I am
also training for the Olympics as a member of the U.S. national triathlon team. My experiences as a triathlete have heightened my interest in environmental policy. Quite simply, my “office” is the outdoors, and my training puts me into contact with the natural environment more than just about any other career. Triathlon has also given me the opportunity to travel to dozens of countries—from Ecuador and Chile to Hungary and Turkey—and to see astounding natural amenities and the consequences of poor environmental policies. I’ve swum in lakes for competitions, for instance, that are so polluted with agricultural chemicals that the athletes didn’t dare touch the water until the start of the race.

My training as a resource and environmental economist has defined my outlook on environmental policy by introducing me to the market failures that lead to suboptimal outcomes in the natural environment. While economic theory certainly provides a strong justification for government policy to protect natural resources amid missing markets, it also provides a method for ranking environmental policies according to their efficiency and offers a framework for determining which, if any, policies should be pursued. While some in the environmental movement advocate a “kitchen sink” and “at any cost” approach to environmental preservation, my training and my research lead me to a more pragmatic approach to environmentalism that (1) advocates the least intrusion necessary to achieve optimal levels of resource protection, (2) prefers market oriented regulation to command and control regimes, (3) strives for maximum policy efficiency in recognition of the fact that resources for protecting environmental amenities are, themselves, scarce, (4) considers the costs and benefits of environmental policy, including use and non‐use benefits of natural resources, and (5) acknowledges that use of the natural environment is necessary to sustain life and that changes in the natural environment can have unpredictable effects on nature’s capacity to sustain life.

I think we can achieve significant reductions in natural resource demand without dramatically altering our way of life. I’ve spent the past several years advocating these types of changes. I was a charter member of the Green Team at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California in 2009. At the Center, athletes live and eat for free. Washing machines and dryers are free, and the laundry room is stocked with detergent. Rooms are serviced daily by housekeeping staff. As all economists know, when the marginal cost facing the user is zero, resources are over‐consumed. I recommended that the default policy of washing athletes’ towels daily be amended so that towels were only washed upon request, as is the policy in many hotels. Climate control systems also operated in public areas even after they closed for the day. I called attention to this wastefulness and the Center staff responded by setting the climate control systems to timers, saving energy and money. And I advocated contests to reward the dorm buildings at the Center that best conserved water and energy. I also urged an educational campaign to convey to residents that money saved by resource conservation would translate into a higher level of services elsewhere at the Center.

Much of my research at Berkeley has drawn attention to the flaws in conventional thinking on the leading environmental policy issues of day. For instance, in 2006, my advising professor and I were among the first to point out that increasing biofuel production would have deleterious consequences for food supply and biodiversity; Energy would compete with agriculture and nature for a fixed stock of land. Today it is well understood that ethanol production raised food prices, contributing to a food crisis in 2008, and led landowners in Brazil to raze rainforest in order to meet demand for sugarcane for ethanol. We have written many more papers on the economics of biofuels and issued a report to the Renewable Fuels Agency of the UK. In addition, I co‐authored a theoretical paper that calls attention to the potential worsening of environmental outcomes if carbon policy is not matched with policy
to correct the negative externalities associated with land‐use change. In short, we show that if the price of carbon is regulated to be inclusive of external costs of carbon emissions and the external costs of land use change are not internalized, then carbon policy leads to suboptimal habitat preservation, as biofuels substitute for fossil fuels.

In a recent article, I presented an environmentalist argument against locavorism, the push local food production that has garnered support in the movie theater, in best‐selling books, at our schools, and in the White House. I noted that our present system of food production capitalizes on comparative advantage in crop production, enabling states to produce crops for which their costs, inclusive of opportunity costs, are lowest. The current system, therefore, minimizes demand for land and chemical inputs in order to produce a given quantity of food. I suggested that a shift to local production, while minimizing carbon emissions from food transportation, may not improve environmental outcomes, particularly if biodiversity loss is a bigger threat today than climate change, as some academics have argued.

My dissertation research centers on developing a theory to explain the disparate estimates of genetically modified seeds on crop yields and chemical dependency. While some have highlighted small yield effects in developed countries like the U.S., theory suggests developing countries will benefit the most from genetically modified seeds and experience the greatest environmental gains in terms of reduced demand for land and chemicals. Drawing on a unique set of data, I demonstrate that genetically modified crops alleviate the pressure for converting land to agriculture that is caused by growing populations and demand for alternative fuel. In this paper, presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research in March, I showed that genetically modified seeds can provide considerable environmental benefits and improve the sustainability of biofuels.

Another track of my research focuses on non‐coercive mechanisms for inducing conservation in societies. This work takes a behavioralist approach to economics and considers the motivations for conservation behavior, recognizing the public good nature of pro‐social behaviors like resource conservation and the incentive to free‐ride on the conservation of others. This research, in progress, will show if simple changes to the “choice architecture” that surrounds us can induce substantial and persistent reductions in demand for scarce resources.