The youth movement to confront climate change continues to grow at Harvard and across the world. This September, 80 Harvard students participated in Divest Harvard’s protests, a movement committed to removing Harvard’s financial investments in the fossil fuel industry.
No one understands the years of research and education that empowered the climate movement better than James Stock, Harvard’s Vice Provost of Climate and Sustainability and Professor of U.S. Energy Policy and Climate Change. A longtime climate economist, he has witnessed the stakes of climate change rise, the public discourse around the topic expand, and optimism toward the planet’s future blossom with the growth of the movement.
When Stock received his Ph.D. in economics in 1983 from University of California-Berkeley, scientists did not understand much about climate change, and there was little agreement on human impact. When he was at graduate school, climate change was a burgeoning field of study. “My education pre-dated most of the work,” he said. “Looking back, a better benchmark would be the 1990s, when climate change was recognized as something that needed to be taken seriously.”
Stock witnessed early tensions between economics and climate. Despite the common sentiment that economists are too conservative and avoid spending money on social issues, he wants to see “more engagement between economists and the more progressive activist crowd.” Stock says, “I think there is much more in common there than one might initially think.” For instance, climate economics can make problem solving more productive, allowing people to frame the problem as a cost-benefit analysis of how to maximize emissions reductions, within realistic budget constraints.
Stock pursued his goal of bridging economics and climate by serving on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) from 2013 to 2014. While the Obama administration was eager to make progress on climate issues, enacting significant climate regulations proved challenging. One example of the limitations faced by the CEA was their failure to legislate a nationwide cap on greenhouse gasses via a trade bill called the Waxman-Markey Bill. “It became clear that there wasn’t going to be significant climate legislation, so the strategy shifted to a regulatory approach using existing laws on the books to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Stock. “Everybody would love to see a legislative approach, but since that wasn’t really on the table… we wanted to do what we could using a regulatory approach.” Though Stock described this as “a complex and robust process,” one requiring time and frequent legal and political battles, the CEA successfully created a moratorium on new coal leases and incited a review of the federal coal program during the end of the Obama administration, with the goal of incorporating the climate costs of burning coal into the evaluation process in the federal fossil fuel leasing program.
Under Obama, Stock also helped revise calculations for the social cost of carbon: the monetized value of damages from emitting one ton of carbon on one given day. He and his team at the CEA discovered the projected cost of carbon emissions in 2020 rose 50% between 2010 and the updated calculations in 2013. Now, President Biden recognizes the significance of this increase, and is committed to updating the social cost of carbon on a regular basis. This attitude represents a drastic change in approaches to carbon emissions in just a few years. “The political folks in the [Obama] White House were so nervous about this that we had to introduce it Friday night of a vacation week,” Stock said. “Now, it is front and center and was one of the first things President Biden said in his first executive orders.”
Stock pointed to three seismic shifts in the U.S. climate debate from when he first entered the field to today.
First is the growing acceptance of climate change as a pressing global issue. Despite continued dispute about its origins, which often fall on political lines, “The most committed lobbyist still cannot argue with a straight face that climate change is some accident,” Stock shared. This acknowledgment is a vital step toward solving our environmental crisis, shifting the conversation from if there is a problem to how it can be fixed.
Second, the price of sustainable technology, like solar panels, and wind turbines, is decreasing. Over the past ten years, the cost of solar panels has dropped nearly 90%. The introduction of the Prius in 1997, one of the first affordable electric vehicles, sparked a rise in popularity for electric alternatives. The introduction of Tesla Motors in 2006 significantly raised the public profile of electric vehicles.
Looking forward, Stock believes it won’t be long until it is cheaper to buy an electric vehicle than a combustion engine car. Currently, an electric car costs on average $56,437, which is about ten thousand dollars higher than its gasoline-powered counterpart.
Third, the rise of the youth movement for climate activism has propelled public discourse around climate change and creates demand for climate innovation. “What has really become a dramatic shift is the youth movement globally and the youth movement in the United States in particular and how that has become integral to driving political activism and political change,” Stock says. Ten years ago, the environmental movement comprised traditional environmental organizations, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Clean Air Task Force. But today, young activists like Greta Thunberg, Isra Hirsi, and Jerome Foster II, are leading the charge in Congress to prioritize emission reductions and end fossil fuel subsidies.
Despite these advancements, Stock warns against complacency. “Now, you might think this suggests we have succeeded, but we are very far from that. Now, at least solutions in major sectors are technically feasible, economically feasible, and there is political support for them,” he said. However, “That political support isn’t sufficiently widespread to make us have large policy changes. There are reasons both for frustration and for optimism.”
Universities and students play an important role in capitalizing on this optimism. On September 9th, 2021, Divest Harvard successfully pushed the University to divest from the fossil fuel industry, an action that College students have advocated for since 2012, when the movement was founded.
Stock commended Harvard for acknowledging the role it can play in reducing emissions and for taking a significant step toward progress. “We all have to step up and really ramp up what we are doing in climate. This is a societal crisis where universities have an important leading rule to play. Harvard has that view,” he said.
But he limited his enthusiasm for the effectiveness of emission reductions more generally, arguing that wind, solar, and electric vehicles only reduce our carbon emissions by one half, at best. “We have a long way to go with our emissions reduction agenda,” he said. Significant policy and technology improvements would prevent climate catastrophes, like the Colorado River water shortages and California fires last summer, from worsening.
Stock’s experience illustrates how the political gravitas and acknowledged effects of climate change have steadily grown throughout recent history. As the problem becomes more severe, youth activism and public momentum grow in tandem, lending hope to the possibility of dampening climate change’s impending consequences.
Now, it’s in our generation’s hands.
Hannah Davis ’25 (hannahdavis@college.harvard.edu) wants to install solar panels on Canaday’s skylights.
Lauren Murphy ’25 (ljmurphy@college.harvard.edu) is currently shopping for a Tesla.