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Podcast – An Unplanned Experiment: How the Economic Response to COVID-19 Affected the Environment
In this episode of the Econ Café 2020/21 podcast, we talk with Martha Field, co-author of Environmental Economics: An Introduction, about the pandemic’s impact on the environment. Martha described how we effectively have been part of an expansive, unplanned experiment. The COVID lockdown led to a big reduction in economic activity, which in turn led to a big improvement in our environment. However, Martha stressed that there were tradeoffs, as usual, for economics. Many people suffered major hardships, such as job loss and lack of social engagement.
We then talked about how her students had reduced their CO2 emissions by 76 percent because they were driving less. But as the lockdown started coming off, students still had lower CO2 emissions, but the reduction was smaller. Then we talked about three different ways to approach climate change: Mitigation, which is reduction in emissions; Adaptation, which is changing infrastructure and lifestyle; and migration, which is moving people from one location to another location which might be less affected by climate change.
What are the takeaways for students? We are still people who like mobility and need energy, even if we have less driving. Even the servers that power our technology still take a lot of energy. The hardships of reduced economic activity are not going to be able to go on. Greener energy sources like wind, solar and hydro are great, but perhaps we can still use fossil fuels and burn them in a different way that leads to less greenhouse gas emissions. This kind of adaptation can enable us to continue with the very mobile and social society that we are.
Questions/Discussion:
- How did the economic response to COVID-19 affect the environment?
- What is the difference between adaptation and mitigation when it comes to climate change?
Source: An Unplanned Experiment: How the Economic Response to Covid-19 Affected the Environment Podcast. Learn more about Martha Field’s book: Environmental Economics: An Introduction.
