This text was initially revealed in UCSB’s ‘The Present.’
Environmental insurance policies have financial impacts, and financial insurance policies have environmental impacts. Luckily, the Workplace of the President has somebody on retainer to fastidiously contemplate these implications.
Affiliate Professor Kyle Meng will be a part of the White Home Council of Financial Advisers (CEA), a physique charged with guiding the president on financial coverage based mostly on knowledge, analysis and proof. Meng will function the senior economist tasked with the council’s local weather, power and setting portfolio. Meng can be on authorities element starting in late August.
“It is a gigantic honor to be requested to serve within the White Home,” mentioned Meng, an environmental economist on the Bren Faculty of Environmental Science & Administration and within the Division of Economics. “I hope my experience can be helpful on this pivotal second for U.S. local weather coverage.”
“This appointment is a stellar recognition of Kyle’s unbelievable accomplishments as an economist,” mentioned Steve Gaines, dean of the Bren Faculty. “However much more importantly, the planet will profit significantly from his potential to drive U.S.-led, modern options to complicated environmental challenges.”
Meng research the implications of environmental insurance policies when it comes to their efficacy, effectivity and fairness impacts. He serves because the co-director of the Local weather & Power Program at UCSB’s Environmental Markets Lab (emLab). His analysis has explored the connection between the worldwide local weather and civil wars, developed instruments to forecast the price of local weather coverage, and uncovered disparity in air air pollution because of local weather insurance policies.
The Biden administration has formidable targets for chopping greenhouse fuel emissions, with laws now in place to pursue this purpose. The large problem is how one can decarbonize the financial system in a manner that advantages Individuals throughout the board. “A key query for any main financial transition — and particularly a inexperienced power transition — is whether or not it additionally ends in a extra equitable society,” Meng mentioned. As an illustration, an electric-vehicle subsidy won’t profit low-income communities if there’s restricted infrastructure for inexpensive charging.
“We’ve got inherited a really unequal society,” he continued. “The multi-billion greenback query is whether or not addressing local weather change also can present alternatives to slim this historic inequality. Discovering these alternatives can be my central focus on the CEA.”
