I recently participated in a panel put together by Boise State’s Hazard and Climate Resilience Institute as part of their Resource Nexus for Sustainability Grand Challenge. Together with 3 other economists (including the moderator), we met virtually to talk about the role of economics as a discipline for advancing the social goal of sustainability put in the context of the climate crisis. The name of the event was “Can economics help save the world?” (I’ll add the link to the video when it’s available.)
The discussion was pleasant, I think. Although to be honest, I can’t say I truly remember what went on. It was very dynamic and “real-time” in the sense that we tried addressing participant’s questions as they appeared in the chat–thus serving for a kind of authentically and beautifully chaotic episode of collective consciousness.
In preparation for the event, a few questions were distributed for panelists to organize their ideas around central topics chosen by the moderator. These questions were not easy and my answers to them kept evolving through the couple of weeks we had to prepare for the event.
So much of what I wanted to say may not have come across the way I wanted to or may not have been said simply by the very non-curated nature of live events. I want to post my evolving thoughts around these questions because the process of discovering those answers was truly edifying and spurred what felt like a moment of self-actualization. I’ll post them one at a time to keep things tractable, but I’ll add links to other reflections at the bottom of each commentary.
Without further ado, please join me in the discovery of some quite provocative questions put together for us by someone who genuinely was seeking to find new ideas and host a fun but illuminating discussion.
Q8: How can what we have talked about today be applied in Idaho for the prosperity of the people and natural systems?
- Learn from Tribal Nations: They can teach us so much about being stewards of nature!
- Start a forum for respectful economic discussion: Economists need to start working together with other economists and with other researchers. How about a forum/platform group of economists4thefuture? Maybe we can start something like a newsletter, something informal where the participants share short updates on how their work can inform consumer choices, producer choices, policy? It doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed and wait years for publication. We can start putting out the knowledge that’s actionable in a format that’s easy to access by everyone. Entertain those forums, discussion boards and invite people outside of the field to contribute. Economics is too important to leave to the “economists.”
- Working with big companies (Idaho Power, Simplot, Jervois, etc) Working with all these large companies that are big emitters and important players in the distribution and use of natural resources (in the world, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions). They have much power and influence and can make big impacts.
- Here’s a controversial one: Have universities work together! How about BSU and UoI work together? There’s so much to do on rangeland management, wildfire suppression, and a myriad other relevant topic.
- Updating curriculums at universities? What are we teaching at universities? What textbooks are we using? What kind of projects do we invite students to work on?
- Push for better methods to aid decision-making than traditional tools like Benefit-Cost Analysis. To the extent that we can, shape the agendas in our workplaces to include climate change in our scenario planning or program/policy appraisal. Propose better methods for our traditional BCAs, etc.
laura villegas ortiz 