When you're sitting in Boston with the
average temperature is 48 degrees Fahrenheit,
three or four degrees of warming
in terms of average temperatures, that
actually sounds nice. But if I told you
that that corresponds to maybe 10, 20, 30
more days a year where it gets too hot
to work outside, then it's suddenly a
different story. As a student of
economics, I see climate change as the
ultimate market failure, it's the ultimate
global public goods problem, so that's
interesting from the intellectual
standpoint but probably more importantly
from a public welfare standpoint, I see
climate change as probably one of the
defining challenges of my generation.
We're only beginning to understand the
extent to which changes in climate,
particularly as they manifest in
increased extreme events, may affect
economic welfare, economic productivity.
Looking at U.S. automobile manufacturing
plants, a week with six or more days
above 90 degrees Fahrenheit results in
roughly eight percent reduction in
output and, more importantly, that output
is not made up in later weeks, right, it's not
like they just work overtime on a
cooler week to make up for that. There's
just so much uncertainty involved and
we're trying to make policy on fifty to
a hundred year timescale, something that
we really haven't done before as a
civilization. And so being able to
clarify even small catches, right, of the
shroud of uncertainty that surrounds
this issue is a hugely valuable task
that places like Harvard are uniquely
well positioned to tackle.
