An interview with T.J. Rakitan, an environmental economist and economics professor, on his views on sustainability. 

O: What does sustainability mean to you?

T: Well, my definition of sustainability riffs on a commonly accepted economic definition, we should leave each next generation at least as well off as our generation is. So whatever we can do to improve the welfare of the next generation, or at least allow it to not be decremented is something worth pursuing. So within that, there’s a lot of things individuals can do. And there’s also information that we need. So that, to me is a big part of sustainability. We need to know what people value what things we get out of, say, ecosystem services, things that we get out of planting more trees. So there’s an individual aspect of that I can plant a tree in my yard, for example, I can choose to walk rather than drive. But there are also sort of policy or coordination type things that we can do we as a society, that foster well being of later generations.

We should leave each next generation at least as well off as our generation is.

O: How does sustainability apply to your everyday life? And to what you do at Bates?

T: Yeah, well, personal example walking rather than driving. When I moved here, I made sure to find a place to live that was within walking distance of campus. So that I, you know, no matter the weather, I’ve, you know, I’ve got my snowshoes, I’ve got my skis. And whatever it takes, I’m not going to start the car if I can avoid it. And you know, I’ve got a car as it has an option value for me. But I will deliberately situate myself such that my carbon footprint is fairly low. And in terms of, you know, my work, for example, I do a lot of research and energy economics. So I’m very interested in how to contain the bad from energy development and how to spread the good. So my research on fracking, for example, involves looking at the returns to agriculture, and whether parking an oil well, right next to a farm field is a good or a bad investment. So I also like to look at things like wind energy, we’ve discussed this in class, you know, how to foster the development of energy that has these positive external benefits. So that’s, that’s a subject of interest to me professionally.

O: What inspired you to become an environmental economist?

T: Well, I remember I took a, I was an econ major as an undergrad, and I took intermediate micro, and the professor introduced a cap and trade model, which, incidentally, we’ll see in our class fairly soon. And I remember just being fascinated by the fact that you could represent pollution as having a value, it wasn’t a binary choice for us anymore, like all emissions are bad. You know, that that didn’t really resonate with me until I could see that we have ways to keep track of the cost and we could in fact, allocate pollution as we would any other resource. And all of a sudden that world evaluation opened up and I just never really looked back. I’d always been interested in energy, mechanical things, things that move, you know, why is it the locomotives use electric motors, as well as diesel engines? Every locomotive on the rails is a hybrid and that was just fascinating to me, hybrid cars, same deal. So in terms of looking at how those things worked, the idea that we could quantify some dollar value of what we were saving by investing in hybrid technology just really gripped me.

 

O: Given the current political climate with the anti-science, anti-environmental claims, is that affecting your work or changing your focus at all?

T: It hasn’t affected my work directly, I’m happy to say, and the academic community tends to be fairly apolitical in their work, even if they are politically engaged, I find most of us do a pretty good job of checking our politics at the door. And I do find that it’s been a challenge to spin my research in such a way that people of certain political inclinations will perhaps Listen to me. For example, the fracking debate has been going on for a long time, but now if I can phrase, my fracking research in terms of well, whose rights matter more? The energy companies or the farmers? Now you’ve got a question of property rights rather than whether or not climate change is a hoax or whether or not regulations are killing jobs. Now, we’ve phrased that in a way that is more of a story, rather than something that could be so politically charged. Same thing with wind energy, you know, one of the things I found in the Midwest was that Midwesterners really, really love the Midwest. And then something I found about pretty much every area I’ve lived, humans tend to be home towners. And anytime you can point out a local resource, or you know, something that is a local comparative advantage, people really like being able to claim it. So working within that political climate has made me aware of how to phrase some of these things, such that the public policy discourse doesn’t get subsumed by you know, more political inflammatory rhetoric.

Working within that political climate has made me aware of how to phrase some of these things, such that the public policy discourse doesn’t get subsumed by more political inflammatory rhetoric.

O: How can we leverage your expertise to create actual efforts at Bates on a personal or a college-wide level? So if you could do anything to promote sustainability, what would you do on campus? 

T: Well, Eco Reps job description seems like a really good place to start, you know, there’s the raising awareness angle, there’s calculating our carbon footprint engaging in waste management activities, looking at funding, taking advantage of grants, for example. So everything that you folks do, I think, is very, very well considered. I think econ, in general, has a lot to add in terms of being able to calculate, alright, under what conditions should we invest in one technology versus another, I mean, that I’m aware of, there’s not a whole lot of geothermal energy available in Maine. You know, so it makes a lot more sense to do something that is hydroelectric, or solar. So those kinds of trade-offs, I think, are well informed by the economic discourse. I’d also like to point out that, you know, things like waste management and recycling and the sort of fact-finding mission of Eco Reps, plays very nicely with this. There’s a lot of information that people need. And often it’s a lot to learn at any one time. And I think disseminating information on the costs and benefits of certain policies, if you can wrap it up in what are the dollar signs telling us that makes our lives much easier? We only have to pay attention to a single metric, is this costly, yes or no. And it makes it so much easier for people to be able to look at, say single stream recycling versus multi-stream recycling and be able to say, all right, this one’s cheaper. And as long as that price truly represents our best information about how we are affecting, say, the planet, the biosphere, you know, whatever the externalities are associated with recycling versus not recycling, as long as that price is informative. You know, people can make a more rational choice. So I think that’s sort of one of the contributions of economics, and especially with my research on energy and externalities, that’s something I hope to be able to promote, you know, under what conditions should we invest in one technology over another? What are some of the property rights issues or some of the spillovers that might be detrimental? And informing people about those, pricing those out, I think, is an important step in the right direction.

Under what conditions should we invest in one technology over another? What are some of the property rights issues or some of the spillovers that might be detrimental? And informing people about those, pricing those out, I think, is an important step in the right direction.

O: Can you think of a way to promote an inclusive group as opposed to it just being the Eco Reps and the ES majors that are focused on this?

T: Of course, I’m going to say more people need to take economics. It’s, you know, we all say that, but it’s true. I think that having that background and sort of getting used to thinking in trade-offs is a very useful skill. And beyond Eco Reps, you know, if students are obliged to take courses in sustainability, that might not have the same effect as facing them or giving them you know, the option to do the right thing with all the information upfront. Yes, I think Bates students are probably more inclined than the general population to think through the life cycle of what they’re doing, you know, they can think through the lifecycle of plastic, of food, we can think about being responsible for our own food waste, that sort of thing. But in general, ways to convince people to act in these pro-social ways, you know, you have to give them signals. So prices in markets, they are signals, so ways to nudge people I think often involve, however you can make those signals more informative. So when I was an undergrad, for example, one of the things we did was in the dining commons rather than allow people to take napkins, right as they got their food, we simply put baskets of napkins at every table. And suddenly, the paper waste went down by something like 15% just the first month. Right, so but here was the problem, we didn’t keep track of those numbers until someone pointed it out that we didn’t know what our savings was. So it wasn’t until the second month that we went back and estimated what the losses were during the first month. So being able to put these systems in place of measuring that’s also important, doing things that are a convenience, basically making it easier for students to make the right choice: you give them the information, and then you make the options easy, decreases their cost of doing the right thing. And then at that point, you don’t necessarily need everyone to adopt the Eco Rep mentality. They just have to go about their everyday business.

Making it easier for students to make the right choice: you give them the information, and then you make the options easy, decreases their cost of doing the right thing.

O: So my final question is if you were given a grant, and you could do anything you wanted with it regarding sustainability at Bates, what would you do?

T: Well, it depends on the amount of the grant. Yeah, if it were huge, I’d look at energy usage. And I’d want to track that and I’d want some kind of information about any individual’s marginal contribution to CO2, you know, looking at tying together, for example, a lot of the programs that are already in place. So things to make people aware, you know, putting information, for example, an app or tying things to people’s student ID cards. And also possibly investing in a system that did give people some nudges toward sustainable behavior. I mean, the campus is a little small to do something like a bike share. But if we did a bicycle sharing program might need logistics and incentives for people to move the bikes from where they’re used, but not needed to areas where they’re needed, but not used. So things like that, that allow and incentivize individual uses of resources in a productive fashion, is something I would really want to invest in, something that’s a lot of students behavior, or individuals, faculty as well, are behaviors to move in that prosocial direction. So yeah, if it were an unlimited grant, I think we’d have a lot of projects.