Jason Shogren
on Balancing T rade-Offs
Lake Superior.
The largest freshwater lake in the world.
It's vastness captivates the senses with its awe-inspiring beauty. Holding ten percent of the world’s surface-level drinking water, it is a testament to nature's grandeur.
Yet, its role as a vital resource has long been tainted— plagued by taconite tailings from mining operations in the North.
Within the untamed landscapes of northern Minnesota, a young Jason Shogren developed a profound appreciation for nature's provisions, its intrinsic beauty, and its indispensable role in our lives.
Yet, his early encounters with Lake Superior presented a paradoxical view—a stunning natural wonder marred by the consequences of human activity.
As a young boy, he struggled to reconcile this stark contrast. But it was within this dissonance that Shogren's understanding of the delicate balance between utilizing and preserving resources began to take shape.
It, too, was a lesson on how misuse and negligence can jeopardize the very resources that sustain us.
These realizations would go on to shape his journey as an economist, fueling his drive to understand and address the intricate trade-offs inherent in our relationship with the environment.
“My inclinations are never to go to the extreme of anything, but always to recognize there's big distribution of behavior— and I am accepting of that big distribution,” he explains. “The whole field is about trade offs: balancing what you want, versus what you need, versus what you can get.”
Perhaps most importantly, the field of economics helps us reach an understanding of how constraints can force people into choices they might not otherwise make— mechanisms that are paramount in the realm of climate and resource policy.
Driven by a unique blend of environmental consciousness and economic reasoning, Shogren took the path of an educator in his early career— inspiring his students to grasp the complexities of economics in all its capabilities and limitations. He embarked on a journey beyond the confines of a teaching-oriented university and into a research-focused institution.
It was this shift that pushed his career towards the realm of public policy.
“If you’re gonna be a good environmental economist, you’ve got to work with a lot of different people, because their perspectives and their science really matters for you to do your science better.”
“As economists, you are dragged into those decisions because people are looking for some kind of estimate of the benefits and costs of different policies,” he explains.
Tasked with evaluating the costs and benefits of various pesticide options in agriculture, Shogren oversaw a team of nearly 20 professionals. During this ambitious endeavor, his team assessed the potential ramifications of banning the widely used pesticide, Atrazine, in the Corn Belt— a critical agricultural region in the United States.
“That project naturally led to this interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary focus. We had economists, but we also had statisticians, agricultural engineers, systems engineers, agronomists, people who specialized in bugs and pests, people who specialized in soil— the whole gamut of natural sciences, ecology, and wildlife. And everybody had a seat at the table because you're dealing with the agriculture system in its entirety,” he explains.
It was through this experience that he learned that as an economist, he by no means knows everything.
“If you're gonna be a good environmental economist, you've got to work with a lot of different people, because their perspective and their science really matters for you to do your science better,” he says.
Shogren’s willingness to listen to and understand other disciplines and his aptitude for rich, productive discourse awarded him the opportunity to work in the White House during the Clinton-Gore administration as Senior Economist for Environmental Affairs.
“My job was always to ask, ‘how much?’” he explains. “As an economist, you're in the middle, and you're always making somebody mad for asking the other side of the question on the policy they want to propose. But that's the job. That's the whole point of it.”
When the U.S government was picking economists to join the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Shogren received an invitation to participate as a lead author for one of the chapters focusing on ‘cost and methodology.’
“It was hard not to say yes to an invitation like that, because now my perspective wasn’t just U.S policy or Wyoming policy— it was global policy.”
Undoubtedly, this invitation was extended to Shogren on account of his stellar reputation as an honest broker— one who would provide the best economic advice without pushing for a specific direction, but instead working for a viable solution.
“I’m still not even sure I'm an economist,” he says. “I’m still just a guy who likes to study things— and economics is one that I like to study. I still think of myself more as an applied philosopher, thinking about all these different ideas and how to make them work to form hard policy decisions.”
With his multidimensional perspective and dedication to studying and understanding, Shogren continues to contribute to the discussion of pragmatic solutions to the complex environmental issues we face. Today, he continues his path as an educator at the University of Wyoming, devoting his time to educate students on the importance of natural resource conservation and management.
Molded by the natural wonders of northern Minnesota, Shogren’s deep-rooted connection to the natural world drives his concern for the dire environmental changes that will occur in the short term— as well as the changes that his children will inevitably face once he is long gone. He believes that while we can all do more to save the environment, it is the younger generation who he hopes will go “all in” to change the world through their actions. He sees Greta Thundberg’s commitment as vital— being an “all in” changemaker who employs her focus and deliberate action to change the world.
In Shogren’s eyes, the state of our future is contingent on our ability to channel our focus into deliberate, collaborative action— listening to one another equitably and navigating the many difficult tradeoffs we will have to make along the way.
Shogren reflects on his career and imparts his expertise on climate policy:
ON WORKING IN EDUCATION
What have been some of the greatest rewards working in education?
“The obvious one is you get to spend a lifetime learning. For me, that has been a great reward— and part of the excitement of that is being able to share that learning with other people who are likewise interested. Not every student is 100% interested in what you're talking about at any given time, and I was exactly the same way. But you can really get people to take a different perspective on things than they had before— not that your perspective is more right, necessarily, than theirs. It is just that, as an educator, you have been able to put your perspective in a context that defines it more sharply— and with that sharper definition, then they can come up with their own conclusions. I have never been interested in dictating a point of view, but I have been interested in getting them to figure out a way to get to the answer themselves. Being able to do that for for students and for colleagues who are interested, to me, has always been a great bonus.”
ON CLIMATE POLICY
From a policy standpoint, are there ways in which you think other countries are handling the climate crisis in a more optimal way than the U.S?
“I don't think that the US is necessarily doing what it needs to do. It seems to be– a lot of times– bogged down in the swamps. You could argue that the EU is doing more, or that they are taking a more aggressive lead. In my mind, that makes more sense than us simply dragging our feet. At the same time, that's partly illusionary, because what happens a lot of times is that the U.S says, “we're gonna talk about it and talk about it, and then when we decide to do it, we do it.” Then the EU says, “let's do it— but first, we better talk about it, and then eventually we’ll get to it.” It's as if we get to the same spot at roughly the same time, but the perceptions are different.
So is there an optimal way to do the policy? I think there are challenges. We have politicians with two-year or four-year focuses– and that makes it a bit tough. But nobody wants a dictator with a 50-year focus. Nobody wants just one person in charge. So there's always the push and pull of the political system. You get three steps up the hill, and you roll back two. Then you go up one and you roll back three. There's a constant sense of progress and then retreat, progress and then retreat.
You’ve got to be patient, but you’ve got to be persistent if you believe in the policy you are promoting. As an economist, when I come into policy debates, people listen because they are given pros and cons. If I come in as an ideologist, then some people put me on their shoulders and other people want to throw me off the bus. I'd rather try to be in the middle and understand both sides of the story, so that we can make better choices.”
What is the best means through which we can create policies that incentivise’s individuals to change their lifestyles?
“For economists, it's about trying to change prices to incentavise consumers to buy less of the things that are causing global problems. They may not recognize why they are paying more, but they ultimately do less of the thing you're trying to get them to do less of.
Now, the hard part with that, of course, is that people don't like to pay taxes. When gasoline prices went up, that should have been every climate change policy-maker’s dream. Its just like having a carbon tax on the fossil fuels. Instead of viewing it as a step in the right direction, people did not seem too happy with it. It’s hard when people don't like the idea of paying more when they're not used to it.
The challenge then becomes trying to find a way to make environmental programs self sufficient through investments in new technologies— such as renewable resources, or figuring out how to use the ocean more effectively in its ability to generate energy, or how to implement better technology so we use less water in the face of more droughts. All of these things become huge policy questions of what is the most cost effective way to get people to adopt these new technologies. Because, at the end of the day, not everybody's on the same page in terms of whether this a huge problem or not. It's easiest to cooperate when nothing's at stake or everything's at stake– and the in between part is the big scrum.”
