The anchor to my sustainability education and Master’s degree in Environmental Economics was Advanced Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis. This class, taught by my thesis advisor, Dr. Susana Ferreira, took the cumulative knowledge from two years of advanced courses on environmental science, economic theory, and ethics, and synthesized it into a complete understanding of how to apply these concepts in the world. Guided by readings from leading policy analysts, I studied how integrative problem solving, systems thinking, and an anticipatory approach can create holistic solutions to the world’s most wicked problems. Our overarching guiding text for the course was No Brainers and Low-Hanging Fruit in National Climate Policy. This book, published October 2021, is an approachable and uplifting guide to facing down climate change. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in climate change solutions that are easy to implement (politically, economically, and technologically) and have been thoroughly analyzed for any unintended ill consequences or feedback loops. Through reading this book and a host of academic articles, I explored sustainability policy analysis with my classmates in a discussion-based setting.

This course provided essential experience in applied policy analysis and creation through the lens of meeting the quadruple bottom line of profits, planet, people, and politics. This was especially important for me as an aspiring professional in the field of environmental policy. I hugely enjoyed working through the climate change policies covered in Low Hanging Fruit with classmates and breaking apart what they did well and how they could be improved. We also read academic papers on emerging topics like the distributional effects of environmental policy and use of behavioral science in policy design, as well as more traditional environmental economics schemes like payments for ecosystem services and pollution taxes. These readings made me excited to enter the world of science-based policy creation, and feel hopeful about the future possibilities of using incentives to create effective and equitable change. During the class I wrote this short editorial, which addresses some common misperceptions about how economists view the world (surprise, we are not all laissez-faire lovers of capitalism.) This course also led me to create the first working draft of my thesis project, in part inspired by another reading: Information as Regulation: The Effect of Community Right to Know Laws on Toxic Emissions, by Konar and Cohen. They showed that public information provision could be a strong incentive for polluting firms to reduce their environmental impact.

My thesis project, A perfect storm: Climate change and contamination in Glynn County, GA, focuses on public information provision around the compound risk presented by climate change and contamination. Glynn County is located on the coast of Georgia, and is at-risk from a host of climate change impacts such as hurricanes and sea level rise. Heightening this vulnerability is the presence of almost five hundred hazardous waste and materials sites, many of which could be directly impacted by climate change in such a way that contaminants are mobilized into surrounding communities. My study investigates the compound risk presented by the possible interaction of hazardous sites with climate change, in particular how this risk is distributed inequitably in the community. I am communicating the results with community members through several custom geospatial web applications. The community in Glynn County has been a partner in this study, and maintains ownership of all data through a public repository and contributes to the database via a custom citizen science application. From my presentation of this research proposal to my classmates in Advanced Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis, I received a new perspective that is helping to share my work on this project going forward. This project is intended to provide public information about climate and contamination risks in order to empower residents and motivate risk reduction. However, it could also harm the marginalized communities who are already most at-risk by decreasing the value of their properties. This was an impact pathway that I had not previously considered, and I am so grateful that my classmates brought it to my attention so that I can address it in the final version of my thesis.