Michael Greenstone, is the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and Director, Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Greenstone, who also served as chief economist in President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, is currently working with the central and state governments to help industries curb air pollution using continuous emission monitoring. In an interview, Greenstone spoke about air pollution, climate change and President Donald Trump.
India is yet to have official data on pollution linked mortality, Environment Minister Anil Dave recently said. In your view, how seriously does lack of data impacts implementation of environmental regulations?
We are at the dawn of an era where we can move from policy made evidence making, where we announce the policy and simultaneously announce the evidence, to evidence based policy-making. This way, we can learn how the world works and use that to guide policy, so that it achieves its objectives.I think we are at the dawn of that era due to several things; advances in computing, advances in access to data and a deep understanding of how to design experiments that can provide answers to critical energy and environment questions that people in India and other parts of the world are facing. I think there…
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