IU Welcomes Severin Borenstein as Featured Speaker for the Bonser Lecture

In February 2020, BEPP and the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs hosted its annual Bonser lecture series. Its namesake, Charles Bonser, is a well-known academic and influential across both departments at IU. Andrew Butters, who helped organize this year’s lecture, says that the series creates an opportunity to bring in well-established thought leaders in the public policy space. Past speakers have included former heads of state, academics, and congressmen.

“It’s an eclectic group, but all individuals, each in their own respect, were able to bring a nice commentary to an issue of public policy,” says Butters. This year’s selection was Severin Borenstein, a full professor at the Haas School of Business at California Berkeley. He spoke about climate change and how to think about the role of energy and public policy implications.

“He discussed how we might think about a path going forward. He’s the perfect person to talk about these issues given his accomplishments,” says Butters, noting that Borenstein has sat on the boards of several major public utility commissions.

“He’s just this really nice balance of someone who has demonstrated himself to be a leader on the academic research side of things, yet he’s also been very involved in the public policy discourse,” says Butters. “I don’t think there was a member of the audience who thought both the content or the person delivering it was disconnected with how the world works or what’s at stake for these issues.”

Butter’s G492 student Nisha Kochar says that watching Borenstein’s lecture made it clear that while pricing greenhouse gases is a part of the climate change solution, it’s not the only component.

“If there is a continued focus on climate change research and greenhouse gas reductions, I believe that we will be able to get one step closer to limiting climate change and its impact on the planet,” says Kochar.

Butter’s G492 student Kirsten LoPrete says that listening to Borenstein’s lecture got her thinking, too.

“While I think making the earth cleaner and fighting to reduce climate change and greenhouse gas emissions will help all people by helping the planet, there are also short-term issues that need to be addressed along the way in order to not cause more harm in this effort,” says LoPrete. “It’s not just about finding the most economical way to cut emissions or playing into incentivizing the wealthy businesses that cause so much pollution. We also have to think about the communities that disproportionally suffer the effects of climate change and pollution.”

While Borenstein was originally slated to speak in the spring of 2020 and meet with faculty and other members of the IU community, COVID-19 changed all of that. As the pandemic evolved and it became clear early in the fall that life wouldn’t return to normal for quite some time, they got creative in how to make it happen in some way, shape or form.

“We wanted to make sure we still had the Bonser lecture given its importance,” says Butters. “We didn’t want to skip a year so we opted to go the webinar route.”

Though it was unfortunate to not be able to hold the lecture in person, one upside to the virtual component was that the web event was recorded, which enabled students, faculty, and others to view later if they couldn’t watch it live.

“It was a nice topic and certainly an important one,” says Butters. “Borenstein spoke to a lot of timely, key issues on the energy side of things.”

The lecture was coincidentally timed around all of the turmoil that was going on in Texas.

“Borenstein spoke about the role of public policy and energy and how that can feed into inequality issues across different potentially disproportionately impacted communities,” says Butters. “He discussed how innovation, businesses and public policy institutions, and regulatory frameworks can be part of the solution.”