Joseph Aldy

Joseph Aldy

When Joseph Aldy trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro with his father in 2000, he was a long way from the farm in Kentucky where he grew up—but close to the things that matter to him. Aldy is an economist who works on energy and climate-change policy. He loves to hike. On Kilimanjaro’s 19,341-foot peak, he got to see the last vestiges of the 11,000-year-old glaciers there—they are expected to disappear within the next decade or so. An assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), he is faculty chair of the regulatory-policy program at its Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He got his start in environmental economics in Washington, D.C., where he became jet-lagged working on the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, even though he didn’t go to Japan: he was the economist who stayed home and crunched U.S. emissions numbers from 7:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. for the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). In the Clinton administration, he rose from a presidential management internship to posts as staff economist, and then senior economist for the environment and natural resources, for the CEA. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2005, he returned to government service under President Obama as special assistant to the president for energy and environment, deferring his appointment at HKS to work on the clean-energy package of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, among other initiatives. “The political world can get hung up on trivial things,” he says, but experience gained by “working in Washington can help you understand what really is a relevant policy question. Scholarship needs to be informative.”

Click here for the March-April 2012 issue table of contents

You might also like

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Radcliffe Institute Announces 2025-2026 Fellows

Scholars pursue projects ranging from reducing ethnic violence to searching for an undiscovered super-Earth.

Danielle Allen Debates Far-Right Blogger Curtis Yarvin

Popular monarchist debates Allen on democracy.

Most popular

Government Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students

The move is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the University.

Harvard Responds to Protests

Smaller campus actions draw administrative and online responses.

Is Harvard Antisemitic?

Two reports investigate hatred and anti-Israel sentiment.

Explore More From Current Issue

The Franklin Stove—A Historical Climate Change Adaptation

Historian Joyce E. Chaplin reinterprets an early era of invention, industrialization, and climate challenge

Making Green Energy Projects Financially Viable

A proposed “green” swap enables decarbonization of emerging market development projects.

Filmmaker Salvador Litvak's Jewish Movies

The “Accidental Talmudist” on making Jewish movies