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May 24, 2006: Brooktrout Lake near Speculator, N.Y. in the Adirondacks. Brooktrout Lake was once a "dead" lake devastated by acid rain and is now a symbol of nature's ability to heal itself once pollutants are curbed.

AP Photo

Report - Harvard Environmental Economics Program

The SO2 Allowance Trading System and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990: Reflections on Twenty Years of Policy Innovation

| January 2012

The introduction of the U.S. SO2 allowance-trading program to address the threat of acid rain as part of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 is a landmark event in the history of environmental regulation. The program was a great success by almost all measures. Ironically, cap and trade seems especially well suited to addressing the problem of climate change, in that emitted greenhouse gases are evenly distributed throughout the world's atmosphere. Recent hostility toward cap and trade in debates about U.S. climate legislation may reflect the broader political environment of the climate debate more than the substantive merits of market-based regulation.

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

New Book from Former Harvard Environmental Economics Program Pre-Doctoral Fellow Gernot Wagner on Effective Environmental Economic Policy

| November 2011

The core message of But Will the Planet Notice?—presented with both rigor and wit—is that the actions of individuals can do very little to solve major environment problems, including climate change, species preservation, and water scarcity. What's required is economic policy that motivates large portions of the population—and major industrial sectors—to reduce pollution and use resources more efficiently.

From left to right: Carlo Carraro of Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Robert Stavins of the Harvard Project, and Jing Cao of Tsinghua University

Robert C. Stowe

News

Harvard Project Leadership Presents Key Lessons at Official COP 14 Side-Event

| December 15, 2008

In the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements' official side-event in Poznan, Poland, Professor Robert N. Stavins presented key findings from the project's Interim Report, which synthesizes an extensive research effort conducted by 27 teams of leading experts from developed and developing countries, whose goal is to identify key design principles of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture.