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Belfer Center Home > Programs/Projects > Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"Convincing the
Climate-Change Skeptics"

STPP Director John P. Holdren comments on the climate-change "debate" in a Boston Globe op-ed.
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Read Professor Holdren's response to criticism of this op-ed here.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

AP Photo

August 11, 2008

"China's Quick Fall, Slow Return to Glory"

The Boston Globe

By Philip Auerswald, Associate, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program

"...China's resurgence extends to a domain in which the country has historically been weak: science and technology. Twenty years ago, China was not on the list of the top 10 exporters of high-tech products; today it is number one. The United States remains the world leader with regard to research and development investments, but in China such spending has for over a decade been growing at a remarkable 19 percent per year — more than six times the US rate...."

2008

"Corporate Policy Preferences in the EU and the US: Emissions Trading as the Climate Compromise?"

Carbon and Climate Law Review, issue 2/2008

By Jonas Meckling, Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy

Since the agreement of the Kyoto Protocol, business in the EU and the US has been split over the course of climate policy. This article reviews the regulatory preferences of major business associations on both sides of the Atlantic, and assesses whether the transatlantic gap on corporate positioning on climate change is actually narrowing and what the compromise solution might be.

Dean Calma/IAEA

July 12, 2008

IAEA Safeguards: Dealing Preventively with Non-Compliance

By Pierre Goldschmidt

In a study commissioned by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Pierre Goldschmidt, former Deputy Director-General for Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), outlines a new approach to strengthening the IAEA's hand in cases when states violate their safeguards agreements. Goldschmidt argues that the UN Security Council should pass a generic resolution laying out steps the Security Council would take to deal with any state found to be in violation of its safeguards obligations. Any state which violated its safeguards pact would be required to accept a broader inspection regime going well beyond the Additional Protocol until the IAEA was able to draw the conclusion that all of its nuclear facilities and materials were under safeguards. If the IAEA is unable to draw such a conclusion with 60 days, the state would be required to cease all its sensitive nuclear activities. Goldschmidt offers a draft text for the resolution and for the "Model Temporary Complementary Protocol" that defines the broader inspection regime, along with an article-by-article analysis.

Department of Energy

July 18, 2008

"'Appropriate Effective' Nuclear Security and Accounting — What is It?"

By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom

Project on Managing the Atom's Matthew Bunn discusses United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1540 — a major new tool for combating nuclear terrorism and proliferation that is little used.

July 9, 2008

Report of the Harvard University Task Force on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

By William Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development; Co-director, Sustainability Science Program; Faculty Chair, ENRP; and John P. Holdren, Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program

Harvard University released the report of its Greenhouse Gas Task Force. The task force, appointed by President Drew Faust in February, proposes elements of a framework for much-intensified efforts to reduce the University's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as part of a broader effort to promote environmental sustainability.

June 30, 2008

"Get Biotechnology on the Agenda for Africa"

The Japan Times

By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project

"Leaders at the Group of Eight industrialized nations' summit in Hokkaido next month need to take strong measures to promote cooperation in using biotechnology to address Africa's food challenges. At present there is resistance from Europe, and even Japan is dragging its feet on this vital issue....While the claims about risks need to be addressed, they no longer carry the same stigma worldwide. South America and Asia have in many cases leapfrogged into the genomics age through the adoption of biotechnology while its use in Africa remains largely marginal."

AP Photo

June 2008

"Analysis of Policies to Reduce Oil Consumption and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions from the U.S. Transportation Sector"

By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Director, Energy Technology Innovation Policy and Gustavo Collantes, Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy

This study examines different policy scenarios for reducing GHG emissions and oil consumption in the U.S. transportation sector using a variant of the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS).

Russia, Georgia, and Nuclear Smuggling

Michael Bronner, author of Project on Managing the Atom's 100 Grams (and Counting...): Notes from the Nuclear Underworld, outlines the security threats emanating from "frozen conflict" zones like South Ossetia in an August 16, 2008, New York Times op-ed.

Read "When the War Ends, Start to Worry".

Securing the Bomb 2007

Securing the Bomb 2007

Managing the Atom Senior Research Associate Matthew Bunn provides a comprehensive assessment of efforts to secure and remove vulnerable nuclear stockpiles around the world, and a detailed action plan for reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. Securing the Bomb 2007 was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The full report, with additional information on the threat of nuclear terrorism, is available on the NTI website.

"Easy Being Green"

"Giving Green to Get Green: Incentives and Consumer Adoption of Hybrid Vehicle Technology", a working paper co-authored by ETIP Director Kelly Sims Gallagher, was highlighted in Atlantic.com's Primacy Sources June 2008 column.

Climate Change,
John P. Holdren, & WRKO's Finneran's Forum

STPP Director John P. Holdren discussed global climate change on WRKO's Finneran's Forum on August 4, 2008. Listen to the broadcast here.

Starved for Science

Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa

Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.

Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.

Resident Expert

John P. Holdren

John P. Holdren is the Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program. His work has focused on causes and consequences of global environmental change, sustainable development, energy technology and policy, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and science and technology policy.

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