Environment & Climate Change

293 Items

Students marching in Milan

Wikimedia CC/Mænsard vokser

Journal Article - Global Environmental Politics

Is Democracy the Answer to Intractable Climate Change?

| 2023

While research suggests that democracy offers an answer to the climate crisis, evidence of the effect of regime type on greenhouse gas emissions is mixed and yields inconclusive findings. This article investigates the effect of regime type on carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane emissions and presents new evidence showing that when it comes to climate change mitigation, democracies are no greener than autocracies.

Students at left watch as student activists take positions in the Cathedral of Learning

AP/Keith Srakocic

Journal Article - Environmental Politics

Fossil Fuel Divestment and Public Climate Change Policy Preferences: An Experimental Test in Three Countries

| 2023

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. The authors assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa.

Robert Stavins

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Glimmers of Movement, Hope at COP27

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| Nov. 23, 2022

Following the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, Robert Stavins said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette that the talks were both frustrating and hopeful: frustrating because they did little to accelerate the slow pace of action to reduce carbon emissions, and hopeful because of a reawakened dialogue between the world’s biggest emitters—the U.S. and China—and movement to address climate-related damage to the world’s most vulnerable nations.

Permafrost samples held by scientists

Credit: Chris Linder

Newspaper Article - The New York Times

Donors Pledge $41 Million to Monitor Thawing Arctic Permafrost

    Author:
  • Henry Fountain
| Apr. 11, 2022

On April 11, 2022, The New York Times covered the launch of the new Permafrost Pathways project, a collaboration between the Belfer Center's Arctic Initiative, Woodwell Climate Research Center, and the Alaskan Institute for Justice. The six-year effort by climate scientists and policy experts aims to fill gaps in knowledge about planet-warming emissions and help affected communities in Alaska.

Wind Turbines

Public Domain/kallerna

Journal Article - Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

The Relative Merits of Carbon Pricing Instruments: Taxes versus Trading

| Winter 2022

Robert Stavins closely examines the advantages and disadvantages of two distinct pricing instruments for reducing carbon emissions—carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. Both policy instruments are in common use today in many countries although not in the United States. Stavins looks at the practical challenges, financial implications, and political feasibility of both approaches, concluding that while they are equivalent in many ways, they can perform quite differently along other dimensions, making an apples-to-apples comparison quite difficult.

Robert Stavins

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Separating Signal from Noise at COP26

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| Nov. 17, 2021

For an assessment of what was done, and left undone, at the recent United Nations’ Conference of the Parties on climate change, the Gazette spoke with Rob Stavins, the Harvard Kennedy School’s A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development and head of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, who attended his first COP in 2007 in Bali. 

Clouds in a blue sky

Flickr CC/arbyreed

Journal Article - Science

Social Science Research to Inform Solar Geoengineering

    Authors:
  • Tyler Felgenhauer
  • William A. Pizer
  • Massimo Tavoni
  • Mariia Belaia
  • Mark E. Borsuk
  • Arunabha Ghosh
  • Garth Heutel
  • Daniel Heyen
  • Christine Merk
  • Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
  • Jesse L. Reynolds
  • Katharine Ricke
  • Wilfried Rickels
  • Soheil Shayegh
  • Wake Smith
  • Simone Tilmes
  • Jonathan B. Wiener
| Nov. 12, 2021

Professors David Keith and Joseph Aldy and their co-authors say deeper social science research could contribute to policy decisions on this tool to address climate change.

sopka

imaggeo.egu.eu/Alexandra Loginova

Journal Article - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Permafrost Carbon Feedbacks Threaten Global Climate Goals

    Authors:
  • Susan M. Natali
  • Brendan M. Rogers
  • Rachael Treharne
  • Philip Duffy
  • Rafe Pomerance
  • Erin MacDonald
| May 25, 2021

There is an urgent need to incorporate the latest science on carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and northern wildfires into international consideration of how much more aggressively societal emissions must be reduced to address the global climate crisis.