Holdren, Colleagues Call for Immediate Action on Climate Disruptions

"Climate change is real, humans are the largest cause of it, it's already doing harm, it's accelerating, and we need to do something serious about it, starting now," John Holdren told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in February. "If the build-up of greenhouse gases pushes the global average surface temperature past 2-2.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts of climate change on human wellbeing becomes very high."

Holdren, director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, was one of 18 leading scientists from 11 countries who produced the report, "Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable," at the request of the United Nations.

The report said the largest causes of climate change are the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation, both of which emit large quantities of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased nearly 40 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the authors said. Resulting changes in climate are already changing ecosystems around the globe, increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, and wildfires, and raising sea level. Without intensified efforts both to reduce the pace and magnitude of climate change and to reduce the damages from the degree of change that cannot be avoided, harm far more severe than what has been experienced so far is in store, Holdren said.

The earth's inhabitants have less than a decade to slow and then begin to reverse climate change, Holdren believes. Critical steps, he says, include changing the world's energy system to emit less carbon dioxide and providing incentives against deforestation. Scientists and technologists have major roles to play in bringing this about, Holdren said in his presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His call on scientists worldwide to "tithe" 10 percent of their time and effort to "working to increase the benefits of science and technology for the human condition" drew a standing ovation.

"How much are we [the U.S.] investing in the new energy technologies that could help us with this mitigation challenge? The answer is, not much," said Holdren at a Belfer Center climate change discussion in February with Robert Stavins, director of Harvard's Environmental Economics Program and member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors.

Stavins noted that special attention must be paid to upcoming Congressional policies on climate change. "Fear of foreign oil dependency and love of domestically produced corn-based ethanol . . . could lead to some terrible policies coming out of both the administration and the Congress," he said. He recommends creation of a post-Kyoto international climate agreement that is "scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic."

Holdren and Stavins are joined by a team of Belfer Center-affiliated scholars whose research addresses different aspects of climate disruption and advises policymakers in those areas. Stavins and the Harvard-wide Environmental Economics Program focus on the role of economic instruments in addressing climate change and other environmental problems. Holdren, Henry Lee, Kelly Sims Gallagher, and their team in the Energy Technology Innovation Project concentrate on the role of advanced technologies in addressing the climate-change and oil-dependence problems in China, India, and the United States. William Hogan's Harvard Electricity Policy Project looks at electricity-sector structure and regulation as important factors affecting energy problems and solutions, including climate change. William Clark and Calestous Juma lead efforts on the theory and practice of environmental sustainability in both industrialized and developing countries.

The Belfer Center debated these topics recently with a number of experts. Richard N. Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of Economics at Harvard University, does not believe a target-based post-Kyoto agreement is possible. Instead, he believes the world should focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal.

Shirley Jackson, president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, summed up challenges to decision-makers at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum in February. "Addressing energy requirements in ways that are environmentally self-sustaining," she said, "is the central challenge of our time."