7 Items

Tree Trunks

Harvard File Photo/Rose Lincoln

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

New Committee to Advise Bacow on Sustainability Goals

    Author:
  • Nate Herpich
| Apr. 20, 2020

Harvard University has created a Presidential Committee on Sustainability (PCS) to advise President Larry Bacow and the University's leadership on sustainability vision, goals, strategy, and partnerships. The Harvard Gazette spoke with committee chairs Rebecca Henderson, the John and Natty McArthur University Professor; John Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard Kennedy School; and Katie Lapp, executive vice president, about why it is so important to act now; the role of the PCS in developing collaborative and innovative projects; and how the campus community can get involved.

Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant is silhouetted against the morning sun

AP/J. David Ake

Magazine Article - Fair Observer

Sacrificing Nature Is Not an Option

    Author:
  • Kourosh Ziabari
| Feb. 27, 2019

In this edition of "The Interview," Fair Observer talks to Professor John Holdren, former science adviser to President Barack Obama and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009 to 2017 about the impacts of global warming on the United States and the government's strategies to combat climate change.

Earthrise over the Moon

NASA/Bill Anders

Journal Article - Nature Sustainability

Policy Design for the Anthropocene

    Authors:
  • Thomas Sterner
  • Edward B. Barbier
  • Ian Bateman
  • Inge van den Bijgaart
  • Anne-Sophie Crépin
  • Ottmar Edenhofer
  • Carolyn Fischer
  • Wolfgang Habla
  • John Hassler
  • Olof Johansson-Stenman
  • Andreas Lange
  • Stephen Polasky
  • Johan Rockström
  • Henrik G. Smith
  • Will Steffen
  • James E. Wilen
  • Francisco Alpízar
  • Christian Azar
  • Donna Carless
  • Carlos Chávez
  • Jessica Coria
  • Gustav Engström
  • Sverker C. Jagers
  • Gunnar Köhlin
  • Åsa Löfgren
  • Håkan Pleijel
  • Amanda Robinson
| 2019

The authors examine the complexities of designing policies that can keep Earth within the biophysical limits favorable to human life.

"Green chemistry" is finding ways to reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals with safer or even harmless replacements. The goal is health, safety, and environmental sustainability.

Journal Article - Minerva

Chemistry, Green Chemistry, and the Instrumental Valuation of Sustainability

| March 2011

Using the Public Value Mapping framework, the author addresses the values successes and failures of chemistry as compared to the emerging field of green chemistry, in which the promoters attempt to incorporate new and expanded values, such as health, safety, and environmental sustainability, to the processes of prioritizing and conducting chemistry research.

Coal-fired power plant in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Journal Article - Science

Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being

| January 25, 2008

"I would urge every scientist and engineer with an interest in the intersection of S&T with sustainable well-being...to 'tithe' 10% of your professional time and effort to working in these and other ways to increase the benefits of S&T for the human condition and to decrease the liabilities. If so much as a substantial fraction of the world's scientists and engineers resolved to do this much, the acceleration of progress toward sustainable well-being for all of Earth's inhabitants would surprise us all."

teaser image

Journal Article - Climate Change

Avoiding a COP-out: Moving Towards Systematic Decision-Making Under the Climate Convention

| 1998

The third meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-3) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded in December 1997 with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol (UNFCCC, 1997). After much deliberation and negotiation, the Parties agreed to the establishment of a set of binding emission targets for developed countries and economies in transition (Annex-I countries)