This policy brief provides an overview of current scientific understandings of climate change in Alaska and the Arctic, with a focus on sea ice, land ice, and sea level change.

After viewing the movie Oppenheimer, Matthew Bunn, John P. Holdren, Mariana Budjeryn, Matthew J. Parent, Calder Walton, Sylvia Mishra, and Julie George offer their thoughts on its relevance to the world today. 

This brief examines the national challenges related to deploying and scaling infrastructure to transport CO₂ from capture sites to storage or utilization sites at a scale consistent with achieving net-zero by 2050.

On March 31 at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage, Alaska, the government of Norway presented its program for Norway’s upcoming Chairship of the Arctic Council. In response, John Holdren, Co-Director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, issued the following statement of support.

Arctic Initiative Co-Director John Holdren and Senior Fellow Fran Ulmer call for increased U.S.-Canadian cooperation on geopolitical challenges around relations with Russia and China as well as the critical problems being imposed by climate change on the North American Arctic.

Riikka Karppinen, a prominent youth leader, environmental activist, and politician from Finnish Lapland, has been appointed to the International Advisory Board of Harvard Kennedy School’s Arctic Initiative. As a Board member, Karppinen will leverage her substantial expertise in nature conservation, policymaking, activism, and communication to help the Arctic Initiative advance its research and education goals and train the next generation of interdisciplinary Arctic experts and leaders.

In October, members of the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative joined more than 2,000 Arctic policymakers, scholars, business leaders, and residents in Reykjavík, Iceland, for the Arctic Circle Assembly—the world’s largest annual gathering on Arctic issues. The Arctic Initiative delegation of students presented innovative ideas for Arctic resilience. 

The Belfer Center Communications Team reached out to policy experts John P. Holdren and Matthew Bunn to reflect on the recent achievement of fusion ignition at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

John P. Holdren, Co-Director of the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative and former Science Advisor to President Obama, has been appointed to the National Academies’ Polar Research Board (PRB). The PRB, composed of 19 independent senior experts across a wide range of scientific disciplines, exists to promote excellence in polar science and to provide independent scientific guidance to U.S. federal agencies and the nation on science issues in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and cold regions in general. 

On October 3, 2022, John Holdren delivered the third annual Lecture on Engineering and Society at the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, D.C.