Environment and Natural Resources

Harvard Kennedy School hosted Sarah Ladislaw, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Climate and Energy of the U.S. National Security Council, for an Energy Policy Seminar on the U.S. approach to energy and climate issues in its foreign policy.

In recent years, the relationship between China and the United States has been characterized by rising geopolitical tensions, and cooperation and coordination between the two countries has become something of a pipe dream. Yet there is one issue where the interests of both clearly overlap: climate change. A global temperature increase of 3°C will damage the economies and social fabric of both the United States and China—an outcome that both countries want to avoid. 

Article 6 is one of the thorniest issues in climate negotiations and determines how countries trade emissions. In Glasgow, countries finally found an agreement on this thorny issue, whose rules have the potential to support the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s goals at a lower cost and provide larger incentives for private sector investments, writes Marinella Davide.

Kelly Sims Gallagher asserts that politicians' pledges of dramatic long-term reductions should not let them off the hook for their failure to achieve more modest progress in the short term.

Joel Clement writes that while climate change is a scientific matter, climate action is a political one, and, if done right, can usher in dramatic social, economic and ecological improvements.

Ian Masters and Joel Clement assess how much time has been lost by governments in facing the looming crisis of climate change, in particular here in the U.S. where the last four years were not only wasted, but were steps backwards from the urgent challenges made clear by yesterday's alarming IPCC report.

Joel Clement describes the influence of U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin over the Department of the Interior and advises that a forward-looking legislator in a fossil-fuel state would be wise to fight aggressively for financial commitments to make the people in their state part of the vanguard of the new clean energy economy, rather than set back the U.S. economy by fighting the inevitable energy transition itself.

Joel Clement urges that addressing the inevitable impacts of climate change requires a national resilience strategy, substantial investments to reduce risk, and policies that address and communicate climate risk to Americans.

Awareness of biodiversity loss is increasing, but climate change still dominates investors' discourse on the environment. Joel Clement, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, explains why we need to focus urgently on the biodiversity crisis. He also discusses why he came a whistleblower in 2017 and the aftermath of that decision.

In the face of advancing impacts of climate change — fires, smoke, floods, droughts, storms, and heat— Lara Hansen and Joel Clement argue for changing the way the country does business in every facet of the economy, with an eye toward reducing risk, increasing resilience, and ensuring equity and justice.