31 Items

President Barack Obama gets direction from his science advisor John P. Holdren during an event on the South Lawn of the White House to explore the stars with middle school students.

Reuters

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Spotlight on John P. Holdren

| Fall/Winter 2016-2017

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

Pavlodar Chemical Plant, May 2007

Arani Kajenthira Photo

Journal Article - Science of the Total Environment

The Role of Qualitative Risk Assessment in Environmental Management: A Kazakhstani Case Study

| March 2012

Successful environmental management is partly contingent on the effective recognition and communication of environmental health risks to the public. Yet risk perceptions are known to differ between experts and laypeople; laypeople often exhibit higher perceptions of risk in comparison to experts, particularly when these risks are associated with radiation, nuclear power, or nuclear waste. This paper consequently explores stakeholder risk perceptions associated with a mercury-contaminated chloralkali production facility in Kazakhstan.

In this Sept. 24, 2010, file photo the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) prepares for the Cyber Storm III exercise at its operations center in Arlington, Va.

AP Photo

Magazine Article - Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The Future of Power

| Spring 2011

"The conventional wisdom among those who looked at the Middle East used to be that you had a choice either of supporting the autocrat or being stuck with the religious extremists. The extraordinary diffusion of information created in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries reveals a strong middle that we weren't fully aware of. What is more, new technologies allow this new middle to coordinate in ways unseen before Twitter, Facebook, and so forth, and this could lead to a very different politics of the Middle East. This introduces a new complexity to our government's dealings with the region."

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2010-11

| Winter 2010-11

The Winter 2010/11 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

 

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

The Cybersecurity Changes We Need

| May 29, 2010

"There is widespread agreement that this long-term trend of grabbing the economic gains from information technology advances and ignoring their security costs has reached a crisis point," write Melissa Hathaway and Jack Goldsmith. "As we progress digitally, we must also adopt and embed sometimes-costly security solutions into our core infrastructures and enterprises and stop playing the game of chance."

President Barack Obama signs the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Oct. 28, 2009, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - DoD Buzz

US Less Dominant But So What

| November 25, 2009

"Our military strength, we are warned, is declining. But is it? In the end, it is important to remember that there is no objective limit to the size or power of the U.S. armed forces; they are as strong as Americans are willing to pay for. And in a country where personal spending exceeds 4 billion dollars a year on cat food and another 6 billion or so on potato chips, that is a huge amount of military potential. America is a land of choice, and right now Americans are worrying more about their homes, schools, health care and jobs than whether the U.S. government spends more on its military than the next fifteen countries, or just the next ten (including multiples of the Chinese military budget), even considering the well-earned personnel and health care costs that makes our military budget seem so much larger than so many others."

A police officer runs past "wounded and dead" during a mock disaster Oct. 15, 2003, in Bossier City, La. The "dirty bomb" scenario involved emergency agencies, the local Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness, & the U.S. Justice Dept.

AP Photo

Policy Brief - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Before Disaster Strikes: Rate and Raise Public Preparedness Now

| June 2009

More, more severe, and new types of disasters can be expected to occur as a result of new types of threats (e.g., biological, cyber, nuclear/radiological) and more as well as more severe threats due to increased global interconnectedness and climate change. Yet, most Americans are not adequately prepared to respond to or recover from a catastrophic disaster, and many expect the government to take care of them. Even those who have experienced many common disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes may not make appropriate preparations or exercise proper judgment in responding to new disasters that may require different responses. Although community disaster preparation is considered the purview of state and local governments, when a disaster strikes, the federal government is often called in to respond or to help with recovery. For example, New Orleans estimates that the federal government role in rebuilding that city will be $15 billion. Although all rebuilding costs cannot be averted, better citizen preparation and community standards have been shown to reduce the costs of catastrophes.

Book Chapter

Acting in Time on Energy Policy: Foreword

    Author:
  • David T. Ellwood
| May 2009

"The question of whether we can "act in time" on energy and climate change poses one of the most profound challenges facing the world today. No human activity, other than the wide-scale use of nuclear weapons, has greater potential to reshape and harm our planet and our species than the rapidly expanding generation of greenhouse gases. What is so frustrating about the issue is that even though the dangers are widely accepted in the scientific community, and even though failing to act in time could set off a chain of events that would be all but irreversible, action to date has been weak at best."