Articles

137 Items

man helps set up portable fencing

AP/Andrew Harnik

Magazine Article - Resources Magazine

What Economics Can Say about an Effective Response to the Coronavirus

| Apr. 02, 2020

In a recent podcast interview, Robert Stavins and Scott Barrett discussed lessons from historic pandemics, how economists can help with policymaking surrounding the coronavirus, and what the “post-pandemic economic equilibrium” might look like. Resources Magazine has published an abridged version of their conversation.

Chernobyl welcome sign

Wikimedia CC/Jorge Franganillo

Journal Article - Futures

Accumulating Evidence Using Crowdsourcing and Machine Learning: A Living Bibliography about Existential Risk and Global Catastrophic Risk

    Authors:
  • Gorm E. Shackelford
  • Luke Kemp
  • Catherine Rhodes
  • Lalitha Sundaram
  • Seán S. ÓhÉigeartaigh
  • Simon Beard
  • Haydn Belfield
  • Shahar Avin
  • Dag Sørebø
  • Elliot M. Jones
  • John B. Hume
  • David Price
  • David Pyle
  • Daniel Hurt
  • Theodore Stone
  • Harry Watkins
  • Lydia Collas
  • Bryony C. Cade
  • Thomas Frederick Johnson
  • Zachary Freitas-Groff
  • David Denkenberger
  • Michael Levot
  • William J. Sutherland
| February 2020

The study of existential risk — the risk of human extinction or the collapse of human civilization — has only recently emerged as an integrated field of research, and yet an overwhelming volume of relevant research has already been published. To provide an evidence base for policy and risk analysis, this research should be systematically reviewed. In a systematic review, one of many time-consuming tasks is to read the titles and abstracts of research publications, to see if they meet the inclusion criteria. The authors show how this task can be shared between multiple people (using crowdsourcing) and partially automated (using machine learning), as methods of handling an overwhelming volume of research.

Adoption of the Paris Agreement

Wikimedia CC/UNclimatechange

Journal Article - Science

Double Counting and the Paris Agreement Rulebook

    Authors:
  • Lambert Schneider
  • Maosheng Duan
  • Kelley Kizzier
  • Derik Broekhoff
  • Frank Jotzo
  • Harald Winkler
  • Michael Lazarus
  • Andrew Howard
  • Christina Hood
| Oct. 11, 2019

The authors highlight why resolving double counting — counting the same emission reduction more than once to achieve climate mitigation targets — is critical for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and identify essential ingredients for a robust outcome that ensures environmental effectiveness and facilitates cost-effective mitigation.

Donald Trump throws a hat into the audience

AP/Andrew Harnik, File

Magazine Article - China.org.cn

China, US Not in 'Cold War', but Cooperative Rivalry

    Authors:
  • Li Huiru
  • Li Xiaohua
| Jan. 11, 2019

Despite the opposition that appears now in China-U.S. relations, cooperation is far more important, underscored prominent U.S. political scientist Dr. Joseph S. Nye during an exclusive interview with Wang Xiaohui, editor-in-chief of China.org.cn, on Jan. 10, 2019.

Gas pipeline Dzuarikau-Tskhinval

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Elsevier Inc. Energy Research & Social Science

Invisible but not indivisible: Russia, the European Union, and the importance of “Hidden Governance”

| February 2016

This article considers a number of political explanations for gas policy and shows that it is usually the economic interests of big energy firms that frequently take precedence, although these are often ignored and hidden as factors.

Harvard Project Director Robert Stavins speaking at a side-event panel discussion in Paris on December 4, 2015.

Courtesy of HKS

Magazine Article - Harvard Gazette

Harvard's Stavins, Stowe Compare Climate Change Policies in Paris

    Author:
  • Doug Gavel
| December 6, 2015

"The role of market mechanisms for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and the relationship between climate change policy and international trade were the topics of a side-event panel discussion on Friday at the Conference of the Parties (COP21), the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. The panel discussion, which was co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, addressed a variety of issues related to the emissions-reduction targets that countries are putting forward as part of a new agreement to be concluded in Paris."

Oil Pump Jack between Seminole and Andrews, West Texas

Paul Lowry, Creative Commons

Newspaper Article - The Wall Street Journal

What Will the U.S. Energy Industry Look Like Over the Next Five Years?

| November 15, 2015

Professor Meghan O'Sullivan was interviewed on November 15th, 2015 for a Wall Street Journal special section on energy, discussing the rapid transformation of the American energy sector in light of low fuel prices, new climate policies and other factors.

The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. A new international climate agreement is to be concluded in Paris, in December 2015, at COP-21.

Magazine Article - Harvard Kennedy School Magazine

From the Ground Up: the Value of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements is Coming into Clear Focus

    Author:
  • Susannah Ketchum Glass
| Summer 2015

"We insist on being policy-relevant but not policy-prescriptive," Stavins says. "And that is something the negotiating teams appreciate. Whereas many groups have an ax to grind, we do not; we just want to help them understand the nature and dimensions of specific issues and how they can address them."

Pope Francis visits the Typhoon Yolanda victims in one of the areas in Palo, Leyte, the Philippines, Jan. 17, 2015. Pope Francis' encyclical, "Laudato Si," discussed how the effects of climate change disproportionately harm the poor.

Magazine Article - Harvard Gazette

A Blessing to Slow Climate Change

| June 18, 2015

"Last year at the United Nations General Assembly, heads of state came together to talk about climate change. We had an announcement on carbon pricing signed on by more than 70 countries, more than 1,000 businesses — reflecting this emerging view of both those in public policy and those using the technologies in the business world — that pricing carbon is the way to get us off of fossil fuels, to create that incentive for the technologies that will allow us to still enjoy the level of economic development that we aspire to, without having an adverse impact on the climate."