News & Announcements

The Danish Minister of Climate, Energy, and Utilities expressed his hope that the tragic war in Ukraine will help accelerate the clean energy transformation by weaning Europe off Russian gas during a Virtual Forum (view recording here) last Friday (April 8). The event was hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) and moderated by Robert Stavins, HPCA Director and A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development. 

Heather Williams, a nuclear expert at King’s College London and visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was “totally ambiguous” but in keeping with a leader who has a history of being a “nuclear bully”. “It is classic Putin, creating ambiguity and uncertainty,” Williams said. “Putin is so good at that because he knows that it keeps people on edge.”

Noi che siamo spettatori dell’abisso, come dice Ian McEwan, a cosa dobbiamo ancora assistere? Alla conquista da parte di Vladimir Putin, per via della sua enorme supremazia, di tutte le centrali nucleari. Riuscirà anche a disarticolare i presidi logistici della difesa di Kiev.

Francesca Giovannini, the executive director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science, believes that the nuclear option, while improbable, should not be completely ruled out. “The circumstances are very complex,” she argues. “And he [Putin] is under a huge amount of pressure.”

And then there are the extreme circumstances of the moment. “I think that he is under huge internal pressure,” says Giovannini. “He’s not crazy. I don’t think that he would launch a strategic bomb. But it worries me that he could consider the option of a tactical one. To send a message that he is prepared to do anything to defend Russian interests. Thinking that perhaps an attack with a tactical warhead in Ukraine would not trigger a military reaction from NATO against Russia.”

The initial stage of the war in Ukraine has confounded expectations. Russia’s military invasion failed in key objectives, upending predictions of a rout of Ukraine. Then, after years of avoiding direct confrontations with Moscow, Western nations are now directly punishing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies with truly devastating economic sanctions while openly supplying arms to Ukraine.

Though there were peace talks for the first time on Monday, there are no signs that the cycle of escalation will go down. Amid unprecedented global pressure, Putin is doubling down on a defensive posture that pits Russia against almost everyone else in the world. He has ratcheted up the levels of violence in eastern Ukraine, bombarding the city of Kharkiv with suspected cluster munitions, while putting the country’s nuclear arsenal on alert.

From his perspective as Principal Advisor to the Directorate General for Climate Action in the European Commission (EC), Jacob Werksman is cautiously optimistic about the direction of international climate policy. Werksman was the expert guest in the Conversations on Climate Change and Energy Policy webinar discussion last Thursday (July 9). The webinar series is sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA), and the interviews are hosted by HPCA Director Robert Stavins, the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School.