Environment & Climate Change

The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) has named Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs winner of the 2012 ICCG Climate Think Tank Ranking in the Global category. The Belfer Center was cited as the most influential institution outside of Europe “working in the field of climate change economics and policy.” The European winner is the Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3) in Spain. See full report here.

Professor Robert Stavins, Harvard Project Director, recently published the second volume of his collected papers with Edward Elgar Publishing. The 26 essays in the volume cover a wide range of topics, including: environmental policy analysis; economic analysis of environmental policy instruments; economics and technical change; natural resource economics — land and water; and domestic and international climate change policy. The first volume of Professor Stavins' papers was published in 2000 — also by Edward Elgar — covering the period 1988–1999.

Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Director Robert N. Stavins delivered a presentation titled "Climate Change: Efficiency and Equity," at The Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 29, 2011. The talk was one in the Geneva Environmental Dialogue Series of public keynote lectures that the Institute holds annually on a theme related to the international environment. The theme for the 2011–2012 term is "Justice and the Environment."

The Spring 2011 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 the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

"Belfer Center participants in the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (UNFCCC) agreed that while the summit did not produce the treaty most wanted, it did make some significant progress. They disagree, however, on how much. Professors JeffreyFrankel, Kelly Sims Gallagher, and Robert Stavins, all members of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, offer their takeaways from the event."

"Because CAFE standards increase the price of new cars, the standards have the unintentional effect of keeping older — dirtier and less fuel-efficient — cars on the road longer. This is counterproductive.

Also, by decreasing the cost per mile of driving, CAFE standards — like any energy-efficiency technology standard — exhibit a rebound effect — namely, people have an incentive to drive more, not less, thereby lessening the anticipated reduction in gasoline usage."

Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the Board of Directors at the school's Belfer Center, has been appointed to a new position in the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.