Environment & Climate Change

In the United States, politicians who refuse to acknowledge the public health consequences of air pollution and drought will soon feel the wrath of voters at the polls.

"Values Conscious design may not be able to prevent the kind of deliberate fraud perpetrated by Volkswagen, but it could well have revealed Volkswagen's design choices as dubious, to say the least."

"But today's scare is not just a matter of concern for China. The nation's insular government, dense population, and environmental ills have already combined to create several global pandemics. The 2003 SARS outbreak began in China, and, by its end, killed about 800 people and caused close to $50 billion in economic losses. China had originally prevented disclosure of the SARS outbreak, telling nervous global public health officials to take a hike."

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.

"Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs."

Will the Obama administration's plan for vehicle emissions standards and auto efficiency affect consumer behavior? During today's OnPoint, Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, gives her take on the administration's recent auto emissions announcement and whether it will have any significant effects on the environment. Gallagher, editor of the new report, "Acting in Time on Energy Policy," explains why she believes Congress should consider a variable tax on the price of oil as part of the United States' energy policy.

Article in The Nonproliferation Review

This short paper explores the security implications of climate change, focusing on the impacts on developing countries, particularly weak states. Security risks related to climate change will not be evenly distributed globally and will affect some kinds of governments more than others. While local and regional consequences of climate change remain very difficult to predict, three types of nations seem particularly vulnerable to the security risks of climate change: least-developed nations, weak states, and undemocratic states. Poor developing countries are the perhaps the most likely to suffer from climate change. These states lack the economic, governance, or technical capabilities to adapt to climate change. Failed and failing states—those with weak institutions of government, poor control over their borders, repressed populations, or marginal economies—stand a higher risk of being destabilized by climate change. The paper recommends a renewed emphasis on risk reduction and disaster preparedness with early warning systems that integrate meteorological risk with political risk.