Environment & Climate Change

The international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change to be determined in Paris in December 2015 is “the greatest opportunity the world has had in 20 years to make meaningful progress on this exceptionally challenging issue,” Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) Director Robert Stavins said in a Boston Globe op-ed in September. Stavins was in New York City during the week of the United Nations Climate Summit, which included numerous side events and a march that attracted several hundred thousand Americans calling for serious climate actions.

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.

With regard to developing a new international framework, developed countries should acknowledge how grave the consequences would be to easily give in to a Kyoto extension. Merely extending the Kyoto Protocol would surely delay mitigation actions on the part of developing countries and discourage the U.S. from making serious efforts to reduce its large energy consumption. In other words, no country should end up being a "climate-killer" in its attempts to avoid being called a "Kyoto-killer."