Environment & Climate Change

18 Items

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Analysis & Opinions - Global Policy

Factoring Pandemic Risks into Financial Modelling

| Apr. 01, 2020

Today’s economic crisis leaves us with an unsettling and perplexing regret. Why weren’t financial portfolios already adjusted for risks that stem from health events such as pandemics? After all, financial portfolios are adjusted for liquidity risks, market risks, credit risks, and even operational and political risks.

Joseph Nye

Martha Stewart

Audio - Harvard Magazine

How Do Past Presidents Rank in Foreign Policy?

| Mar. 02, 2020

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.

Solar panel field and wind turbines

PIXNIO / hpgruesen

Book - Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy and Natural Resources

| 2018

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Norberg-Bohm Fellowship Supports Research Curiosity

| Spring 2015

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) doctoral student Daniel Velez Lopez is researching air pollution in Mexico and whether the country is willing to pay the costs to reduce it. HKS student Jennifer Kao is interviewing academics, investors, and government officials working to generate and commercialize clean energy innovations in the United Kingdom.

A firefighter stands next to the radiation head of a radiation therapy machine in the village of Hueypoxtla, Mexico, Dec. 5, 2013.

Marco Ugarte, via AP

Analysis & Opinions - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Mexico’s Stolen Radiation Source: It Could Happen Here

| January 23, 2014

Although the truck-jacking of highly radioactive material outside Mexico City on December 1, 2013 ended without the worst case materializing, it should serve as a wakeup call, not just in Mexico but also in the United States and elsewhere. Dangerous radiation sources remain vulnerable to theft, especially when they are out on the road. There is also poorly protected radioactive material in hospitals and other facilities. Improving security requires tougher regulations and greater risk awareness in the industry. Unfortunately, the United States is no exception, so it’s time for the country to get serious about locking up its radioactive material.

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

In Galapagos Islands, Influx Prompts a Harsh Migration Policy

| July 30, 2012

"In an effort to help save the islands 600 miles into the Pacific Ocean, Ecuador's controversial president, Rafael Correa, has adopted one of the strictest migration enforcement efforts in the history of mankind. It is as though the United States took the same unforgiving rules it uses to limit the influx of foreigners and used them to keep Americans from going to the state of Hawaii."

In this Friday, July 17, 2009 file photo, an Iraqi worker operates valves at the Nahran Omar oil refinery near the city of Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq.

(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani, File)

Press Release - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

New study by Harvard Kennedy School researcher forecasts sharp increase in world oil production capacity, and risk of price collapse

| June 2012

A new study by Belfer Center fellow Leonardo Maugeri shows that oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020. This could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices. The findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project in the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects.