Environment & Climate Change

Direct air capture (DAC) is a type of technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air. As the negative impacts of climate change become ever more apparent, governments and private industries have funneled increasing support toward DAC as a critical pathway toward achieving a net-zero future. Although a promising technology, wide-scale deployment of DAC faces several significant challenges.

Climate disasters shape the trajectory of internal conflicts in states highly vulnerable to changes in conflict dynamics. Conflict after a climate disaster escalates when the disaster induces shifts in relative power that enable one side to increase its military efforts. But when one actor is weakened by the disaster and the other lacks the capability to exploit that weakness, conflict intensity declines.

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

Significant technological advances in satellite technology and atmospheric measurements have greatly enhanced the understanding of methane concentrations and emissions. The dynamic ways in which those advancements are allowing researchers to monitor methane emissions down to the source level was the focus of discussion Thursday (November 17) at a COP-27 side event co-hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Enel Foundation, and the government of Mexico.

Paul Joskow, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus at MIT and former President and CEO of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York City, shared his thoughts on U.S. regulatory economics and climate change policy in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”

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Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced the appointment of Lori Garver and Beth Sanner as non-resident Senior Fellows. Garver is a former Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and current CEO of Earthrise Alliance. Sanner was Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration and is now Professor of Practice at the University of Maryland's Applied Research Lab for Intelligence Security. They will both share their experience and expertise with students and faculty of Harvard Kennedy School and the greater Harvard community.      

While China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country in the world, major constraints may limit nuclear energy’s ability to grow to the scale of hundreds of gigawatts that would be required for it to play a major part in decarbonizing China’s energy system. This chapter explores the major constraints on, and risks of, large-scale nuclear energy growth in China, and how both new policies and new technologies might address them. It focuses particularly on the two biggest constraints – economics and siting. Substantial government policies to support nuclear power and advanced reactor systems designed to address some of the key constraints are both likely to be needed for nuclear to have a chance of playing a major role in decarbonizing China’s energy system; nuclear energy’s role may be bigger in the second half of this century than in the first half.

Joel Clement writes that because the Biden administration  has moved to repair the damage done by the Trump administration, colleagues from around the global Arctic are optimistic once again about partnering with America on solutions to regional crises .

David Keith argues that either or both carbon removal or solar geoengineering  is needed to cool the planet this century. There are no other options.

Joseph Aldy and Richard Zeckhauser advocate for urgently getting serious about solar geoengineering as a realistic response to climate change that could significantly curb consequences to human well-being.