Environment & Climate Change

Al-Juaied and Whitmore examine the costs and prospects for direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), and identify types of funding needed for early deployment for DACCS and building momentum for later widespread deployment. The challenges of implementing DACCS at very large scale further emphasize the need for urgent and widespread action to reduce emissions, which should continue to be the main priority for meeting climate goals.

Stephen Walt writes that it may seem harder to give thanks this year, but it's not impossible. He enumerates five things for which to be grateful, including that none of the outside parties in the Middle East seem inclined to expand the conflict beyond Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Energy economist Karen Palmer, renowned for her research on the nation’s electric power sector, shared her insights on electricity regulation and deregulation, carbon pricing, and climate change policy in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”

This paper examines the understudied role of international engagement, and of specific international actors, in greening China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative.

The geopolitical implications of solar displacing oil as the world’s major source of energy are enormous. Why has the Middle East been a central arena in the “great game” for the past century? Because countries there have been the major suppliers of the oil and gas that powered 20th-century economies. If, over the next decade, photovoltaic cells that capture energy from the sun were to replace a substantial part of the demand for oil and gas, who will the biggest losers be? And even more consequentially: who will be the biggest winner?

Renowned environmental economist Kathleen Segerson, who in addition to her academic and scholarly research and teaching has served on numerous state, national, and international advisory boards, expressed her frustration with the political polarization of climate policy in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

Joseph S. Nye argues that history shows that globalization is largely driven by technological changes that reduce the importance of distance, and that will not change.

The economist and HKS professor is passionate about solving what may be humanity's most important and perplexing problem: How to untangle fossil fuels from the global economy.

While the Paris Agreement provides the framework for the nations of the world to slow the growth of CO2 emissions, additional policy and technological tools will have to be deployed to meet the challenge of climate change. That’s the perspective expressed by Daniel Bodansky, the Regents’ Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, during the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

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.