Environment & Climate Change

963 Items

a seabird's nest containing three eggs and plastic pollution

Adobe Stock/Vladimir Melnik

Journal Article - Polar Record

Managing Plastic Pollution in the Arctic Ocean: An Integrated Quantitative Flux Estimate and Policy Study

| Nov. 10, 2023

Plastic pollution in the Arctic marine system is sparsely quantified, and few enforceable policies are in place to ameliorate the issue. In this paper, Dewey and Mackie estimate the flux of plastic through rivers, sea ice, and ocean, and quantify marine plastic pollution from Arctic shipping and fishing. They also examine how a suite of proposed policy interventions would quantitatively change those concentrations.

Analysis & Opinions - Financial Times

China’s dominance of solar poses difficult choices for the west

| June 22, 2023

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?

Steam rises from a coal-fired power plant.

AP Photo/Michael Probst

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

Technology Primer: Direct Air Capture

    Editors:
  • Howard Herzog
  • Peter Psarras
| June 09, 2023

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.

Students at left watch as student activists take positions in the Cathedral of Learning

AP/Keith Srakocic

Journal Article - Environmental Politics

Fossil Fuel Divestment and Public Climate Change Policy Preferences: An Experimental Test in Three Countries

| 2023

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. The authors assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa.

Vehicles move down Altamont Pass Road with wind turbines in the background in Livermore, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2022.

AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez

Analysis & Opinions - Center for a New American Security

Institutionalizing Climate Diplomacy in the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service

| Mar. 07, 2023

The climate catastrophe is one of the most pressing and consequential challenges of the 21st century. To meet these challenges and maintain global leadership, the United States needs a diverse, nuanced, and data-driven approach to climate resiliency. U.S. foreign policy should prioritize climate diplomacy with an urgency that is comparable to any other U.S. national security interest.

juvenile Arctic cod

Shawn Harper, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Journal Article - Polar Record

The Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Moratorium: A Rare Example of the Precautionary Principle in Fisheries Management

| Jan. 16, 2023

This paper explores the unique conditions that made the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean possible and examines how success was achieved by the interrelationships of science, policy, legal structures, politics, stakeholder collaboration, and diplomacy.

Audio - Harvard Environmental Economics Program

The Power of Youth Climate Activism: A Conversation with Michael Greenstone

| Oct. 06, 2022

The explosion of youth climate activism in recent years has focused the world’s attention on the problem like never before, but Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, argues that young activists often err by trying to turn climate change into a moral issue rather than an environmental one. Greenstone shared his thoughts 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