Environment & Climate Change

New Haven, Connecticut is a city of about130,000 people—a typical American city in terms of size and challenges. One of the major and growing challenges facing New Haven and other cities is flooding. Increasingly extreme rainstorms and rising sea levels, both caused by climate change, are taxing local drainage systems and destroying vulnerable neighborhoods. An innovative partnership in New Haven is responding by building bioswales, a cost-effective green infrastructure that reduces pollution and urban flooding in a major rainstorm.

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

The New York Times’ Energy and Environment Correspondent Coral Davenport covers environmental policy in a way that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of Washington-based reporting to the larger, all-encompassing impact of climate change issues on a human and dollars-and-cents scale.

Call it the fall heard round the world.

The dramatic decline in oil prices—from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to below $30 this year—has been one of the most disruptive and least expected developments in global energy markets since the 2008 financial crisis.

With the continuation of high oil production and low prices, the Belfer Center’s Khalid Alsweilem, Calestous Juma, David Keith, Henry Lee, Leonardo Maugeri, Meghan O’Sullivan, and Robert Stavins offer insights, predictions, and recommendations based on their research and varied perspectives.

In January, community leaders and officials from around the world gathered at Harvard to share experiences and best practices in “Accelerating Disaster Recovery: Strategies, Tensions, and Obstacles.” The conference was organized by Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Crisis Leadership (PCL), which is jointly affiliated with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and the Belfer Center’s Broadmoor Project: New Orleans Recovery.

Anna Goldstein is, at the moment, a scientist standing at a crossroad. Since her PhD from University of California, Berkeley is in chemistry, one might imagine Goldstein working in the lab. Instead, she’s at the Belfer Center researching the policy side of technology.

David Keith is the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, housed at the Belfer Center. He has worked at the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for 20 years and has received numerous honors for his work, including the MIT prize for excellence in experimental physics and TIME magazine’s selection as one of its Heroes of the Environment.

Former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd is a senior fellow with the Belfer Center and the Inaugural Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute. A longtime China scholar, Mr. Rudd headed a major project at the Belfer Center during the past year on alternative futures for U.S.-China relations over the next decade. In April, he released a report titled U.S.-China 21: The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping. In this Q&A, we ask Mr. Rudd about his report and the future of U.S.-China relations.

The Belfer Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy group is co-organizing a major workshop with China’s Tsinghua University on “Energy Technology Innovation on the “Backdrop of the U.S./China Emissions Deal.” Belfer Center’s Professors Laura Diaz Anadon, Henry Lee and Venky Narayanamurti are planning the June event with Tsinghua University Professor Su Jun, a former Science, Technology, and Public Policy fellow.

Dongsheng Wu has an important role in the development and implementation of China's plans to reduce carbon emissions and, subsequently, climate change. As director of the Department of Climate Change at the Shanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission, Wu is responsible for developing a greenhouse gas emissions policy for Shanxi, a region with the highest coal production and highest energy intensity in China.