Science & Technology

8 Items

Audio - Harvard Environmental Economics Program

Climate and Environmental Policy in the Biden Administration: A Conversation with Richard Revesz

| Jan. 05, 2021

Richard Revesz, the Lawrence King Professor of Law at New York University and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Integrity, shared his thoughts on how the transition to a new presidential administration later this month will impact U.S. environmental and climate change policy in 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.

May 24, 2006: Brooktrout Lake near Speculator, N.Y. in the Adirondacks. Brooktrout Lake was once a "dead" lake devastated by acid rain and is now a symbol of nature's ability to heal itself once pollutants are curbed.

AP Photo

Report - Harvard Environmental Economics Program

The SO2 Allowance Trading System and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990: Reflections on Twenty Years of Policy Innovation

| January 2012

The introduction of the U.S. SO2 allowance-trading program to address the threat of acid rain as part of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 is a landmark event in the history of environmental regulation. The program was a great success by almost all measures. Ironically, cap and trade seems especially well suited to addressing the problem of climate change, in that emitted greenhouse gases are evenly distributed throughout the world's atmosphere. Recent hostility toward cap and trade in debates about U.S. climate legislation may reflect the broader political environment of the climate debate more than the substantive merits of market-based regulation.

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Governing Climate Engineering: Scenarios for Analysis

    Author:
  • Daniel Bodansky
| November 2011

 

Geoengineering grows in salience, the more time that passes without an effective international regime for mitigating climate change. It will be in the background of negotiations at COP 17 in Durban—and, perhaps, in the foreground of some important discussions. This discussion paper by Daniel Bodansky explores the opportunities and risks presented by geoengineering, as well as the particular challenges to crafting an effective system of governance for this set of approaches to addressing climate change

 

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

International Climate Technology Strategies

    Author:
  • Richard G. Newell
| October 2008

This paper considers opportunities for improved and expanded international development and transfer of climate technologies. It characterizes the economic scale of the climate technology challenge, and it reviews the pattern of public and private R&D and the rationale for R&D policies within the global innovation system. The paper clarifies the importance of options for inducing technology market demand through domestic GHG pricing, international trade, and international development assistance. It then turns to upstream innovation strategies, including international coordination and funding of climate technology R&D, and knowledge transfer through intellectual property. The paper concludes that a successful international effort to accelerate and then sustain the rate of development and transfer of GHG mitigation technologies must harness a diverse set of markets and institutions beyond those explicitly related to climate, to include those for energy, trade, development, and intellectual property.

Press Release

Harvard Launches Major Initiative to Help Design an International Climate Agreement

Summer 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— Harvard University announced a two-year project to help identify key design elements of a future international agreement on climate change, drawing upon the ideas of leading thinkers from academia, private industry, government, and advocacy organizations, both in the industrialized world and in developing countries.