These problems require “new ways of organizing ourselves” across disciplines and Schools, requiring the ability to access and expand community collaborations “between groups of people with different skills, areas of knowledge, and connections,” said Sam Myers ’87, M.P.H. ’07 Myers is principle research scientist for planetary health at the Chan School, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, and an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In the September panel, Myers spoke about the need to the reframe the debate about climate change and energy to address how global and environmental changes are affecting human health and well-being far more broadly. He said Harvard’s “incredibly broad, diverse community” can contribute significantly by engaging experts in everything from sustainable design to movement building and activism to food as well as energy systems to those thinking about manufacturing.

Claire Broome ’70, M.D. ’75, said strategic action is needed on all fronts. She cited areas in need of collaboration, especially “the transition to renewable energy and investment in cost-effective carbon sequestration, such as via natural and working lands.” Broome, who will speak at the Dec. 9 panel, “Climate Change, Protests, and Politics,” has spent the last 12 years helping accelerate adoption of renewable energy in California and working with advocacy organizations such as the Sierra Club and 350 Bay Area. Earlier, she spent nearly three decades working at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Park gave a real-world example to show how diverse disciplines solve problems. “When a heatwave hits a place in the world, we need emergency health care workers to treat those with heat stroke, policymakers to supply shelter and water for all, agriculturalists and farmers to protect the crops, park rangers to monitor fire-prone trees, meteorologists to predict the severity and duration. In the direct aftermath, we need all thinkers from all areas and all peoples to come together and map out what steps are needed going forward in what is increasingly becoming a climate crisis.”

Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, summed up: “Yes, it’s all hands on deck both intellectually and civically.” Allen participated in the October panel, “Climate, Government, and the Economy: Reform or Transformation?,” about the need to reform political institutions be response to crises like climate change.

Building on community

The organizers envisioned that creating a cross-generational space for Harvard community members to engage together would bring inherent advantages. In his remarks, Bacow said, “[Harvard’s] faculty, students, and alumni and friends have long shaped the future in almost every field imaginable … [and] must continue to do so.”

In addition to the research, teaching, and innovation leadership at the University, Bacow also called out the role alumni play in leading and contributing to organizations across the spectrum.

“Alumni bring a depth of knowledge and perspectives from their professional backgrounds and their experience in how to change organizations and systems over time,” agreed Broome. In her panel, Broome will use her “technical knowledge of cost-effectiveness analysis in my current efforts to promote renewable energy” as well as her “knowledge of how bureaucracies work and how to work with partners to get the policies we need.” She said that recent generations of students have produced “transformative developments in energy technology — think storage, solar, and the Internet of Things — combined with the technology platforms that were unimaginable only 20 years ago.”

“I don’t know how I can emphasize strongly enough how valuable the community-building function is,” said Myers.

Issa’s experience has shaped the view that this approach helps redistribute power, making it easier “to gain compassion, deeper understanding, multiple critical lenses, and momentum to shake stakeholders to enact needed transformation.” They said they learned this by being “deeply engaged in Restorative Justice Circles” in high school. “[I found] student-teacher circles were the most moving and vulnerable. Still, it was essential to really see teachers in their personhood and just as impacted by school issues as were students.” Issa calls this “an imperative alliance.”

Park said that bringing together these groups is powerful, “especially if those voices can amplify those that are silenced elsewhere.” She pointed out that “experience comes in many shapes and sizes” and that during her time at Harvard as an undergraduate and as a graduate student she “has been educated by an 18-year-old and an 80-year-old just the same.”

“[I] would have been lost without the mentorship of graduate students and professors” during College, “and now as a grad student, I know I would be lost without the unrelenting and eager passion of the undergrads,” she said.

“Harvard is an extraordinary community with rich resources of mind and heart,” Allen said. “We can do more together than separately. What is gained through collaboration is the chance to accelerate development of shared understanding and identification and implementation of solutions.”

“Climate Conversations” is hosted by the Harvard Alumni Association and was developed in conjunction with members of the Harvard College Class of 1969, Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment, the Harvard Club of New Hampshire, and the Harvard Office for Sustainability.