New Initiative on Climate Engineering Awarded by Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs recently awarded $250,000 to fund a new Weatherhead Initiative on Climate Engineering. The Center funds the Initiative through its Weatherhead Initiative Research Cluster in International Affairs grant, which supports large-scale and groundbreaking research in the realm of international affairs.

The initiative is led by Principal Investigator David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Joshua Horton, research director of geoengineering at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, will serve as project manager. Additional Harvard and non-Harvard faculty members round out a robust research team.

Climate engineering, or geoengineering, is the deliberate, large-scale alteration of the climate system to counteract climate change caused by accumulating greenhouse gases. This new initiative will address some of the pertinent questions about climate change that fall outside the confines of the natural sciences, such as implications for politics, governance, economics, security, game theory, and more. By addressing these global topics, the research team hopes to fill in gaps in the existing literature.