Tag: Climate

  • Science & Tech

    Climate options must include ‘all of the above’

    Climate change has so much momentum behind it that “either/or” discussions about options are meaningless because it’ll take all we can do just to arrest carbon dioxide at levels double those in preindustrial times, a top climate scientist said Dec. 11.

  • Science & Tech

    Shai Agassi dreams of a gas-free future

    Electric cars with zero emissions. Powered by renewable energy. All over the world. That is Shai Agassi’s dream. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur left a lucrative corporate software track last year to found Better Place, a transportation company based on sustainability and independence from oil.

  • Science & Tech

    Lovins: Protecting the environment is ‘a highly profitable enterprise’

    As U.S. automakers plead for a government bailout, the next great automotive revolution is already under way, as Japanese automakers plan for a generation of lightweight cars that vastly increase mileage and whose advanced materials pay for themselves through dramatically streamlined assembly and smaller engines, an energy expert said Wednesday (Dec. 3).

  • Campus & Community

    FAS plan will slash greenhouse gas emissions

    Without action to slow the release of greenhouse gases, Harvard biologist and oceanographer James McCarthy said last week, current projections indicate that Massachusetts in 2080 could resemble South Carolina in 2008: The Bay State would experience an average of 24 days over 100 degrees each summer and two solid months of temperatures above 90.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard College Library is going green

    The changes may not be immediately evident, but little by little, Harvard College Library (HCL) has been “going green” for years, even before the University’s newest commitment to sustainable practices.

  • Science & Tech

    Humanity may hold key for next Earth evolution

    Human degradation of the environment has the potential to stall an ongoing process of planetary evolution, and even rewind the evolutionary clock to leave the planet habitable only by the bacteria that dominated billions of years of Earth’s history, Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir said Thursday (Nov. 13).

  • Science & Tech

    Global warming predicted to hasten carbon release from peat bogs

    Billions of tons of carbon sequestered in the world’s peat bogs could be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades as a result of global warming, according to a new analysis of the interplay between peat bogs, water tables, and climate change.

  • Campus & Community

    Paul Zofnass ’69, M.B.A. ’73 establishes GSD sustainability initiative

    Paul Zofnass ’69, M.B.A. ’73 has established a sustainability initiative at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) with a $500,000 gift.

  • Campus & Community

    Effects of climate change vary greatly across plant families

    Drawing on records dating back to the journals of Henry David Thoreau, scientists at Harvard University have found that different plant families near Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., have borne the effects of climate change in strikingly different ways. Some of the plant families hit hardest by global warming have included beloved species like lilies,…

  • Science & Tech

    10 ways to help

    1. Drive less: Walk, bike, and take public transportation instead. Check out the Harvard Commuter Choice Program for information on ridesharing, discounts for MBTA passes, and more.

  • Nation & World

    Green politics at IOP

    An environmental call to action issued by Harvard President Drew Faust accelerated this year, with a pledge to reduce campus-wide greenhouse gas emissions and with an October celebration of sustainability efforts.

  • Health

    New Guinea forest expands ‘observatory’

    Just getting there takes hours of hot, sweaty hiking through lowland Papua New Guinea forests: three hours from the road to the base camp, then another seven to the site. That’s when the real work begins: tagging, measuring, and identifying 250,000 trees scattered over 50 hectares.

  • Science & Tech

    Gore: Universities have important role in sustainability

    Former vice president Al Gore ’69 addressed a crowd of 15,000 in chilly, leaf-strewn Tercentenary Theatre Oct. 22, 2008, delivering the keynote address in a multi-day celebration of the University’s commitment to sustainability.

  • Science & Tech

    Ban calls for international efforts

    United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the United States to combat the “imminent threat” of climate change, both by reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions and by leading the effort to craft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

  • Campus & Community

    Students watch ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

    It’s “an inconvenient truth,” but only about 25 people showed up for a Harvard screening Sunday (Oct. 19) of a film by the same name, which earned former Vice President Al Gore ’69 both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Science & Tech

    Controlling greenhouse gases, universities, individuals matter

    From 1850 to 2000, the use of fossil fuels worldwide grew 140-fold, a practice that has gradually filled the Earth’s atmosphere with warming gases.

  • Campus & Community

    Alice Waters special guest at ‘smart food’ panel

    In anticipation of Harvard’s upcoming sustainability celebration, a panel discussion on sustainable food took place Tuesday (Oct. 14) in the Faculty Room at University Hall. It began with a reception at which chefs doled out demitasse cups filled with a chowder of Cape Cod Bay scallops and Berkshires bacon, and wait-staff circulated trays of heavenly…

  • Campus & Community

    ‘Green’ University celebration commences

    If you flew over Harvard University in a small plane, you would see only a few outward and obvious signs of sustainability. You would see a glittering solar array on Shad Hall at Harvard Business School, a landscaped green roof on Gund Hall, home of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and you would see a…

  • Nation & World

    HBS summit addresses future

    The timing couldn’t have been worse, or perhaps better, for Harvard Business School’s (HBS) “Centennial Global Business Summit,” a three-day conference Oct. 12-14.

  • Science & Tech

    Arctic ice is thinning steadily

    There was a polar bear sighting at Harvard last week. At Pforzheimer House on Thursday (Oct. 2), global warming expert James J. McCarthy delivered a crisp summary of how fast ice is melting in the Arctic — and why we should care. The audience of 80 took in his companion slide show, including images of…

  • Science & Tech

    Exelon executive offers regulations, incentives to ‘green’ energy supply

    The head of the nation’s largest nuclear power plant owner decried America’s lack of an energy policy Monday night (Oct. 6) and laid out a five-point plan featuring a mix of new regulations and financial incentives for coal, nuclear, and renewable power sources as a way to ‘green’ America’s energy supply.

  • Science & Tech

    Island nation president plans for extinction

    The leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan Monday (Sept. 22) that would scatter his people through the nations of the world as rising sea levels submerge the islands they have called home for centuries.

  • Health

    Harvard Forest: 3,500 acres, global impact

    Harvard may be rooted in Cambridge, but it has a lot more roots in the small north-central Massachusetts town of Petersham. That’s where you’ll find the woods, streams, and fields of the Harvard Forest, a 3,500-acre research and teaching facility that’s been part of the University for more than a century. Having been closely monitored…

  • Nation & World

    Electric cars, ‘cap and trade,’ and more

    R. James Woolsey Jr., a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has a favorite personal strategy for ensuring U.S. domestic security: his Toyota Prius hybrid, upgraded with an A123 conversion kit that allows it to run largely on a battery rechargeable by house current.

  • Nation & World

    Sachs insists new technologies essential

    Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally renowned economist, returned to his alma mater Monday (April 14) to give his prescription for saving the world. Sustainable development, he said, is the “central challenge of our time.”

  • Campus & Community

    Museum of Science to honor McCarthy with Walker Prize

    James McCarthy, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, will accept the 2008 Walker Prize from the Boston Museum of Science on April 7. The prize recognizes “meritorious published scientific investigation and discovery” in any scientific field.

  • Science & Tech

    Workshop ponders: Post-Kyoto, what next?

    With the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expiring in 2012, the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements hosted a workshop of leading thinkers Friday (March 14) to help determine what comes next.

  • Nation & World

    Can corporations police themselves effectively?

    On the surface, one might argue, it looks like the business world is headed in a decidedly socially conscious direction. Coffee giant Starbucks supports fair prices for its coffee growers. Wal-Mart, the department store dynasty, has instituted a number of measures to lighten its environmental footprint. Companies everywhere tout their eco-friendly products and packaging, and…

  • Campus & Community

    Environmental work honored by HMS

    The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) has named Kofi Annan and Alice Waters as its 2008 Global Environmental Citizen Award recipients.

  • Science & Tech

    Holdren talks back to skeptics of global warming

    “Global warming is a misnomer,” said John P. Holdren, speaking Tuesday night (Nov. 6) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School. “It implies something gradual, uniform, and benign. What we’re experiencing is none of these.”