Tag: Harvard University Center for the Environment

  • Nation & World

    Working with China on key issues necessary

    Former World Bank President Robert Zoellick advocated engagement with China in areas of agreement as the nation faces its multiple challenges in environment, economy, and energy supply.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Advising on climate change

    In addition to conducting research and teaching about climate, energy, and the environment, Harvard faculty members also serve as expert advisers to policymakers, putting their science to work to improve laws and regulations and to foster understanding between the worlds of government and academics.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Putting the ‘estimate’ back in estimates

    Professor M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon wants to bring the uncertainty back to forecasting, he said in a Harvard talk.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Linking China’s climate policy to its growth

    Nobel laureate Michael Spence offered some growth projections for China in a talk at the Science Center.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Following the weather

    From the violence of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to Earth’s own extreme weather, Ziff Environmental Fellow Pedram Hassanzadeh is investigating atmospheric vortices, those swirling air masses that make the weather go — and sometimes make it stop.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Genes without patents

    The ACLU’s lead attorney and other participants in the Supreme Court case that overturned the common practice of patenting human genes discussed the ramifications in an event at the Science Center.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Geoengineering: Opportunity or folly?

    Scholars on opposite sides of geoengineering debated the climate change strategy’s potential — pitfalls and benefits — this week at the Science Center.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In Ireland’s recent history, a model for clean growth

    Clean economic growth is not just a pipe dream — it happened in Ireland between 1990 and 2010, when emissions dropped 10 percent even as the country’s economy grew 265 percent, the leader of that country’s Green Party said in a Harvard talk.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The Himalayas’ amazing biodiversity

    Can science and art join forces to conserve one of the world’s richest natural areas? UMass Boston biology professor Kamal Bawa and photographer Sandesh Kadur, a National Geographic emerging explorer, have joined forces to create a richly illustrated, scientifically accurate account of biodiversity in the Himalayas.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fresh hopes on climate change

    A top U.N. climate official said doom and gloom on the issue is just part of the story and that there are many innovative programs and products that provide reasons for hope.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Seeds of violence in climate change

    Nathan Black, the French Environmental Fellow, is studying how nations fall into civil war during the type of agricultural disruption possible with a changing climate — and what some nations might do to prevent it.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Speaking up for science

    Former National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco described her four years in Washington, D.C., as difficult and frustrating, but said it’s imperative that other scientists follow suit to give science a voice in national policies.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Urgent prep work

    Humanitarian relief workers and climate scientists gathered in Cambridge this week to discuss the connection between climate change and humanitarian disasters and what relief workers can learn from science.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Building with an eye on the sky

    Real estate developer Jonathan Rose highlighted recent progress in incorporating green features into affordable housing projects, saying America’s cities provide an energetic counterpoint to the stagnation in Washington, D.C.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Earth feels impact of middle class

    The rise of the middle class is a bigger environmental challenge than the rising global population, according to Sir David King, the former science adviser to the British government, who urged the adoption of sustainable development as a way to manage growing global demands in a finite world.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A groundswell on climate change

    More vigorous grassroots social action is needed to drive the reforms that could address climate change, panelists said during a discussion at Sanders Theatre.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A notion to cool the skies

    An international regulatory framework is needed to govern possible research and deployment of engineering approaches to counter climate change, an authority on environmental law says.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    When the sky turned black

    Director Ken Burns presented clips of his new documentary on the Dust Bowl at Harvard’s Boylston Hall, talking about the creative process that he uses in his films.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hello again, climate change

    Superstorm Sandy’s hurricane winds and torrential downpours killed at least 106 people, left millions without power, and caused billions of dollars in damage. It also got people talking again about climate change.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Unearthing a dietary behavior

    A new Harvard study says that pica — and particularly geophagy, or the eating of soil or clay — is far more prevalent in Madagascar, one of the few areas of the world where it had gone unreported, than researchers previously thought. The research also suggests that the behavior may be more prevalent worldwide, particularly…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Silent Spring,’ 50 years on

    Environmentalists and faculty members gathered at Sanders Theatre to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” which catalyzed the environmental movement in its impassioned presentation of the impact of chemicals on nature.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Emergency planning

    Six of Harvard’s deep thinkers on climate change and sustainability took the stage Sept. 18 in the second annual Harvard Thinks Green.

    10 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Health care savings, naturally

    Though questions persist about whether natural remedies are as effective as their pharmacological cousins, one Harvard researcher is trying to understand the economic benefits people receive by relying on such traditional cures.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Meserve, Fisher to lead Overseers

    Richard A. Meserve, J.D. ’75, has been elected president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers for 2012-13 and Lucy Fisher ’71 will become vice chair of the board’s executive committee.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Warming hole’ delayed climate change

    Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States — that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Technology transforms energy outlook

    The U.S. energy picture has changed dramatically in recent years, with a flood of shale gas making natural gas a more attractive fuel option and the opening of new supplies cutting U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, an energy expert says.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    To help the environment, manufacture

    An American manufacturing revival is needed if the United States is to transform its energy mix at the scale necessary to blunt coming climate change, the former chairman of the Sierra Club said in a Harvard University Center for the Environment discussion on the future of energy.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    On climate issues, look to states

    The head of California’s air pollution regulatory board said Feb. 27 that with climate change action stalled in Washington, D.C., the states are taking the lead in creating ways to reduce carbon emissions.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A vote for more natural gas

    James Hackett, chairman and chief executive officer of the Anadarko Petroleum Corp., described an energy future driven by new, abundant supplies of natural gas. He spoke during a Future of Energy talk sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    SEAS brings good things to light

    By nestling quantum dots in an insulating egg-crate structure, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have demonstrated a robust new architecture for quantum-dot light-emitting devices (QD-LEDs).

    4 minutes