Featured series 
Tag: Harvard University Center for the Environment
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Nation & World
Weighing the risks of fracking
Susan Tierney, former assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Energy, discussed the environmental risks and potential benefits of shale gas extraction in a Future of Energy talk sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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Nation & World
New sources near for biofuels
Researchers are making progress in creating a biofuels process that will allow the use of tough-to-digest cellulose produced by hardy grasses that can be grown on marginal land around the world, the head of the Energy Biosciences Institute said Oct. 13 during a presentation at the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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Nation & World
Starting out green
With a green tour and “brain break,” Harvard freshmen learn early about the importance of living sustainably.
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Nation & World
Pollock: Artist and physicist?
A quantitative analysis of the streams, drips, and coils of artist Jackson Pollock by a Harvard mathematician and others reveals that he had to be slow and deliberate to exploit fluid dynamics as he did.
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Nation & World
Learning to love the irrational mind
Just how much should we allow “human nature” to guide our politics — and our everyday decision making? Columnist David Brooks and a trio of Harvard analysts debated new findings on the unconscious mind during a panel discussion.
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Nation & World
Challenges, solutions for South Asia
A two-day symposium on the future of South Asia examined several key challenges facing the region, as well as solutions on issues ranging from climate change to population control.
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Nation & World
Regimes won’t halt climate change
Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says the world should stop waiting for governments to solve the global warming problem. He called on academics to band together to find workable solutions.
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Nation & World
Cutting the military’s energy tether
Fueling America’s war effort is an expensive proposition, costing not only money but lives, since supply convoys are routinely attacked. The constraints imposed by an energy-hungry military prompted the Defense Department to investigate conservation techniques.
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Nation & World
Taming Australia
The recent floods and drought experienced by Australia are extreme expressions of a naturally fluctuating water cycle that has been moderated with engineering and which the introduction of market reforms recently has made more efficient.
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Nation & World
Solar’s time still on horizon
Bruce Sohn, president of the power company First Solar, says that reducing the cost of solar energy is on the horizon, but solar power has to grow dramatically if it is to replace fossil fuels.
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Nation & World
The EPA at 40
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that strong Republican gains in November’s election do not mean there is a public mandate to roll back EPA protections.
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Nation & World
The looming water shortage
The head of Nestlé explored ways to address a looming worldwide water crisis during a discussion at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Nation & World
Building the cheapest car
An executive of the Indian conglomerate Tata described how the company promotes innovation, resulting in the creation of the world’s cheapest car, a $2,500, fuel-efficient four-seater.
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Nation & World
Sustaining the cities
An interdisciplinary Harvard working group on sustainable cities is in search of some organizational details, but is already certain of its urgent mission.
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Nation & World
Center for the Environment welcomes 2010-12 fellows
The Center for the Environment welcomes an incoming group of environmental fellows for the 2010-12 academic years. These four new fellows will join a group of five scholars who will be beginning the second year of their fellowships.
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Nation & World
Pondering energy’s future
Reducing dependence on foreign oil and reducing greenhouse gases are the two major challenges facing U.S. energy systems, a visiting federal energy official told a Harvard audience.
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Nation & World
The future energy mix
Shell Oil President Marvin Odum said he expects global energy demand to double by mid-century, with renewables making up 30 percent of the total and fossil fuels remaining an important part of the mix.
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Nation & World
Battling climate change on all fronts
Harvard’s research spans the gamut from the sciences to the humanities, examining key questions about this critical challenge facing humanity.
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Nation & World
Ambitious undertaking
U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson said the United States plans to have 80 percent of its energy come from alternative and unconventional fossil fuels by 2050. She spoke as part of the “Future of Energy” discussion series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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Nation & World
Kicking the habit
Clean, renewable wind and solar power may be the most-preferred fossil fuel alternatives, but their land-hungry collecting requirements make them difficult options for replacing more conventional power sources, according to a British energy…
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Nation & World
An addiction to fossil fuels
David MacKay, physics professor at Cambridge University and scientific adviser to the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, outlines challenges facing efforts to eliminate fossil fuels from the world’s energy mix.
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Nation & World
New source of natural gas
Chesapeake Energy’s chief executive officer, Aubrey McClendon, struck a positive note on the future prominence of natural gas as an energy source, though some critics decried new gas extraction techniques.
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Nation & World
Study: Polar ice sheets vulnerable to even moderate global warming
A new analysis of the geological record of the Earth’s sea level, carried out by scientists at Harvard and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, employs…
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Nation & World
Just use less
Energy adviser and former Honeywell executive Maxine Savitz says there are enormous energy savings available through increased efficiency, as much as 30 percent by 2030.
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Nation & World
Expert: Lift taboo on Earth engineering
University of Calgary Professor David Keith calls for investment in geoengineering research as part of the search for solutions to climate change.
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Nation & World
Geology is destiny
As a teenager in Toronto in the 1950s, Paul Hoffman would spend hours in the Royal Ontario Museum studying its collection of rocks and minerals. He became a passionate collector, trading rocks with friends and exploring abandoned mines in search of crystals.
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Nation & World
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.
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Nation & World
U.S. energy answers there for the taking, says Amory Lovins
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…
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Nation & World
Global warming threatens his nation’s existence, a president warns
During a talk at Harvard, the leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan that would scatter his people through the nations of the…
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Nation & World
Policy can empower technological climate change solution
The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis last night, saying that an energy revolution…