Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
Students in this seminar will develop skills in cross-disciplinary analysis of environmental outcomes through cases of ecosystem carbon sequestration and storage, wetland “reclamation” and restoration, and coastal planning for climate resilience.
You are part of the so-called “pivotal generation” for preventing the worst effects of climate change. While global carbon emissions continue to rise yearly, there remains a small window of time for action. What options are available to you for responding to climate change and the unequal burdens it creates?
How can we address the issue of climate change, reducing the damages by preparing for impacts already underway and fixing the problem by transforming our energy system? This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it.
The nutritional health of the public begins with food. There are two goals of this course: (1) To learn the basics of food science and technology, including food composition, chemistry, processing, and engineering; and (2) to understand how the broader food environment, including agricultural practices, food policy, and food trade, affects food availability and consumption. Through lectures, discussions, and group projects, students will be challenged to think critically about how the food supply impacts public health.
This foundation course examines how societies and states have responded to a range of disasters around the world, drawing key lessons for communities (and nations) preparing for climate changes.
The aim of this course is to place human beings in a universal and planetary context. You will learn where we come from beginning with the Big Bang and ending with modern human civilization and our relationship to the planet from which we have evolved and on which we depend.
The intersection of environment and health is by necessity an interdisciplinary focus. The most promising advances in lung biology and respiratory disease are resulting from teams of scientists with diverse disciplinary training, including biology, medicine, engineering, and physics. In addition to a strong foundation in a specific discipline, the ability to recognize and act upon opportunities presented by outside disciplines is a crucial skill. This course is designed to train scientists to approach lung biology and respiratory diseases with an interdisciplinary perspective, in particular by bridging the gap between life sciences and physical/engineering sciences.
The seminar will consist of three weekend field trips (Friday evening through Sunday afternoon) to Harvard Forest and a final mini symposium (Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon) at the Harvard Forest. The seminar will acquaint students with our current knowledge about global change, drawing upon state-of-the-art research, tools, and measurements used in evaluating and predicting climate change through ongoing studies at the Harvard Forest’s 4,000-acre outdoor classroom and laboratory in Petersham, Massachusetts. Students will spend the weekends at the Harvard Forest (HF) in comfortable accommodations with round-trip travel and meals provided. Through readings, informal discussions, and field excursions, students will become versed in the ecological concepts related to global change, and the science behind current predictions for future climate scenarios.
Climate change puts pressure on conceptualizations of place, world, and planet. As humans confront the force of the non-human world and the planetary scale of the crisis, we must also contend with the ambivalent legacies of both place and planet.
This seminar introduces students to the major contributions of the field of science and technology studies (STS) to the analysis of politics and policymaking in democratic societies.
What is the place of the human within nature? How are cultural concepts of what is ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ reflected in and shaped by texts from different periods? Where do our ideas about ecology and climate today have their roots? How can a text, or a film, be ‘ecological’?
An integrated approach to the diversity of life, emphasizing how chemical, physical, genetic, ecological and geologic processes contribute to the origin and maintenance of biological diversity.
