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
This course applies economic tools to understand the rationale, design, and evaluation of public policies focused on energy and environmental problems.
Physicians and epidemiologists have already begun to document the adverse health effects of global warming. The myriad impacts are only going to get worse. While these specific health threats are new, concerns about health and the environment have ancient origins. This course will explore the long history of theorizing about the impact of the environment on health, paying particular attention to changing climates: what happens when people travel to new climates, and what happens when a place’s climate changes. Topics range from health in the ancient world to modern theories of planetary health.
How we teach about climate change is critical to our response as a global population. Educators adopt a longitudinal view on the outcomes of their daily efforts—guiding each generation with hope and possibility. How do we communicate the loss of what might be called a pact between the generations to the next generation? This course offers an intensive opportunity to explore issues related to teaching climate change in K-12.
Through the lens of the rapidly changing Arctic region, this module will give students an overarching understanding of these local and global challenges, as well as tools and experience in developing their own policy and social innovations to address complex issues in a sustainable way.
.This one-week intensive on-campus course is designed for those planning to work in high-intensity environments such as pandemics, climate crises, natural disasters, armed conflicts and other critical situations. This is a demanding course for highly motivated and committed students.
The course emphasizes a molecular scale understanding of energy and entropy; free energy in equilibria, acid/base reactivity, and electrochemistry; molecular bonding and kinetics; catalysis in organic and inorganic systems; the union of quantum mechanics, nanostructures, and photovoltaics; and the analysis of nuclear energy.
This course explores the varied roles that international lawyers and international institutions have played in shaping responses to climate change, the competing legal projects and strategies that they have developed to do so, and the shifting geopolitical contexts in which this work is taking place.
An introduction to environmental policy in the US with a focus on the Environmental Protection Agency. We will explore how policy is made at the federal and state levels and consider the actors who design policies, including legislators, agencies, advocates, regulated companies, and the courts.
Throughout centuries, Indigenous communities have developed knowledge systems and practices that allow them to foster meaningful connections with natural environments and the earth
In this perilous moment in human history, the world desperately needs leaders with the courage, drive and hardball political skills to fight climate change and help restore the natural world. Environmental leaders must also recognize how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate change. Leadership is difficult in any enterprise, but it is especially difficult for environmental leaders who face opponents with vastly more power and money.
