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 examines the relationship between urbanization and development through a historical and contemporary lens, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and structure of cities have influenced the economic, social, and political prospects of residents and their host nations, as well as vice-versa.
Topics will include understanding human impacts on natural systems through engineering and design, their consequences, and the use of ecological principles and methods of landscape design and planning to achieve natural restoration, resilience, balance, and sustainability.
Explores controversies about the use of markets and market reasoning in areas such as organ sales, procreation, environmental regulation, immigration policy, military service, voting, health care, education, and criminal justice.
At a time of increasing global turbulence with debates on the end of the liberal international order and rising turmoil in the wider European neighborhood, this course offers a comprehensive dive into EU external relations.
Our planet and its biodiversity are in peril. We will begin by exploring the state of the planet and how we got here before focusing on what can still be done to conserve Earth’s remaining biodiversity, considering the biological, societal and ethical considerations of conservation in a changing world.
This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate change, including the radiation budget of the Earth, the carbon cycle, and the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere.
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.
Data and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing our world.. Intended for leaders, this course introduces statistics and machine learning and what they can tell us about global challenges. Using case studies on justice and policing, elections and polling, behavioral economics, development, climate change, education, and health, we analyze research design, regression, and project evaluation, and compare the perspective of ethics.