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
Avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change requires nearly a complete replacement of the world’s energy system. Although the timing and technology mix of this energy transition remain uncertain, it is clear that trillions of dollars in new investment will be needed for everything from wind- and solar-farms, to batteries and EV factories. This is far more than any government or international organization can spend, making the private sector critical to success. In this light, this module explores how policy can help the world to finance the energy transition by using the different financial instruments and institutions that exist.
Throughout centuries, Indigenous communities have developed knowledge systems and practices that allow them to foster meaningful connections with natural environments and the earth
The complexity of governing cities continues to escalate as more of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050. The problems of delivering basic services, while addressing climate and equity compound the challenge. This course seeks to equip students who wish to use digital tools to innovate with the knowledge and skills necessary to imagine and implement innovative solutions to public problems
This course will explore the potential for scaling agroforestry practices in the US by examining the relationships built through the cultivation of North American tree crops, from species-level interactions to regional distribution systems. Significant species and their immediate understory collaborators will be the starting point for unraveling and describing cultivation and stewardship, related ecological and social communities, craft, and other cultural practices.
Principles governing energy generation and interconversion. Current and projected world energy use. Selected important current and anticipated future technologies for energy generation, interconversion, storage, and end usage.
This is a project-based seminar that focuses on applied climate research, examining in detail and through text and drawings the climate changes that are impacting a densified urban center. The
The world’s economic and political order reels under mounting challenges that predate the Covid pandemic, and have deepened in its aftermath: climate change, authoritarian populism, global financial fragility, a slowdown in economic growth and productivity, the aggravation of inequality, the risks of AI, the rise of middle powers and geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China, and the stalling in global poverty reduction.
There is a way out of the climate box we have created, though resistance to the necessary ecological transformation remains intense. Sunk investments in existing infrastructure, broadly accepted design and economic theory, and the lifelong operations employment it has provided make the foundation of such resistance. Creating Environmental Markets will examine alternative capital markets based in regulatory requirements but offering opportunities to use credit trades and new approaches to old systems to restore ecology while providing economic incentives and jobs.
The course will be designed to provide students with an understanding of relevant physical, technical and social factors including an historical perspective.
The Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA is changing the way state government and attorneys general address their continued reliance on federal regulations that are now potentially being enjoined by federal judges who will be applying the “Major Question Doctrine.†The impact of West Virginia goes beyond environmental matters and extends into core attorney general duties of health, consumer protection and education.
