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
Given the urgent need to shift societies away from carbon-based energy, how can such transitions occur so as not to reproduce existing injustices? Answering this question requires an interdisciplinary approach. Texts from historians and anthropologists will provide insight into how societies across time and space have made large-scale energy transitions.
Fundamental concepts and formalisms of conservation of energy and increase of entropy as applied to natural and engineered environmental and biological systems.
This course examines the economics of place. We study cities in their role as engines of modern economies. In part two of the course, we consider policies to address affordable housing, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, regional economic divides, persistent joblessness, climate change, and informal settlements.
Together, the coupled transfer of carbon and nitrogen through the atmosphere, organisms, soils, and water drive key ecosystem functions and will play central roles in determining how the biosphere responds to climatic change.
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.
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.
Using an interdisciplinary exploration of the liberal arts, you will develop and apply transformative ideas to tackle today’s societal challenges such as racial injustice, climate change, and strained health and wellbeing.
First, we’ll learn some of the physical principles that govern climate, and trace the broad arc of history of climate and life on the continent. Next, we’ll focus on human history, learning about how climate changes influenced human origins and behavior, up until the present. Lastly, we’ll learn about how climate is projected to change in the coming centuries, and how this will likely impact human healthy, political fortunes, and conservation.
Provides a survey, from the perspective of economics, of global climate change and public policies to address it, including international, regional, national, and sub-national policies.
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
The course covers climate dynamics and climate variability phenomena and mechanisms, and provides hands-on experience running and analyzing climate models, as well as using dynamical system theory tools.
This course will cover major topics in urban adaptation broadly divided according to concepts, governance, and practices. Concepts will include cross-cutting issues such as equity and justice, limits to adaptation, and the adaptation/mitigation nexus. Governance will span scales from community-led resilience to regional collaboratives to transnational city networks. Practices will delve into leading strategies for cities to adapt to major climate impacts with an emphasis on flooding and heat.
