ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE
August 30, 2010
A Katrina 5th Anniversary Success Story
News
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
Five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, one stand-out recovery success story is the neighborhood of Broadmoor and its unique collaboration with Harvard Kennedy School through the Belfer Center's "Broadmoor Project." While the determined community continues its renewal today, Broadmoor has become a model of disaster recovery efforts for other neighborhoods, cities, and even countries.
AP Photo
August 2010
"Modern Energy Access to All in Rural India: An Integrated Implementation Strategy"
Discussion Paper
By Balachandra Patil, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program/Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2009–2010
Expanding energy access to the rural population of India presents a critical challenge for its government. The presence of about 364 million people without access to electricity and about 726 million who rely on biomass for cooking indicate both the failure of past policies and programs, and the dire need is for a radical redesign of the current system that will address the need to expand energy access for these people.
AP Photo
August 17, 2010
"Midterm Advice for Congress: Tax Carbon Instead of Jobs"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Robert J. Shapiro and Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"To deal with climate change, we have to move our entire economy to low-carbon sources of energy. Tying a carbon fee to lower payroll taxes for workers on a permanent basis can not only take the sting out of what has to be done for the climate, it also can help create thousands of jobs and stimulate more innovation. The current favored approach for climate, cap-and-trade, is dying in the Senate, because its proponents can never guarantee that it won't turn into one more playground for Wall Street traders."
August 2010
"Institutional Support for an International Forest Carbon Sequestration Agreement"
Discussion Paper
By Liz Baldwin and Kenneth R. Richards
Because forests play a critical role in the global carbon cycle, the international community is actively pursuing policies and programs to increase the amount of carbon stored in forests. Recent estimates suggest that forestry could contribute an average 6.7 billion tons of emissions reductions annually, with over two-thirds of this potential coming from tropical nations. Making full use of the forest carbon sink is appealing to both the developed and the developing world. Developed nations see forest carbon projects as a low-cost option for mitigating climate change. For the developing world, forest carbon payments could provide a sustainable source of much-needed income. At the most recent climate negotiation talks in Copenhagen, even as negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions limits stalled, the parties moved closer to a framework agreement on forest carbon.
August 2010
"Europe's Emissions Trading System"
Discussion Paper
This paper describes and evaluates the system for trading CO2 emission permits introduced by the European Union to encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to help abate climate change. This system represents a live example of a functioning trading system under the so-called cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
July 2010
"Negligence, Strict Liability, and Responsibility for Climate Change"
Discussion Paper
This paper reexamines responsibility for climate change. Claims of responsibility are based on legal and ethical principles concerning liability for wrongdoing. They are, in essence, tort claims. Tort-law principles might be used in actual legal disputes, to make quasi-legal arguments in a negotiation, or to simply claim moral wrongdoing by a set of actors. The goal, therefore, will be to examine whether tort-law or similar theories of obligation apply to past greenhouse gas emissions
AP Photo
July 27, 2010
"The Power of Cap-and-Trade"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Richard Schmalensee and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
"A price on carbon is the least costly way to provide meaningful incentives for technology innovation and diffusion, reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and drive energy efficiency. In the long run, it can reduce our use of oil and drive our transportation system toward alternative energy sources."
July 2010
"Linking Policies When Tastes Differ: Global Climate Policy in a Heterogeneous World"
Discussion Paper
By Gilbert E. Metcalf and David Weisbach
The authors discuss linkage of various types of trading systems. Their goal is to identify opportunities for constructive linkage and policy choices that might limit or hinder linkage. They argue that the basic approach of existing emission-reduction-credit systems, especially the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), can be extended to create linkage opportunities among diverse emission control systems while eliminating some of the problems in the CDM. Moreover, while emission-reduction-credit systems are designed to work with cap and trade, the authors describe how they might complement tax and certain regulatory systems, as well.
June 2010
"Three Key Elements of Post-2012 International Climate Policy Architecture"
Discussion Paper
By Sheila M. Olmstead, Former Research Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Program, 2001–2002 and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
We describe three essential elements of an effective post-2012 international global climate policy architecture: a means to ensure that key industrialized and developing nations are involved in differentiated but meaningful ways; an emphasis on an extended time path of targets; and inclusion of flexible market-based policy instruments to keep costs down and facilitate international equity. This architecture is consistent with fundamental aspects of the science, economics, and politics of global climate change; addresses specific shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol; and builds upon the foundation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
June 2010
"Interactions between State and Federal Climate Change Policies"
Discussion Paper
By Lawrence Goulder and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate policy developments. In the presence of federal policies, to what extent will state efforts be costeffective? How does the co-existence of state- and federal-level policies affect the ability of state efforts to achieve emissions reductions?
