Seeking Global Climate Answers

When President Barack Obama toured Alaska in September to experience firsthand how climate change is affecting Alaska and the greater Arctic, he was accompanied by his science advisor John P. Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House and chair of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee. Holdren, former director of the Belfer Center’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, wanted to better understand the direct impact of climate change on local Alaskan communities and ecosystems.

Among the impacts Holdren observed was melting permafrost, which threatens transportation and infrastructure and can release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. He, along with President Obama, listened to stories from Alaskan residents about life in Alaska and climate effects they are experiencing. They were hosted one evening at the home of Alice Rogoff, owner and publisher of Alaska’s largest newspaper, the Alaska Dispatch, and her husband David Rubinstein, a longtime friend of Harvard Kennedy School.

Holdren’s work at OSTP on climate challenges was aided during the past year by Kelly Sims Gallagher, a member of the Belfer Center board of directors and former director of the Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group. Now a professor at Tufts University, Gallagher spent a year working with OSTP and the State Department. She helped with negotiations for two major climate change agreements between the U.S. and China, whose energy policies and practices were a focus of the ETIP group while Gallagher was at the Center.

The Center’s ETIP researchers, now led by Laura Diaz Anadon, continue to work extensively on energy/climate issues related to China and the U.S., as well as India. ETIP and the Tsinghua School of Public Policy and Management convened a workshop at Tsinghua University in Beijing in June to build on the momentum created by the U.S.-China joint emissions agreement and December's Paris negotiations.

As this newsletter went to press, a team from the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, led by HPCA Director Robert Stavins, completed preparations for several side-events they will host in Paris during the December conference, focusing on linkage of mitigation efforts, the IPCC, and implications of the agreement for business. See pages 4–5 for views on the Paris conference by Stavins and HKS Professor David Keith.

In October, a delegation of Kennedy School students, fellows, and staff took part in the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland.