Sustainability & Environment

Reducing methane emissions can buy the world crucial time to avoid catastrophic global warming. A Harvard team is helping provide policymakers with the tools to help policymakers do just that.

For his senior capstone project, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences student Sebastian Lindner-Liaw SB ’23 designed a bike powered by compressed air as an alternative to electric bikes, which rely on batteries that have high environmental and humanitarian costs.

In her book, Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis, Harvard neuroscientist Ann-Christine Duhaime explores how our brain’s wiring affects our ability to deal with the complexity of climate change.

Poet and Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow Isabel Galleymore asks us to consider how our perceptions of the natural world influence which species we deem worth protecting.

The push to keep the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius is doomed unless world leaders take significant near-term action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry said during a conversation with Harvard President Larry Bacow, which anchored the daylong symposium “Rising to the Climate Challenge” as part of Harvard Climate Action Week.

The first-ever Harvard Climate Action Week served as a celebration and acceleration of climate research, education, and engagement across Harvard University, convening thousands of experts, decision–makers, students, alumni, and scholars across campus and online.

Harvard government professors Dustin Tingley and Stephen Ansolabehere collaborated with students to design the course “Politics of the Environment and Climate Change.” The course contends with climate change as a fundamentally political problem, challenging students to navigate obstacles and opportunities for effective policymaking at all levels of government. 

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have developed a biodegradable, antimicrobial food packaging system that extends shelf life and eliminates microbial contamination.

Aerospace engineer and entrepreneur Kyle Clark AB ’04 is working to revolutionize aviation and combat climate change by developing a fully electric aircraft designed for cargo missions.

The first cohort of the Climate Justice Design Fellowship, a pilot project of Harvard’s Data+Climate Initiative, demonstrate the real-world impacts that can be achieved when researchers and civic leaders work together to support communities