Sustainability & Environment

During Harvard Climate Action Week, more than 70 participants traveled to Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts to learn how scientists at this 4,000-acre living laboratory capture data and partner with the Nipmuc people—whose ancestral land includes the forest—to guide research, conservation, and education efforts.

Edward Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Carlos Curbelo, a former GOP representative from Florida, discussed bipartisan action on climate change in a discussion on the first day of Harvard Climate Action Week.

At Harvard Climate Action Week, experts discussed one of the biggest remaining unknowns in modeling the effects of climate change: the impact of thawing permafrost in the Arctic region, which could unleash large quantities of climate-warming methane.

At Harvard Climate Action Week, a panel of environmental leaders from New England Tribal Nations explained how traditional ecological knowledge can and should be leveraged to protect natural resources, preserve historical perspectives, and develop climate and environmental solutions.

Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic senator from Rhode Island and co-chair of the U.S. Senate Climate Task Force, did not mince words in a panel discussion held as part of Harvard Climate Action Week: “If we want a path to climate safety, it’s going to require us to do what is economically and morally right, which is to price carbon pollution.”

At a June 10 discussion held during Harvard Climate Action Week, leading scholars from atmospheric chemistry, climate physics, economics, and philosophy discussed our current understanding of solar geoengineering.

Stricter new federal regulations on deadly fine particulate air pollution in the U.S. were announced on February 7, 2024, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health research played a key role in the decision.

The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard announced a third round of seed grants for work on understudied and emerging topics in climate and sustainability—including research into new methods of direct air capture of carbon dioxide, the role animals play in global carbon cycles, new frameworks for climate migration, and more.

Kari Nadeau MD ’92, PhD ’95, chair of the Harvard Chan School’s Department of Environmental Health, says there is strong evidence that climate change is driving a global epidemic of immune health problems.

Quino Energy—co-founded by Eugene Beh AB/AM ’09 and former Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences postdoc Meisam Bahari—has begun production on the startup’s redox flow batteries, which use solutions of molecules called quinones to provide a cheaper, safer way to store surplus electricity from renewable sources.