2015

Faculty Fellow Receives Risk Analysis Award

Faculty Fellow Receives Risk Analysis Award

December 22, 2015

The Society for Risk Analysis announced on December 8, 2015 that it would present its prestigious Distinguished Achievement Award for 2015 to HEEP Faculty Fellow James Hammitt. The award is granted to “any person for extraordinary achievement in science or public policy relating to risk analysis.” Dr. Hammitt is Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of...

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A Fair, Efficient, and Feasible Climate Agreement

December 17, 2015

[Jeffrey Frankel's Blog] How should one evaluate the agreement reached in Paris this month at the United Nations climate change conference? No sooner was the deal announced on December 12 than the debate erupted.

Some avid environmentalists were disappointed that the agreement did not commit firmly to limiting global warming to 1.5º Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2050.

The 1.5-Degree Global-Warming Target Doesn’t Matter. Here’s What Does.

December 10, 2015

[National Journal ]...“More im­port­ant at the Par­is cli­mate talks … are the dis­cus­sions and de­bates re­gard­ing the scope of par­ti­cip­a­tion (now hav­ing reached some 180 coun­tries that ac­count for 95 per­cent of glob­al emis­sions), the am­bi­tion of the in­di­vidu­al IN­DCs, and the trans­par­ency with which each coun­try’s per­form­ance in achiev­ing its IN­DC will be mon­itored, re­por­ted, and veri­fied, with the strin­gency of the IN­DCs re­vis­ited on a reg­u­lar basis,” said Har­vard Uni­versity eco­nom­ist Robert Stav­ins.

What the WTO Can Learn From Paris Climate Talks

December 7, 2015

[The Boston GlobeRobert Lawrence and Robert Stavins: For many years, negotiators at the annual conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change looked longingly at how the World Trade Organization was able to negotiate effective international agreements. Ironically, the Paris climate talks that are scheduled to conclude on Friday and the WTO negotiations, which will take place next week in Nairobi, lead to...

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Harvard’s Stavins, Stowe Compare Climate Change Policies in Paris

December 6, 2015

[Harvard Gazette ]...The panel, titled “Dialogue on the Comparison of Climate Change Policies,” featured Robert Stavins, the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and faculty director of the Harvard Project; Harvard Project Manager Robert Stowe; and several other scholars in the field. The discussion was moderated by Zou Ji, deputy director-general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy...

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An Economist’s Take on How to Combat Climate Change

December 3, 2015

[PBS NewsHour ] One hundred and fifty world leaders are in Paris this week for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. Their goal? To limit global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

We turn to economists Gernot Wagner of the Environmental Defense Fund and Martin L. Weitzman of Harvard University for how economics might be able to tackle the immense problem that is climate change...

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