Experts Debate Sustainability

A panel on global warming got heated last night as four members of the Harvard Kennedy School faculty debated the responsibilities of individuals and institutions in addressing climate change.

The discussion, hosted by the Harvard University Center for the Environment in celebration of the University’s Sustainability Week, was moderated by Daniel P. Schrag, HUCE’s director.

In July, University President Drew G. Faust affirmed Harvard’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent of its current levels by 2016. Schrag outlined the steps the University will need to take in order to achieve this goal.

He also stressed the severity of climate change—an impending “catastrophe,” he said, if not addressed—and asked the panelists to discuss their opinions on how best to approach the problem.

William C. Clark, co-director of the Sustainabilty Science Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, pushed the belief that individual collective action is a critical component of the solution.

Clark, who also chaired the task force that drafted Harvard’s emissions reduction plan, explained that up to 10 percent of the total emissions reductions needed to lower atmospheric carbon to a safe level can come from cutting emissions in personal residences.

“The problem is connecting [individual] behaviors to the implications of this problem [of climate change] that they all admit is there,” Clark said.

Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program at HKS, presented an opposing view, arguing that “voluntary initiatve and reliance on unilateral action is...insignificant.”

Stavins said that a solution founded on market-based instruments and government regulation, in which institutions and businesses focus on the environmental impact of their products, would be more effective.

“[Harvard’s] carbon footprint is absolutely trivial compared with the impact we have on the environment through our products—knowledge through research, students through teaching, outreach by faculty student participation.

Kelly S. Gallagher, the director of HKS’s Energy Technology Innovation Project, took an intermediate position, saying that Harvard must both “[instigate] knowledge and [give] people tools” and reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions.

The final panelist, Richard J. Zeckhauser, said that the outcome of the effort is more important than specific means.

He pointed to former vice president Al Gore, who owns a “very large house” but has nonetheless contributed to combating climate change through his ideas.

Though tensions rose during the discussion (one panelist tersely asked another if he “lived in an igloo” after the latter said individual greenhouse gas emissions were irrelevant), those in attendance said the contention was demonstrative of the issue’s salience.

“By making this institutional commitment,” said Spring Greeney ’09, former chair of the Environmental Action Committee, “you’re turning Harvard into a living laboratory as well as an institutional example for its peers, one that extends beyond the classroom and has hands-on, real-world relevance.”

—Staff writer Natasha S. Whitney can be reached at nwhitney@fas.harvard.edu.