What You Wanted to Know About Climate Change But Were Afraid to Ask

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome. I'm Jim Stock. I'm Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University and the Director of the Salada Institute. Welcome to this year's first edition of Harvard Speaks on Climate Change. I'd like to thank the Harvard Alumni Association for their help in putting this on and for helping to advertise this series. Now, normally this series goes into a specific topic related to climate change, sustainability, and the energy transition like we did last year. But today, to start the semester, we're going to do something a little different. Over the course of the past year and summer, we had inquiries from multiple members of our viewing audience who have some basic and not so basic questions about climate change and the energy transition. So we decided to spend some time on those questions, taking up audience questions and providing answers from our Harvard experts. So to help us with this task, we've got four members of the Harvard faculty who work on very different problems related to climate change. So I'd like to welcome them now and have them join the webinar. In alphabetical order, they're Joe Aldi. Joe is the Teresa and John Hines Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Joe is an economist with expertise in climate policy. He's involved in various research programs in the Solada Institute, including a climate research cluster on corporate net zero emissions targets, and also another project on international global climate arrangements. Anita Beres-Beta is Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design. Anita's practice encompasses landscape level changes to facilitate adaptation, especially in urban environments, where adaptations can accommodate local populations who are confronting serious climate change challenges. Peter Habers is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Peter's work is truly wide-ranging, encompassing global climate modeling, assessing solar geoengineering, agricultural productivity, climate migration, and many other areas. Mary Rice is the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health. She was just recently announced to be the new director of the Center for Climate, Health, and Global Environment, or Sea Change, at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. I'm particularly excited to welcome Mary and look forward to working with her in her new capacity. So the way this is going to work is I'm going to read some questions, read a question, and then open it up. I think most of these questions will typically be handled best by one or two members of the panel, but a few of them I think we want to get everybody's opinion on. If you want to drop a question in Q&A, please do so, and I'll try to get to it. We've got some great questions already, some from quite distinguished Harvard alumni. We didn't ask permission to provide questioners names, so I'll keep the questions anonymous. So with this introduction, let's get started. So I'm going to read through the question, in some cases edited or composite, and then turn it over to the panel. So we're going to start with questions about the climate system. What do we know? What do we need to learn about? So the first starting point question is that we're at the, are we at the point now where action to slow or halt human emissions of greenhouse gases is warranted? Or do we need more research? And if so, what research is critical before we act? And I think Peter, this is, sounds like a question for you. [00:03:48] Speaker 2: Uh, yeah. Thanks, Jim. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, I think overwhelmingly obvious that climate change is upon us. We're already dealing with the effects and we're in store for more. Maybe I should just run down as a kind of introductory framing here. Some of the things that we're just seeing, uh, as of, as of this year, right? So, um, oh, 2023 last full calendar year. That was the warmest year on record. 1.18 degrees Celsius warmer than the average between 1901 and 2000. Uh, it's the hottest year on record since 1880. And in fact, the 10 hottest years in the record are the last 10 years in the record. Okay. So that's fairly clear pattern of events. That warming has driven changes that were predicted to occur. Arctic sea highs has declined. We had the third lowest year on record, uh, this last year. Snow cover has declined by about a couple days per decade in terms of how often it's occurring in the Northern hemisphere, uh, since the 1970s. And so we have 10 days less snow cover in most places in the Northern hemisphere. Uh, we see hurricanes that can be more intense. And so Helene and Milton were, were definitely wake up calls. Um, and we're also seeing sea level rise continuously about 3.4 millimeters per year. Um, and so we know what's here now. I, I study and research the climate and, uh, there's always more details that we'd like to know. What exactly are the risks? What are the sorts of adaptations and mitigation measures that are appropriate? So understanding what's going to happen in detail is, is critical. Uh, but waiting until we have 100% assurance on exactly what's going to happen as a recipe for having all sorts of major changes and irreversible effects, uh, taking place. Um, so, um, Jim, I don't know if, uh, I, I, I can go on and on, but I'll stop here. Yeah. [00:05:36] Speaker 1: That's really great. I think that's a really good, um, summary. And I guess I would just say that there's always more that we need to learn. And one of the areas that's particularly critical for learning more is, uh, in the area of sea level rise and, uh, and glacial melt and, uh, melting of ice sheets. And we just hired a terrific, uh, oceanographer, physical oceanographer in, um, the faculty of arts and sciences in, in your department, actually, Peter, uh, who studies, uh, melting, uh, ice sheets in, uh, Greenland and, uh, and what happens, how that, how that, uh, how that actually is, uh, accelerating and getting the science right. So getting the science right is incredibly important, but that's it. So much, just like Peter just said, so much is all pointing in exactly the same direction that we have to be able to, uh, uh, uh, accept that it's, it's, it's quite real. And at the same time, uh, continue to do a good science. So one other question that came up is about tipping points. And I think a lot, a lot of people are just curious, like what, what, when people were, when you hear this term tipping points in the climate system, what does that mean? Is that going to be accelerating global warming? Maybe you can explain that whole concept. Sure. [00:06:52] Speaker 2: I, I, I, you know, people are, you know, tipping point, it basically is, you know, you push something and you get a linear response or some sort of response, and then at some point you get over a threshold and it, it falls over and it's, it's hard to put it back just in general. So with, with regard to tipping point in the climate, this notion that there are elements of the system that are irreversible, at least on anything that approaches a societal timescale. We, we actually have already, uh, broached, uh, one important tipping point. Um, and that, that's what the Greenland ice sheet. So the, the Greenland ice sheet and the, we have two ice sheets that are left to us. The, the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. We had many more 20,000 years ago than the last Glacial Maximum. All of those ice sheets disappeared except for these two. And, and Greenland is, the reason why it can exist is it's tall and sits up in the atmosphere and fairly cold reaches of the, of the, uh, of the atmosphere. And so it doesn't melt a whole lot, but as we've begun to melt it at its periphery and as we've increased the, the temperature of the, that it's exposed to, what we're seeing is that that ice sheet is, uh, is wasting away. And eventually what will happen, uh, under the temperatures that we've already achieved and the only accelerate going forward is that ice sheet will disappear and it won't come back because you need a tall ice sheet to sustain the tall ice sheet. Once it's lower, it's hotter and it's just not going to, to come back. So that's going to take place over a long time scale. That's not the sort of tipping point that we're going to realize anytime soon, but it's going to waste away over the coming centuries and millennia. There, there's other sorts of tipping points that one might be, um, I think particularly cognizant of, uh, the, um, the sister to the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctica ice sheet. That's a very interesting one. It actually sits below sea level, um, and it has the susceptibility to, as it loses mass to actually start to float and to peel off the bed that it sits on. And then you can get water underneath it and it can actually erode much more quickly. The major question is just how quickly can and might the West Antarctic ice sheet disintegrate? Um, sea ice, uh, we, we can see as, uh, having tipping points, uh, and, uh, not coming back, uh, once we've lost it. Um, there's also things that are maybe a little bit closer to home. So if we think about the biosphere, right? We have certain ecological communities that exist, uh, in our present climate. At some point, it could be that they are no longer viable. Uh, there are concerns, for example, for example, about the Amazon and whether or not this is going to be something that, uh, can be sustained going forward. Uh, people speculate as well about ocean circulation as potentially being able to change in substantial ways. Could the pattern of El Ninos that we've observed historically, uh, change such that we have a kind of a lock-in of one particular type of ocean state? That might exacerbate the rate of warming that we're observing. And these are all possibilities, uh, become kind of increasingly speculative in terms of what I'm talking about. Uh, but we have to be open to them and then, you know, see back to where we let off here. There are things to research and understand in greater detail, uh, to understand what sorts of risks we are going to be exposed to in the short term, but also the potential for things that we simply can't undo, uh, once we've broken them. [00:10:01] Speaker 1: That's just, that's just great. Thank you very much, Peter. Um, sobering, uh, you know, all of these changes that are happening in the physical system raise questions about what the impacts are on humans. And one of the leading things that we've had a number of questions about is, uh, health and, uh, climate change. So I think Mary, that's your, that's your area. Let me start with one of the questions that was raised, which is what do you see as the biggest, what do you understand to be the biggest climate threats to human health? Which sounds like an easy question, but I think that's, it sounds to me like that's kind of a tricky question because we have all of these things, you know, heat and wildfires and, uh, vector-borne diseases that might be changing. What's your take on that? [00:10:47] Speaker 3: Yeah, I, uh, thank you for, first of all, for having me on this panel. It's really a pleasure to be here and I'm excited to work, uh, with all of you on these really important issues. Jim, I agree with you. Um, there is no simple answer to this question. And I would say the biggest health threats really, uh, depend on what part of the world you're talking about. You know, hurricanes and wildfires are a really big deal here in the United States, but food scarcity, forced migration are causing death and mortality in many other parts of the world. I personally am a physician, a pulmonologist, and I, I treat the health effects of fossil fuel combustion, wildfire smoke, aeroallergen exposure in my clinics. Um, but to give you a little kind of a introduction of, you know, some of the major issues here, um, heat-related illness and heat-related mortality is obviously a very serious public health problem. And I think we all pay attention to the big headlines, you know, healthy people dying during marathons, you know, large numbers of people dying during extreme heat waves. Um, but there's another whole tier in the middle there of, of people who are coming to the hospital with ordinary things like heart failure, kidney, um, failure. And they're not coming in with climate change or, or heat somehow label, you know, carrying a label of that diagnosis. But we know from the, from the evidence that we see a real increase in, in hospitalizations for a variety of chronic conditions related to heat. So heat, I think is really important and, and under-recognized in terms of the total scope of that issue. Um, air pollution, as I mentioned, is a really big, uh, public health problem that I personally deal with in my clinics and wildfire smoke is an obvious one. Uh, wildfires are much, uh, large destructive wildfires are increasingly common now. Um, and the wildfire season is longer than it used to be. Um, so there's a greater frequency of these really, um, devastating wildfires that cause impaired air quality in the regions where the wildfires are located. But as we've all seen, that smoke could really travel. And, you know, there have been times in, in our very recent history where the east coast of the United States had some of the worst air quality in the world because of wildfire smoke in Canada. Um, ground level ozone is another pollutant that we can't even see. But because of heat, we have more ozone pollution, uh, in cities. And that's another respiratory health hazard. Um, I could go on and on about the health hazards of, of climate change. I, I, another, a couple of other really important ones I want to make sure we touch on are the spread of infectious disease, as you mentioned, uh, Jim, um, due to crowding, sanitation, um, in the case of extreme weather events, changes in the ranges of vector-borne diseases, um, and food and water scarcity, uh, as a result of our, our drying climate. If I would end with one thing on the health issue that I think, you know, I think it can be overwhelming, uh, to think about all these hazards, right? Um, it's just, you know, so terrible and it's affecting all of us and, and it's affecting some parts of the world even, uh, more severely than others. Um, but if we think about solutions, I think one simple, simplifying message is that most of the emissions reduction efforts have immediate health benefits. So, um, that's a, that's an important health argument, I, I think, uh, is part of this puzzle. [00:14:46] Speaker 1: Maybe you can clarify one thing, and I think this is related to your answer and related to one of the questions is, um, you mentioned heat and like, for those of us who aren't doctors and don't really know about this, I might think of heat stroke. And I don't know too many people get heat stroke or like have us, you know, sort of die from overheating, but then you read the, I read it, I read these articles that where it says tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people are excess mortality because of heat. How do we square that circle from what seems to be a fairly isolated thing of a, of a heat stroke event? What are all the other sorts of issues? Like what you said, pulmonary, respiratory, heart issues, uh, what, how does, what's the physiology there? What's the, what's the connection? [00:15:31] Speaker 3: Oh, well, I can give a couple of examples. So, um, let's say that your kidney function isn't perfect. Um, and so, um, you know, your kidneys are doing the best every day to try to manage your electrolytes and keep your body in equilibrium. And then on a really hot day, um, let's say you take your usual medications as you always would, that some of which might have a drying effect and you don't hydrate yourself quite as well as you should have, and maybe you didn't replete your electrolytes as well as you should have, you're more likely to end up with kidney failure. Um, and that's one of the most common reasons people come to the emergency room, right? So that's just one example of a chronic condition [00:16:15] Speaker 1: that, uh, is exacerbated by heat. Um, and then it wouldn't be recorded as a heat death, but it's induced, [00:16:22] Speaker 3: but it's basically a result of heat. Exactly. So those studies that you, you gave as examples, they're looking, you can control statistically for things like, uh, air pollution, right? And then you could look at the, the differences in hospital visits for these different kind of chronic conditions and association with changes in heat. And that's how we arrive at those, those estimates that quite consistently show that we have excess mortality, not just from heat stroke. I mean, that's just a small [00:16:53] Speaker 1: portion of the overall health burden. That's really interesting. Another question that's a follow-up on that is more in the solution space. Is there low hanging fruit, uh, in the global health, public health apparatus that could, uh, ease climate impacts? Is that education about extreme heat? Is it vaccines for or communicable diseases? What, what are, what are some of the things that we can be doing now that are not, you know, gonna, gonna be super expensive that we can actually implement it in the short run? [00:17:26] Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, extreme heat is, is certainly an important public health issue that I, the medical and public health community could address more effectively. I would say through public health interventions and clinical guidance, like things that doctors advise their patients on. So for one, one example is certain medications, um, uh, their impact can be affected by, by extreme heat, for example. And so we could advise our patients on, on some of those issues more, more effectively. And actually the evidence has shown that many people don't take pretty obvious, simple measures that they might easily be able to do, uh, both at home and in the workplace to prevent dehydration and, and heat exhaustion, for example. Um, so I definitely think, uh, there's opportunity to improve on our education, uh, for patients to help, uh, with adaptation and actually see change has developed some clinical resources in the form of, uh, toolkits that are already available online, have been downloaded over 20,000 times. Um, but we also know that heat warning systems are insufficient, right? And we need more, more, more behavioral and implementation science to evaluate and then scale public health guidance [00:18:43] Speaker 1: interventions for, for heat. Great. Thank you very much. I think there's a, we have a whole host of questions that are associated with reducing emissions. So if you take what Peter was saying, uh, we know enough that it's anthropogenic, uh, in terms of these impacts, uh, and you take Mary's comments that these impacts have severe health consequences, uh, the source of these, the source of the warming in the first instance is increasing, uh, concentrations of greenhouse gases and most notably CO2. So that raises the question for quite a few people of like, what should we be doing? So um, so here's a specific question on, uh, on mitigation policy or reducing emissions, uh, mitigation is jargon for reducing emissions. So if we focus on the United States, what are the key policies that would help reduce emissions? Should these be policies supporting green technologies like advanced batteries? Uh, are, are there other policies to take into account? Joe, maybe you want to handle that. [00:19:50] Speaker 4: Uh, thanks, Jim. I think, uh, on this question on sort of where there are the opportunities in the United States, uh, for reducing emissions, it's important to keep in mind, we already have a, uh, quite, uh, uh, a wide array of policies supporting deployment of clean energy, whether it's through the federal level, when we think about subsidies in the inflation reduction act, but we also have at the state level, uh, in many states policies that mandate the deployment of renewable power in the electricity sector that are trying to promote improvements in energy efficiency, uh, for households. Uh, so we already have a lot of policies moving forward here. And so I think the question is when we think about what additional policies do we need going forward to accelerate decarbonization decarbonization, we need to think through how these new policies will work with this existing landscape, at times complicated and patchwork landscape of policies. So I think one thing that jumps to mind, uh, and there's, there's a lot of discussion right now in Washington on this, is how to think about, uh, reducing the time it takes to build new energy infrastructure. Um, that we've got a lot of subsidies to support building out new renewable sources of power. We have subsidies to support new nuclear sources of power. Um, we even have some subsidies focused on transmission, but the holdup with transmission is as much as much on the permitting process, getting your permits, your licensing, going through all the re the relevant reviews. That is what is holding up some of these projects and slowing how fast we can decarbonize the U S economy. So some of the proposals out there for permitting reform would, for example, make it easier for the federal regulator to jump in and require the building of a large transmission line. If it's sort of carries enough juice over a long enough distance, if it's in the national interest. Now we've had something on that, like that on the books, but this would actually give for greater authority and greater discretion to identify a project that would be in the national interest level. And a more streamlined process by which a developer could go through their state and then go, if they're not able to get the state to permit that line to then quickly go to the federal regulator to get that line approved. Another would be to try to accelerate how quickly we can go through the review process for environmental impacts. In some cases to say, we don't have to do a review. So under the national environmental policy act, there are reviews for environmental impacts. Sometimes those reviews can take a number of years. The proposal would say, if you're going to build a line through an existing right of way, if you're going to upgrade the capacity in that existing right of way, why do we have to go through the review process again? That's already a transmission corridor. That should be covered by what's called a categorical exclusion. So the idea is to think about ways in which we can accelerate the process by which we can cite and build transmission lines. So I think that would be one that would have this kind of reform to make the regulatory process on energy infrastructure a bit more modern to be on par with the more modern approach to subsidies we have through the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, the second thing I would say is that while the Inflation Reduction Act has done a lot to promote clean energy adoption by lowering the cost for you to buy, whether it's an electric vehicle or for a utility to invest in a large-scale wind or solar facility, we don't face a penalty right now. In most parts of the country, outside of California and a little bit of the Northeast, no one faces a penalty for their carbon emissions associated with burning fossil fuels and especially with respect to coal. So to talk about some of the policies we can pursue going forward, we can think about a carbon price of one form or another that would make it more expensive to burn coal for electricity. Now that matters a lot for emissions because going from coal to natural gas to produce electricity is about as good in terms of CO2 as going from natural gas to solar or wind. It's a big improvement. Just inducing that switch, let alone the fact that you are then moving down that trajectory for over time, it'll become more and more costly to run power plants that are burning natural gas. You'll want to switch more and more as the technology becomes even more available to these new renewable sources of power. So I think a second policy option would be how we can drive down quickly the emissions in the power sector by further moving coal out of the mix of generating technologies. The third thing I'd say is to try to think through, and this may map in part to the second part about how you might use a carbon price, is how to think about what we're going to do in the US that can actually leverage emission reductions around the world and think through what might be the ways that instead of having what has sometimes been described in recent years as a mix of subsidy war and maybe trade war in the climate context. The subsidy war being, is China going to subsidize too much of their domestic production? We'll put tariffs on imports coming from China in the clean energy space. Some countries are upset with the United States for having generous subsidies for manufacturing capacity now in the US and have talked about whether they should have their own subsidies to compete or put tariffs on US manufactured goods. We have the EU now saying they want to put on a- effectively a tariff on the carbon content of the goods going into the EU. There's been discussions about that for the US as well. It's a bit of competition without much coordination right now. It's also something that frustrates many developing countries outside of the big emerging economies who feel like it's just making it harder for them to try to live up on what they've tried to pledge to do to reduce emissions. So I think there's an opportunity going forward to think through in a much more coordinated way among our trade partners what we're going to do to reduce emissions at home, how that contributes to what they're trying to do to reduce emissions in their countries, how we might be able to raise some revenues, some of which we will address using to address our domestic needs, but some of those revenues we could actually use to help enable developing countries to cut their emissions. That enables us to be able to say, as you're producing goods in these developing countries that come into our markets, they're not actually causing as much environmental harm. It may make it easier for us to leverage greater emission reductions abroad, because at the end of the day, whether we're cutting emissions here or any other country in the world, that has the same benefit for the global climate. And so I think it's going to be important for us as we move forward with our policies to not just cut our emissions here, but think about how we can use our policy implementation to leverage emission reductions in other countries. [00:26:14] Speaker 3: Can I add a little something to Joe's really good points? [00:26:16] Speaker 1: Absolutely. Please, Mary. [00:26:18] Speaker 3: So, Joe, I just wanted to add to your points about the climate benefit of transitioning away from coal. I think it's really important to point out that coal is a very, very dirty fuel when it comes to the health impacts. And so, yes, the impact on climate would be equivalent, but there's an immediate and a local health benefit every time you shut down a coal-fired power plan, and there's plenty of studies to show this. So it's important to get the health equity and health costs and benefits integrated into these decisions. [00:26:57] Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, Mary. If I could just say, too, I think that matters a lot for how we think about the politics of these. We've been talking for decades about putting a price on carbon in the US. The politics are thorny. There may be creative ways to think about the politics, but part of it, and we've seen some of this in the discussion about the Inflation Reduction Act, how do we highlight the local benefits of the clean energy transition? And whether that's improving the local environment and the air we breathe, whether it is in some places, how do we think about creating certain kinds of jobs that we think are going to be durable and valued in certain locations? There's different ways you can think about managing the politics that is going to influence how effective you can be on pushing on any of these policy levers. [00:27:42] Speaker 1: I think that politics gets really complicated, that's for sure, in our current environment. But, you know, the economist in me loves the fact that there's still somebody talking about a carbon tax. I have a more narrow technical question, Joe. There's a ton to unpack in what you said, but one thing that is related to some of the questions that we've received is you mentioned how going from coal to natural gas, so Mary made the point that that reduces local particulates and socks and so forth, and these various things are going to cause respiratory illnesses. But on top of that, it's just about half as much carbon emissions per megawatt hour from the amount that you generate. That doesn't, you know, the pushback that you might get from that is that that doesn't, it does, there's two pieces to that that you might push back on one. Is that going to mean that you're going to be building new natural gas plants? Are those going to be around for a long time? And the second pushback is like, what about all these leaks? We know there's a lot of leaks from upstream from natural gas they emit from the wells, and then that, you know, methane is a really potent greenhouse gas. And so if there's emissions from upstream methane, doesn't that kind of run against your, this argument? And I think, so there's actually two things there that you might want to comment on. Because I think a lot of people wonder about this. It's a big debate. [00:29:06] Speaker 4: No, so I think it's a really important question, Jim. I think part of it is this question of if we're supporting natural gas, and there was a time when we were talking about natural gas as being a bridge fuel that would enable us to make that transition away from having a coal intensive power system. It was only about 15 years ago, more than half of the power in the United States came from burning coal. That's now less than 20%. So we're doing a lot to move coal out. A lot of what we've been doing though, moving coal out has been replaced by natural gas. We are seeing a lot more renewables coming online. We brought more solar online last year than any other type of electricity generating technology. But I think it is going to take some time to be able to develop a grid that can rely on very high levels of renewables, given the intermittency in certain parts of the country, certain times of the year, and the power that can be produced by renewable technologies. And so there's a sense in which natural gas can still play some role in sort of managing the reliability of the grid, even as we increase the penetration of renewables. But I think as we continue to subsidize renewables, and if we can make it easier to build out both new renewables generating facilities and the transmission lines to get to them, it's going to make it easier to have natural gas playing a smaller and smaller role over time, and really just assuring that kind of reliability that people have come to count on in the grid. And that matters a lot, I think, politically. To your point on methane emissions upstream and the production of natural gas, I think that's very important. It's an issue that we are covering and addressing in one of the Solada Institute clusters that focuses on methane that our colleague Rob Stavins leads for us that spans, it's about 18, 19 faculty now, all across the university, including those who are working with and partnering with EDF and others to really understand where emissions are occurring by helping develop both the satellite technology to surveil the emissions, but to surveil to measure actually concentrations, but then to also have the very clever data science and how we evaluate the atmosphere chemistry to be able to identify who's the source of emissions when we see the concentration in a given place in a given point in time go up and be able to then really target our work. And this is where our colleagues at the law school come in as they've worked with EPA on a new regulation target our work to really cut down the emissions at those super emitters when we see big hot spots of methane occur, often unknown to the oil and gas producer. Something's failed in their equipment and they're not aware of it immediately, you have this big hot spot occur. So I think it is important that there's a concern that if we use more natural gas, we could have some methane emissions upstream. We do have a very stringent EPA regulation that has recently been promulgated. It is tied with actually a, if you will, carbon price or carbon equivalent price. There's a methane fee in the Inflation Reduction Act. So if that EPA regulation is not being fully implemented and complied with by an operator, we can actually apply a pretty stiff tax to their methane emissions. So you're right, it is a problem, but it is one where we have other policies that are moving right now to address and reduce those emissions of methane that occur at our oil and gas operations. And it's something where we've got, we're leveraging, I think, a lot of the expertise here at Harvard to address that and [00:32:27] Speaker 1: advance those efforts. That's great. Thanks. You know, I think for somebody who's not in the weeds with this, it just seems overwhelming how many special things there are. And if you think about what you talked about, you talked about upstream methane regulations, a methane fee, subsidies from the IRA, citing reform, you've managed to use them out of the word FERC. So this gets really complicated. And I would just say for the audience, you know, you think, oh gosh, I can think of 87 things. How do I rank them? And actually, a big part of what academics do in this space and sort of the tool-based analysis is to try to say, well, yeah, this is important. This is going to be more tons. This is probably not very many tons. What are the best things to focus our limited resources on? So if we're going to spend money on something, do we get the most money by spending it on biofuels? Do we get the most bang for a buck by spending on biofuels? Do we get the most bang for a buck spending it on FERC reform or whatever it is? And so there's a lot of hard analysis in the background. I just want to say, Joe sounds like, gosh, those are great ideas, but who knows? The actual reality is there's a ton of hard analysis in the background in terms of thinking about what the priorities are, as you said, given where we are right now with the IRA and with the various impediments that we face and with the technologies that we have at hand. I'd like to switch over to the adaptation space. And Anita, I think there's some questions for you in particular. So adaptation is about, you know, okay, climate change is going to be, is already upon us. And it's, we need to be reducing emissions, but we need to be preparing our cities and our environments to be more resilient because we're having more storms, more heat waves, more flooding, all of those things. So a question for you, Anita, is what cities in the world, if any, do you see as leading the way in adapting to climate change? And related to that, what holds the city back from adapting in your, in your experience? [00:34:36] Speaker 5: Anita, well, thank you, Jim. This is a fascinating conversation. Everyone's contributions make me think of how we can redesign cities for, for, for better use of energy and, and of course, getting to cleaner air and overall health. I think it's a, it's a spatial thing as well as, as a given thing that, that we, that we, that we need to, to accept. Um, adaptation takes many forms and, and scales of intervention and, um, in cities. And I am, I'm not really aware of any one place that does it all. Um, and however, there's several cities that, that really serve as, as examples of addressing adaptations, uh, in, in, in, um, specific ways. So for example, um, Scandinavian countries tend to lead, um, uh, the way in, in net zero construction and, and, um, in circular economy. So Copenhagen, for instance, is very well known, um, perhaps the best example of, of, uh, developing circular economies in, in, in, um, in the city, uh, to reduce, um, to reduce energy and consumption and, and recycle, et cetera. Uh, and of course, Germany has been a leader for a very, very long time, many decades in coming up with alternative uses to, to energy and incentivizing homeowners to put solar panels, uh, in much more extensive ways than, than the U.S. Um, there are companies like, um, Snoheta in Norway, Henning Larsen and Kobe in Copenhagen again, um, who have been ahead of, of other, um, planners and designers in carbon calculation and, and materials recycling. Um, again, these are, uh, even though these are, um, global firms, they have many, many studios around the world and they work on a, a very broad variety of, of projects, um, in urban environments. Um, they have developed, uh, these new ways of working um, because, uh, because, uh, because they come from a context where there is, um, a regulatory and incentive, uh, environment, uh, there that has, that has pushed them to, to reinvent, um, design, uh, broadly defined. Um, and we, and, and, and Singapore is another place where, um, we know that they've been, uh, a leader, uh, in more ecologically focused, uh, developments, uh, within their cities. Um, in this country, uh, when it comes to adaptation to risk, of course, um, New York and, and Miami, um, um, have both, both have had to, to jump into this because of, of their, uh, recent disasters. Um, here we tend to really distinguish between, between the planning, uh, processes, which take a very long time and then the implementation. I, I should also mention here New Orleans, which is also done quite a bit of planning, of work at the planning level. Um, uh, and then in the east coast, uh, we have many cities who have started doing, uh, planning for large scale afforestation, uh, and planning of, for urban forests. Um, this of course is a, as a major, when we say we, you know, we all bear climate change, but we don't all bear it equally. Uh, if you look on Google Earth on top of every, any city around the world, you see where the green is and you see that that's where the wealthier areas are and the places with no trees. Are the places where, where there is great precariousness. So, um, the cities in the east coast, Washington, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, uh, they're working on foresty plans that are, um, equity centered for, um, environmental and climate justice. And these are all things that can be quantified, uh, Boston and Cambridge itself, uh, in, in our area, uh, have done, uh, forest plants a couple years ago. And it's remarkable the, the kind of information, the measurements that one can take of, of the heat island effects, uh, the degrees that one can begin to lower, uh, the temperatures, uh, and to guide ventilation in cities, uh, using vegetation. So, um, so again, no one, no one has really tackled everything. I think, I think every city, uh, really works with what they can work with, uh, to your second point, there is always budgets and there's always politics. And, um, so even, for instance, even though Boston is now implementing their climate ready, um, plan, this plan has been in, in the planning stages for probably more than a decade. And now it's a, they're starting to construct, uh, resilient waterfront projects. So it's slow, uh, and it's political, um, uh, and, uh, as Joe just mentioned, and, um, and then the question is always how much money is there and who should pay for what. And, um, um, I, I, you know, this is, this is the, the core of the subject, right? Um, we, I think we need to really find a way of, of, um, paying for what needs to get done, that it's not, you know, clearly some, some sectors of, of, of the, of cities pay a lot more taxes than others, but, uh, reinvestment goes into the, those areas and that money needs to be, uh, spread out. There's got to be some kind of policy to begin to figure out how to, um, work at climate justice and environmental justice so that we can all bear the brunt of what's happening in the same way. [00:41:36] Speaker 1: That's really helpful. And it's, it's, it's actually, especially helpful to think about how there's this range of solutions from very complicated and costly and long-term solutions, such as changing building materials. And that's going to phase in over a long period of time to things that might be much more tangibly and, and have shorter term benefits, like have afforestation, getting more, getting more green space in urban environments to directly affect the heat burden that is in the most, you know, the most concrete and brick of our environments, which is typically the urban centers and the, uh, the least affluent centers. Uh, and so there's sort of shorter term things to do that can be directly useful in that regard. [00:42:20] Speaker 5: Yeah. Except that they're, they're very difficult in the sense that the urban ground is a contested ground. And what that means is if you think of the space underneath a sidewalk, there's no soil and there's no soil because there's so much infrastructure. And that space underneath the, the sidewalk on the road is just full, full, full of the infrastructures that, that we depend on. Uh, you know, so, uh, water supplies, sewer pipes, uh, electric, electricity, uh, cable. I mean, you name it, there's just very, very little soil and a tree needs a lot of space in its roots. And so convincing, you know, traffic engineers, convincing, um, any neighborhood, you know, that they, that we need to relocate that, that, that these are all costly things. And so a tree, it is true at one level is, is a very basic sort of human need and another, it's a huge technological problem. So, um, for instance, the Cambridge forest plan is fascinating because most of the spaces that, uh, are available to plant more trees are inside people's private properties, such as their front yards, because the, the, you might all remember how narrow the, the sidewalks are in Harvard Square and, and in Cambridge. So, um, and so then this is a, also a political problem, you know, what do people think? They're going to be forced to be, to be planting trees. Do they have other plants for their yards? And this is the moment where we all need to think about the greater public benefit, uh, even in our own private sphere, I think. [00:44:19] Speaker 1: You know, that gets us to a question. That's, that's great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anita. Um, that gets us to a question from the, uh, that a number of people have asked, uh, which is, you know, it's easy to feel powerless given the enormity of this problem and the needed solution. So what can individuals do, um, open to suggestions? [00:45:01] Speaker 5: Well, we've seen that, we, we've seen that even small moves have a big impact. I mean, Cambridge doesn't have plastic bags in their markets. Um, some towns don't have plastic bottles in their town and people complain, but it works. Um, we all in our household can reduce consumption, can share rides, can, can, yes. I mean, we, we can, we can question every aspect of our daily lives and edit that. I mean, if we were to, if we were to do that on mass, everyone, we would look what happened during COVID, right? All of a sudden the air was clean. Even the canals in Venice started to, to have fish and transparent water. So, so, and those were all, you know, those were all the single person doing something. Um, it's just the coordination and the politics and the, the, uh, you know, my sense is that we we're, we're not sharing in the mission in this, in the way we should. [00:46:26] Speaker 1: I'm going to start off with some concrete things. Okay. So I'll, I'll, I'll let me kick in a few here, uh, instead of just being moderator, because this is such a terrific question. My students ask this all the time. Um, there are a few things that we do in our lives. There are many things that we do in our lives that use a little bit of energy. There are a few things that we do that really determine how much energy we use and also how clean that energy really is. So one of them is the car that you buy. So if you buy an electric vehicle, um, you're going to be reducing emissions compared to some comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. So that's one thing that you can do. It turns out that between the inflation reduction act incentives and the declining price and electric vehicles, you're saving money when you do that. Now you might find it kind of annoying when you go on a road trip and try to charge. So, you know, we're working on that. That's a, that's a task. Uh, but, um, but that's one thing. Another thing is if you're going to go replace your furnace, like, I think I have to replace my furnace in the next few years, I'm going to get a heat pump. And so that's going to have a side benefit of being able to air condition part of my house that I'm not currently, that isn't currently air conditioned. It's going to be a pain in the neck, uh, because you got to find an installer who can do it, but you know, it's going to be, it's going to be an enter. It's going to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions I'm using because it's going to switch off of my, my old oil furnace, which I still have because a lot of us here in the Northeast still heat by oil, and it's going to turn it into something that's electric. And as the grid gets cleaner and cleaner, that's going to be a low carbon activity. So there's a number of big things that we do in our lives that actually, uh, that actually really impact how much emissions, uh, we're responsible for. So another, a smaller, but still important, just thinking about your range. If you're going to, if you're going to buy a new range, having an electric range is going to be a environmentally sort of fewer emissions and having a gas range. So there's a number of things like that. So that's just, that's just a few activities off the top of one's head. And that doesn't get into the political sphere, but maybe somebody else is going to venture into the political sphere. Peter, Mary, do you want to jump in? I can jump in here. Um, you know, I think [00:48:34] Speaker 3: several of the panelists have pointed out, this is, this is not a problem that any one person can solve. And I think I've often gotten questions that are of a tone, like, what can I do? You know, and we feel so frustrated that we can't just fix this problem. But clearly the answer is, uh, for many voices to engage and for many people from all perspectives to weigh in. Um, and so I'd give two examples coming from the healthcare sector. Um, so, uh, I always advise, uh, clinicians who want to get engaged to plug into an organization that already exists, uh, where you have a relevant perspective to offer. So in respiratory health, that would be, for example, the American Lung Association, which has been very effective nationally and also locally and, and advocating for clean air and clean climate policy. And they welcome volunteers, uh, who have, um, some relevant expertise, um, patient stories to tell, for example. Um, so starting working with a group that already exists. So you don't feel like you have to do all this on your own. Um, and another is to look at your own organization, um, your own institution, where you work. Um, cause that's a place where your voice matters, um, no matter what your, your discipline is. So, um, for doctors that would be hospitals, right? And then many hospitals have a sustainability committee. In fact, I first found a spot on my hospital's sustainability committee dating back to literally picking up the phone about 15 years ago and asking to talk to the facilities manager at my hospital and to talk about our energy, uh, sources for the hospital. Um, so picking up that phone, even if it's out of your comfort zone, is a way that, uh, you can provoke change. [00:50:33] Speaker 2: Peter? Yeah. One of the main things I study is paleoclimate. So I'm always thinking about long time scales. Uh, the, um, so, so there's an urgency to act and there's things that we want to say, you know, what can we do right now? Um, and, and I, I think that's entirely appropriate and valid, but this is also an issue that's going to be with us for literally centuries, right? The, the CO2 that we put in the atmosphere, 10% of the molecules we put in are still going to be with us in a hundred years in the atmosphere. They, they just stay there and hang out and they're going to continue to warm the climate and we're going to be continuing to deal with them. And so we also need long-term durable solutions. And, and honestly, the, the ways that I see that as being most effective is education so that people understand what's happening. We also need to build trust amongst, uh, appropriate, uh, sources of information. So we have a question here. How do we know about the greenhouse gas emissions? I don't know if we'll be able to get to it, but wow, we could go into that in great detail and we're trying to make it better. Um, how well do we actually understand exactly what's happening? Why? And what the implications are? And I think clarity of thought, clarity of expression, and kind of a clear understanding of the cause and effect is going to be helpful in that education and trust component eventually. So those are, uh, some kind of ways that I think Harvard can play a particular role. Um, and you know, all of us can play a role in here by educating ourselves, by talking to others, um, by seeking, uh, the best understanding that we can find. [00:52:00] Speaker 1: And I think if I could just underscore that point, Peter, uh, climate has become one of many highly politicized topics, at least here in the United States. That's different in other parts of the world where it's, uh, much less politicized in some places, but in the United States, it's a highly politicized topic. And I think to the extent that we sort of going back to the question of what can we as individuals do, I think for starters, it's doing our best in just our daily conversations and in our social spheres to try to take this out of the realm of politics and into the realm of just like under education, understanding and, uh, and seeing, uh, possible advantages of many parts of the energy transition. Like, you know, it's fun to drive EVs, for example. Well, Peter, I think we actually still have a few minutes. Do you want to talk a little bit about GHG emission metrics? Like how, when we say there's so much emissions from, uh, of greenhouse gases or CO2 in the United States, how do we actually, how do we actually know that? I mean, we don't have monitors out there on every smokestack or on every tailpipe. How, how do we know? [00:53:08] Speaker 2: By no means. Right. So, so we can contrast, uh, two different ways of understanding what the greenhouse gas emissions are. And so we talk about CO2, the principal greenhouse gas, uh, because of its quantity and how long it stays in the atmosphere for, we can, we can do a top-down, uh, sort of inventory where we say, well, we can actually see how much CO2 is in the air. And we monitor that quite well. It's well mixed. And so it's easy to look at a few points around the globe and understand how much is there. And we think about the various sinks that are occurring. We know that about half of the CO2 emissions every year are going into the ocean and into the biosphere. Uh, and so what we see is that accrual of CO2 in the atmosphere about times two, uh, is how much must be coming in on a year by year basis. And so what that turns out to be is around 10 gigatons of CO2 emissions per year. Then we can do a bottom-up inventory as well. Um, and we can look at, uh, best estimates across different industry sectors across different nations. Uh, what are the CO2 emissions? And these things are sufficiently consistent, uh, that we have a really good sense of the, um, you know, not just the order of magnitude, but within about plus or minus 10 percent, uh, in terms of what our overall, uh, emissions must be. Um, there's also other greenhouse gases like methane, which are a lot harder. They only stay in the atmosphere for 10 years. And so these things are eroding as they're being put up there, but the pastor we put them up, the higher the concentration, each molecule of methane is a really potent greenhouse gas. Uh, and we know that there's a multitude of sources. There's all sorts of natural sources like wetlands and there's sources that are associated with agriculture and livestock, uh, particular cows, uh, that are important. We know it comes from natural gas exploration. And here, uh, Harvard is, um, really helping with the ability to do top down, uh, and, uh, in some ways, vet the bottom up by getting high resolution satellite imagery of concentrations that you can look at in relation to winds so that you understand what flux is occurring from different facilities around the world. And this is work that the Slott Institute is sponsoring. Steve Woffsy is working on this along with environmental defense fund. Uh, it's really going to be exciting to see just how much detail they're able to add, uh, and how much more insight we can get into where the methane is coming from and why it's accruing in the atmosphere and why methane concentrations are going up, uh, as quickly as they are now. [00:55:29] Speaker 1: Steve Woffsy: So I think that's a good point to pivot to, um, to, uh, the, uh, final question, which I will take, which is what, what this is, I, this is, this wasn't a plant, but one of the questions actually was what can universities do? Uh, so let me say something from that perspective, put on my director of the Salata Institute and vice provost hat. I think what Peter was just referring to was the really tough research, the really hard research that we're doing, uh, we're doing here and in other universities to, uh, figure out, uh, figure out in this particular case, uh, how do we detect methane emissions, but more generally, what are the new ideas, the new technologies, the new concepts, the new policy proposals, the new ways of business operation, the new ways of carbon accounting, all of those sorts of things that can be used down the road in the short run, but then in the longer run, uh, in the real world, as we're trying to reduce emissions, what are the new ideas that we can put out for in landscape architecture to increase resilience, to, uh, sequester emissions at the same time to reduce, uh, heat, uh, heat, heat impacts. How do we work through these issues? These issues are complicated. They're really granular. Uh, they require having the time and the smart students and, uh, the research ability to actually try to figure them out. That's so that's one thing that we can do. And that's something that we can do unique universities really uniquely. That's really one of our sweet spots. Another sweet spot is education. So we've got these fantastic students who are really blessed by unbelievable students are going to have really important careers as they go out, uh, from, uh, from our undergraduate and graduate populations at Harvard. How can we provide them with the right education? Climate situation is going to evolve. It's going to be different in 10 years than it is today. It's going to be different 10 years after that and different 10 years after that. But as Peter points out, these effects are going to be with us for a long time. And that means that we need to make sure that the students have the right education, not just about the science or not just about the policy or not just about the health, but across the board and all of these different areas. So they're able to have productive careers in this, in this field. And I think the third thing we can do is we can serve as a framework for exchange of ideas, exchange of ideas between members of the general public, between climate professionals, between academia, the work and research, the research done in academia is going to be better as we learn more about the needs of the private sector and the needs of the public sector. And hopefully our ideas will percolate there too. So I'm really excited about all of this. Thank you very much for this. We are now going to wrap this up. Thanks audience for, for your participation. And we look, we will come back again in a month in our regular format, where we'll have a couple of one or two Harvard experts presenting their research on a relevant climate problem. And we'll kind of take a dive into what they're doing in their labs and learn about that. But thank you very much. And thank you so much to the Harvard Alumni Association for your help in putting this on. So thanks very much.