Climate change is the major environmental science, technology and policy challenge facing society in the 21 st century. So far nations have failed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, there is little obvious prospect of major progress, and significant warming is forecast in the decades ahead.
Climate engineering offers a possible way of offsetting the worst of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Research suggests it may work and be low cost.
Could climate engineering be the way to avert catastrophic climate change in the event of continued global failure to reduce CO
2
emissions fast enough?
Would the "moral hazard" of having a way out of emissions mitigation worsen things in the long run? And might there be an unintended major environmental impact of engineering the climate?
This new special subject offered in fall
2014 by MIT and HKS will explore these questions, starting from a rigorous treatment of the science of climate change, introducing the technologies that could enable climate engineering, and debating the policy and governance challenges that it brings about.
Note that this is a quantitative subject requiring fluency with freshman level mathematics, physics and chemistry.
Who should take the subject?
•
Students interested in the intersection of science, technology and policy
•   Students interested in addressing the challenge of climate change
•   Students who think large-scale deliberate engineering of the planet offers great opportunity to improve life on earth, or who think it poses great dangers to life on earth, or who want to develop a view on the topic

The subject will meet on Wednesdays when both HKS and MIT are in session from 4pm until 7pm. The location will vary between HKS and MIT as per the schedule below.
HKS location: HKS 1BA 401 1 Brattle Square, 4 th floor
MIT location: 33-422 http://goo.gl/1Z8mMG
Building 33, 4 th floor http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=33
Each three-hour session will typically consist of three parts: 1-2 lectures on scientific or technical topics, and 1-2 other activities. These other activities will include debates/ discussions, guest speakers (both research and policy), and regular in-class quizzes so that students are keeping up with the technical and scientific content. There will be a term paper with intermediate feedback on a draft. Students can follow either a science or policy track, where the primary difference is in assessment. There will be an individual final oral exam, covering both the term paper and lecture material.
Draft Subject Schedule
1
Date
9/10/14
Location Topics
HKS Introduction to climate change and climate engineering;
Emissions and climate change forecasts
2
3
9/17/14
9/24/14
MIT
MIT
4 10/1/14
5 10/8/14
6 10/15/14
7 10/22/14
8 10/29/14
HKS
MIT
HKS
MIT
HKS
Radiative forcing and climate response; Feedback theory;
Climate as a boundary value problem; Linearity of response;
Uncertainty; General circulation of the atmosphere; Climate models; Ocean response
Public policy primer: cost-benefit analysis and its limits; Optimal policy; Game theoretic approaches
Overview of solar radiation management (SRM) approaches;
Historical perspective; Stratospheric particle injection (SPI)
9 11/5/14
10 11/12/14
11 11/19/14
12 12/3/14
MIT
HKS
MIT
HKS
Atmospheric chemistry; Effects of SPI on the ozone layer
Climate response to SRM: Hydrological cycle; Impacts of climate change and climate engineering
Aerosols in the atmosphere; “Inadvertent” climate engineering
Technical assessment of SRM; Disagreement between experts;
Formal assessments
Governance
Final oral exams on scientific content and term paper

Professor David Keith
Professor of Public Policy and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics,
Harvard Kennedy School of Government and School of Engineering and
Applied Science, Harvard University david_keith@harvard.edu
David Keith works at the interface of climate science, energy technology and public policy. He was one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment of 2009 and is President of Calgary-based Carbon
Engineering, a start-up developing technology to capture CO
2
from the atmosphere at large scale. At Harvard he teaches in the areas of climate policy and energy technology. He co-chairs the Harvard-MIT
Geoengineering Seminar Series.
Professor Steven Barrett
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Finmeccanica
Professor of Engineering, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology sbarrett@mit.edu
Steven Barrett works at the intersection of aerospace, energy and the environment. At MIT he is part of the Joint Program on the
Science and Policy of Global Change and is Director of the
Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. He teaches jet and rocket propulsion to undergraduates and a course on aviation and the environment at the graduate level. He co-chairs the Harvard-MIT
Geoengineering Seminar Series.
Harvard students: register for IGA-409 (Credit: 1.0)
MIT students: register for 16.S982 (Units: 3-0-9 H-level)
Email sbarrett@mit.edu
(MIT) or david_keith@harvard.edu
(Harvard) with questions