Spring/Summer 2010
Environment @Harvard
H a r v a rd U n i ve r s i t y C e n t e r f o r t h e E nv i r o n m e n t
www.environment.harvard.edu
Hope in Copenhagen?
Economists and scientists reflect on the latest climate accord—and the path forward
by Alvin Powell
Canada
6,400
Russia
17,600
E. U.
46,400
China
48,700
U. S.
63,800
India
12,500
Africa
10,800
Central &
S. America
11,800
Australia
4,200
Cumulative Emissions of Carbon Dioxide due to
Energy Consumption from 1998 to 2008 (Million Metric Tons)
I
n December 2009, the nations of
the world gathered in Copenhagen,
Denmark, for what had originally been
planned as a landmark conference on
climate change. The goal was to negotiate
a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions responsible for climate change,
an agreement that would succeed the
Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Though expectations fell dramatically
as the conference approached, even those
diminished expectations proved optimistic
after reports emerged of an organizational
and political mess. One U.S. climate ne-
gotiator described the meeting to the New
York Times as a “snarling, aggravated, chaotic event.”
By most accounts, the last-minute diplomacy of U.S. President Barack Obama
and a handful of world leaders salvaged
at least a commitment to move forward,
Harvard University Center for the Environment 1
“Copenhagen illustrated
problems with the
process… . About 190
countries are talking,
when 20—counting
the EU as one—account
for 80 percent
of global emissions.”
Pratt professor of business and government
Robert N. Stavins of the Harvard Kennedy
School directs the Harvard Environmental
Economics Program and the Harvard Project
on International Climate Agreements.
with most participating nations “noting”
a short, nonbinding accord, providing at
least some guidelines for action and cause
for hope.
The months since have allowed time
for reflection on Copenhagen and on
what meaningful action might come next,
perhaps as soon as the next such meeting,
scheduled for Cancun, Mexico in December 2010.
To better understand where these
complex issues stand today, the Harvard
University Center for the Environment (HUCE) posed questions on the
Copenhagen meeting, its implications,
in
this
issue
Hope in Copenhagen?
Economists and scientists assess the
successes and failures of the Copenhagen
climate conference—and the way forward.
3
Mostafavi about the intersection of
sustainability and design principles.
13 Food in the Balance
In the global battle against hunger,
climate change introduces a host of
new uncertainties.
Letter from the Director
10 Re-envisioning Sustainability
as a Design Art
HUCE director Dan Schrag talks with
Graduate School of Design dean Mohsen
2
and the best way forward to a handful
of HUCE-affiliated faculty members
involved in climate change science and
policy.
Participants include: Robert Stavins,
Pratt professor of business and government at the Harvard Kennedy School
(HKS) and director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements;
Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel professor of capital
formation and growth at HKS; Richard
Cooper, Boas professor of international
economics; James G. Anderson, Weld
professor of atmospheric chemistry; Peter
Huybers, assistant professor of earth and
planetary sciences; Steven Wofsy, Rotch
professor of atmospheric and environmental science; Michael McElroy, Butler
professor of environmental studies; and
HUCE director Daniel Schrag, Hooper
professor of geology.
Spring/Summer 2010
20 Implications of a Nuclear
Renaissance
Is nuclear power a viable source of energy
for the future? Leading policy experts
discuss the potential and the pitfalls.
E@H: Would you characterize Copenhagen as a success?
Robert Stavins: It would have been very
unfortunate to achieve what some participants would have defined as “success”
in Copenhagen. That would have been a
signed international agreement, glowing
press releases, and photo opportunities.
The reason I say “unfortunate” is that
there is only one possible agreement that
would have met those characteristics. That
would have been the Kyoto Protocol on
steroids. In other words, more stringent
targets for the Annex 1 countries—that’s
the industrialized world; no meaningful
action by the key emerging economies—
China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Korea,
Mexico, and a couple of others. That
would have meant no emissions reductions
globally. It also would have meant no ratification by the United States Senate, which
would have been just like Kyoto—no real
progress on climate change.
There was political grandstanding and a
lack of consensus. But at the last minute,
quite dramatically, there were direct negotiations by key national leaders. This was
virtually unprecedented because it’s usually
people four levels down in the respective ministries that do the negotiations.
That saved the conference from complete
collapse and produced a significant political—not legal, but political—agreement
that has been labeled the Copenhagen
Accord.
The accord takes a “portfolio of domestic commitments” approach—each country essentially commits to do what it has
on the books domestically. It addresses two
very important deficiencies of the Kyoto
Protocol. One is it expands the coalition
of meaningful commitments to include
all the major emitters. And it expands the
timeframe of action.
So the Copenhagen accord has both
good news and bad news. The good news
Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel professor
of capital formation and growth at
the Harvard Kennedy School.
is it provides real cuts on greenhouse gas
emissions by all the major emitters. It
establishes a transparent framework for
evaluating countries’ performances. It
initiates a substantial flow of resources to
help poor, vulnerable nations carry out
mitigation and adaptation.
But there’s bad news. This is certainly
not on track for a two degree centigrade,
or a 450 parts per million (ppm) stabilization of CO2; but neither is any other
policy, including a hypothetical Kyoto
agreement on steroids.
Jeffrey Frankel: My definition of progress
is steps toward specific, credible commitments by a large number of countries. And
in that sense, we actually had some good
news. January 31 [2010] was the deadline
under the Copenhagen Accord [to specify
2020 emissions targets] and 106 countries responded. Six big, emerging market
countries set targets. Many of them are
vague about the base year and they clearly
resist saying this is a legal commitment—
that’s obviously a limitation. The fact that
they’re taking this seriously means that
Obama’s personal breakthrough there on
the last day may indeed lead somewhere.
Richard Cooper: It was even worse than I
expected it to be. I forecast two years ago
that it would fail on substantive grounds.
But the process is a throwback to 30 to 35
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Spring/Summer 2010
years ago, which
I think is sad for
the international
community.
The G-77 [the
group that represents developing world countries] is unable
to negotiate.
They get together ahead of time
and decide what
their demands
are going to be.
Once they decide what their
position is going to be, they
find it impossible to change,
in a give-andtake sense.
E@H: Some have argued that the United
Nations process is unworkable and will
never lead to a meaningful treaty. What are
the prospects for progress going forward?
Robert Stavins: Copenhagen illustrated
problems with the process under the
United Nations, particularly what’s called
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC].
The first problem is the size. About 190
countries are talking, when the 20 largest
economies—counting the EU as one—
account for more than 80 percent of global
emissions. Getting agreements among the
full set of 190 countries on anything is
difficult. What exacerbates that is that the
U.N. culture tends to polarize factions,
particularly the industrialized world versus
the developing world. And then there’s the
UNFCCC voting rule: unanimity is required. It was the lack of consensus on the
Copenhagen Accord that led to it being
noted, not adopted.
So what are alternative institutions going forward? For the Harvard Project on
International Climate Agreements, this is
a major focus of research for the next six
to nine months. One possible venue is the
Major Economies Forum, an initiative
launched by the Bush Administration as
the Major Emitters Meeting. At the time,
it was lambasted by environmental advocacy groups in the U.S. and Europe and
by the E.U. as a diversion from the U.N.
process. Wisely, the Obama administration
recognized that it made a lot of sense, so
they changed its name but kept it. Now
it’s called the Major Economies Forum
on Energy and Climate. And again, more
than 80 percent of global emissions are
covered by the 17 participating countries
and regions.
Another important potential forum going forward is the G-20. For the most part
this has been finance ministers focusing
on economic issues, but they think more
broadly. It has the advantage of not being
the creature of a single nation, which is a
limitation of the Major Economies Forum.
I believe it’s too early to write the obituary of the UNFCCC. For one thing, the
Kyoto Protocol is going to be with us until
2012. Even more important is that it has
a huge constituency, namely a majority
of countries in the world—those are the
developing countries. They would like
everything to stay within the UNFCCC.
In fact, they’d like to extend the Kyoto
Protocol to become the exclusive focus of
negotiations, for clear reasons that are in
their self interest. But there is also international legitimacy for anything under the
United Nations versus something that is
the creation of a single nation.
Jeff Frankel: Copenhagen was pretty discouraging. Progress is not possible solely
in the U.N. framework because small
member nations will obstruct the process.
It isn’t just the one country-one vote thing;
the WTO [World Trade Organization] is
the same way. Technically, one country can
hold it up but in that forum they never do.
Because the big guys decide what the deal
is, then the others take it or leave it and
they usually take it.
The important decisions can only be
made by a small steering group, as has long
been true with multilateral governance.
And in the past it’s always the G-7. After
years and years of talking about giving
major emerging markets a voice and doing nothing, suddenly in 2009, the G-20
supplanted the G-7. That means they have
representation for the first time. This is
good news generally, that big emerging
markets have been given a voice in world
governance.
Richard Cooper: For a variety of reasons,
I think this forum cannot negotiate an
agreement on climate change, but it’s not
going to go away either, because the COP
[Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change] are a regular part of the UNFC-
“Two things have to happen. One, people have
to get scared about climate change. And two,
the strategy for dealing with it has to look a little
bit cheaper and a little bit more doable.”
CC process. So I think we need to have
a negotiation outside and present them
with the outcome of the negotiation. The
negotiations have to be sensitive to the
interests of the key developing countries
and present it to them as, “this is what the
deal is.”
Dan Schrag: If out of Copenhagen and
what President Obama did, we see a move
to negotiations between a smaller number
of key countries: the U.S., China, India,
Brazil, the EU—the G-8 plus a handful—
as opposed to all of the countries, I think
that’s a positive move because it’s more
likely to get something done.
But at the same time no international
treaty is going to be useful if people
aren’t convinced that this is a serious
problem. Nobody’s going to follow
through on an agreement if they’re not
actually concerned about the problem.
It’s too expensive.
Part of me feels like Copenhagen and
the whole Kyoto process is almost irrelevant to the real activity around climate
change, which is focused on industry, both
in terms of alternative energy—bringing
the cost down—and also things like carbon capture and storage, which means
allowing us to still use fossil fuels and not
pollute the atmosphere.
Things are happening because companies are anticipating regulation. Coal
plants: five years ago, six years ago there
were 200 coal plants, roughly, in permitting. Two years ago, before the economy
collapsed, they had almost all gone: banks
weren’t taking those sorts of risks. In
Detroit, there’s a competition [The Progressive X Prize to get super fuel efficient
vehicles]. I have no idea whether they’ll
succeed, but it’s a sign of work that’s being
done that could be the foundation.
There’s a similarity with the Montreal
Protocol with CFC’s [ozone-depleting
chlorofluorocarbons]. That was only
agreed to after DuPont developed an alternative to CFCs. They complained
they couldn’t do it until they came up with
an alternative, then all of a sudden, the
Montreal Protocol followed that.
Two things have to happen. One, people
have to get scared about climate change.
And two, the strategy for dealing with it
has to look a little bit cheaper and a little
bit more doable. Right now it looks awfully expensive, it’s not clear who the winner
is and you have some of the most powerful industries in the world campaigning
against it.
E@H: How will a meaningful agreement
come about?
Richard Cooper: First I think there
should be bilateral conversations between
the United States and China. We are the
two elephants in the room and we’re not
playing at the moment. We need to have
serious, technical-level discussions—with
political guidance of course—with the
Chinese about what they’re willing to accept and what we’re
willing to accept,
what we think we
can get through
Congress.
If it goes reasonably well, I think
we could roll it
out in the G-20. I
don’t have any expectation that the
U.S.-China discussions will produce
something in time
for the Seoul summit. But I think we
should get the process going, because
India is going to
be a problem. The
Indian leadership
at the moment is
outstanding, but they have the practical
political problem of dealing with the Indian parliament which is at least as fractious
as the U.S. Congress. This is a multi-year
process, it’s not something that’s going to
happen quickly.
Robert Stavins: From a policy perspective,
the cliché we often hear about the baseball
season applies even more so to international climate policy: it is a marathon,
not a sprint.
International climate negotiations are
best thought of as an ongoing process,
perhaps somewhat like trade talks. Not a
single task with a clear endpoint, whether
Copenhagen, Cancun, whatever.
E@H: What would we need to happen—
scientifically or in the natural world—to
change the game and really push things
forward at this point?
Dan Schrag: There are lots of things you
can talk about: A big piece of ice breaking
off of Antarctica. You can talk about heat
waves, droughts, or floods. My fear is that
none of them will ever be clear enough to
enough people, especially when there’s a
$300 million communications campaign
paid for by the fossil fuel industry to confuse the issue. By the time people do get
scared, it may be too late. That’s my worry.
I think realistically you’re not going
to see China and India and any other
developing countries commit to serious
reductions until they’re, quite frankly, just
scared about the consequences of letting
CO2 emissions continue. Right now, I
Richard Cooper, Boas professor
of international economics.
don’t think they’re scared enough. And it’s
clear that reducing emissions for them and
reducing future emissions will limit their
ability to grow their economies, and that’s
the focus for them. So it’s a really tough
problem.
Richard Cooper: If we were to have three
really blistering summers in a row, or a
Harvard University Center for the Environment
5
serious drought in the plains states that
people could analogize with Oklahoma in
‘33 and ‘34—the Dust Bowl—the U.S.
dialogue on this would change radically.
Honest climatologists will tell you that
you cannot really attribute those events
to climate change, but it would catch the
public’s attention.
Peter Huybers: My sense is we’re kind of
in this for the long run. As time passes, we
expect the climate to change and the evidence for that change to become increasingly obvious.
Our understanding of ice dynamics is
very thin. So an advance in our ability
to predict what the cryosphere is doing
James G. Anderson, Weld professor of
atmospheric chemistry.
[might have an impact], as would an understanding of the feedbacks associated
with the carbon cycle in the Arctic tundra.
It is my understanding there is a lot of uncertainty there.
If history is a good indicator of what’s
to come, we’re going to have incremental
progress toward a treaty. Even at the rate of
the IPCC reports, every five years—if you’re
to measure that in an academic time scale,
that’s the amount of time to produce a thesis. A thesis is likely to present some advance
in our understanding, but nothing dramatic.
E@H: Are you concerned about the pace
of action? Are there possible ramifications
for going slowly on a climate change treaty?
6
Spring/Summer 2010
“On our current trajectory, given political
momentum…we’re headed for 600 to 700 parts per
million in carbon dioxide. That carries us back
30 million years in history and at that point there
was no ice at all in the northern hemisphere.”
Jim Anderson: My feeling is that China
is going to set the pace here, because they
recognize they’re going to lose those key
snowpack and glacial systems that provide critical parts of their water supply. It
doesn’t matter if it’s 10 years or 50 years
because the conclusion of any public policy…is exactly
the same and
you have to
start taking
very rapid
corrective
action right
now. The
minute they
make that decision, they’ll
go wholesale
into making
these [renewable] energy
systems because they
want to sell
them internationally.
So the
United States
has a couple
of choices. We can look back at the twentieth century and “drill, baby, drill” and
continue with the kind of public policy
we had, or we can say, “If we don’t turn
around and get moving very quickly and
we don’t apply our technology…we’ll be
buying all this stuff from China.”
We’ve passed the point of stability—
once you get above 350 ppm, which is 50
ppm in the rearview mirror, the glacial ice
systems are no longer stable. From that
perspective, we have a great deal of difficulty seeing a solution in any cutback
in carbon dioxide unless it’s draconian.
On our current trajectory, given political
momentum…we’re headed for 600 to 700
parts per million in carbon dioxide.
That carries us back 30 million years in
history and at that point there was no ice
at all in the northern hemisphere. There
was a little bit forming in the Antarctic. It
now becomes a question of how rapidly
this process occurs.
Dan Schrag: At what point will it be too
late? The honest answer is we don’t know.
We do know there are thresholds in the
system: things like the breaking off of the
Ross Ice Shelf, which would accelerate
the demise of the Antarctic ice sheet; or
the melting of the permafrost. But exactly
where those thresholds are, we don’t know.
My suspicion is we’re not going to know
very well until it’s already happening.
It’s possible that maybe 450 or 500 ppm
is okay. Maybe it’s not catastrophic. So
that’s a reason for optimism. Of course the
problem is, if that’s not catastrophic, we’ll
probably get to six or seven [hundred parts
per million].
Steve Wofsy: Delaying isn’t a very good
idea. The discussion shouldn’t just be
about climate change. The discussion
should be about the whole energy economy of the developed world. What we’re
currently doing is unsustainable anyway,
it’s bad for the environment, it’s costing
us a lot of money, and a lot of things happen in the geopolitical framework that are
pretty bad.
The greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere stay there for a very long time.
They take a long time to work themselves
out. Delay is dangerous and it is expensive.
Jeff Frankel: My answer to this question
has always been the same. There is nothing
magic about this year. Or next year. Or
any year. But the problem isn’t going to get
any easier by postponing it. All the issues
will be the same in the future…but just a
little tougher.
E@H: Once an agreement is struck, how
long will it take before we are technically
capable of transitioning to a lower-carbon
energy system?
Mike McElroy: I think we can make a difference on a timescale of 20 years, and it’s
hard to go much faster than that. But we
have to make that commitment if we’re
going to get there. If we’re serious about
it, we can have a different kind of energy
system by 2030: a lot less coal, a lot more
non-carbon sources. I think it’ll probably
be wind, maybe solar will come along. I
don’t think nuclear will grow very much.
I think we’ll have a transportation system
that will be more electrical: plug-in hybrids, maybe even all-electric cars. Natural
gas may be a player in big vehicles, interstate trucks and buses.
E@H: What would an alternative energy
system look like, here or elsewhere around
the globe?
Jim Anderson: We’re endowed with wind
power and solar thermal like no other nation on earth. The only other nation with
wind power and solar thermal resources
that can compare to ours is China.
We have this massive resource, we could
completely eliminate our import of petroleum products by switching to electrified
vehicles and removing fuel oil we burn in
our homes. We’d have no imports of petroleum at all. All of the energy would be
generated here, all the jobs created by producing those systems and installing them
would be here.
Mike McElroy: The challenge for the
United States is to reduce our dependence
on coal in the electricity generating sector
and to reduce oil in the transportation sector. There are two good reasons to do so.
One is the climate issue. The second is the
fact that even at $80 a barrel, we’re sending $375 billion a year to other countries.
We have a number of alternatives to
coal: nuclear, wind, solar. Natural gas is
increasingly the fuel of choice, particularly
with gas prices dirt cheap.
We’ve done studies on what the potential is for wind in the U.S. as well as in
China. The U.S. has abundant sources of
wind, particularly in the Midwest down
the central part of the country. You can
generate that energy at prices that are currently competitive with alternatives. One
of the problems with renewable sources of
energy such as wind and solar is the intrinsic variability of the source, and the lack of
ability to store electricity.
There are three unconnected grids in
the United States: East, West and Texas.
We have access to the data on hourly electricity demand in the Texas region for the
last few years. So what we’re doing is asking how you would realistically integrate
wind into that system, and what are the
problems and costs associated with that?
As you go to more wind, the
problem you confront is there will
be times of the year—in the winter,
at night—when there will be more
electricity generated than you can
use. But there will also be times
when you’re short, during the summer, in the day. The way you get
around the shortage is by having
backup, and that means generally
gas. That increases the cost because
you have to pay the capital cost of
equipment that is staying idle for a
significant fraction of the year.
When you have excess, you can
produce cheap hydrogen. There are
lots of things you can do with it.
The first and most obvious is make
nitrogen fertilizer. There are other
creative things you could imagine
doing with it. If you have hydrogen and CO2, you could make
methanol and make fuel to run in
automobiles.
If we had a better grid—which
should be a serious emphasis—if
I was short of electricity in Texas
I could buy it from wherever they
don’t need it. The chances are
pretty high that when the wind
isn’t blowing in Texas, it’s blowing in Massachusetts or somewhere else.
E@H: Are there particular research priorities that should be set to advance either the
science or the policy of climate change?
Jim Anderson: What’s really crucial are the
feedbacks within the climate structure that
control the way heat, thermal energy, is
flowing into the major climate reservoirs,
the arctic ice cap, and the glacial systems.
We don’t know how rapidly heat is flowing into the ocean because we don’t have
the observing systems. We don’t know how
rapidly the climate structure—determined
by temperature, water vapor, and cloud
systems—is changing, because we don’t
have the observations. We don’t know
how the ocean currents are changing in
response to recent increases in carbon
dioxide because we don’t have the observations. We don’t know how fast Greenland
is losing its glacial structure because we
don’t have observations there, either.
We don’t know how fast carbon is coming out of melt zones in both the Siberian
and Alaskan tundra, nor the oceans, because we don’t have the observations. So
here we are, with an extremely time-de-
Peter Huybers, assistant professor of earth
and planetary sciences.
pendent problem that is predictable only
if we have these basic pieces of information on how the system is responding—
and we don’t have any of the required
observations.
These aren’t expensive observations…
we’re not talking about even a minor blip
on the economic structure.
Steve Wofsy: [In March] there was a National Academy of Sciences report out on
measuring and understanding the sources
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
This report basically asks the question, “If
we have a treaty to restrain emissions of
greenhouse gases, how well can it be verified?” If you read the material coming out
of Copenhagen, you realize that monitoring and verification were at the center of
the debate between Obama and the prime
minister of China.
The NAS panel laid down several parallel
approaches. One is to improve self-reporting mechanisms. Another parallel track is
to try to make measurements—either in
the atmosphere or proxy measurement of
economic activities—that you can use to
validate these inventories. The question
Harvard University Center for the Environment
7
“Climate change is the kind of thing
that at any one point in time, never
looks like the most important thing.
Healthcare or wars or deficits…
there’s always a more pressing issue.
I think 50 years from now when we
look back we’ll say, “Oh my! What did
we do to this planet?”
then arises, how well can you do that, and
how do you do it?
I speak mostly to the atmospheric
measurements. You have three tiers: satellite data that gives you a global picture,
very blurry, that sets the framework for
everything else. Then you have ground
stations and limited aircraft measurements in which you can do a better job
estimating what’s coming from a region
or a country.
The third tier is to actually go hunting
where the ducks are. If I identify the largest sources in a country, where are they?
How many sources do I have to measure if
I want to get,
say, 70 percent
of the sources?
It turns out
it’s not that
many, perhaps
300. So one of the questions we’re asking
right around Harvard is: Suppose I make
atmospheric measurements in a big urban
area, how accurately can I detect a trend,
a change? If someone says we’ve cut our
greenhouse gas emissions by five percent,
can I check?
We have a sensor on top of one of the
buildings in Boston and another in Harvard Forest and I am putting
one up in Worcester. This
is all to ask the question: If
you make measurements
hour-by-hour, year in and
year out at these places, can
you detect changes in emissions? Emissions have a very
strong fingerprint that they
leave, but there’s a lot of variability in the atmosphere. So
it’s a research question: How
accurately can you detect
a change? That hasn’t been
looked at very much.
The hope is within a
year’s time we’ll have results
that can help in negotiations, that people can really
believe in and that can be
demonstrated.
E@H: When you think
about your children and
grandchildren, what kind of
world do you think they’ll
live in?
Steven Wofsy, Rotch professor
of atmospheric and
environmental sciences.
8
Spring/Summer 2010
Michael B. McElroy, Butler professor of
environmental studies.
Mike McElroy: My grandchildren will
live in a world with nine and a half billion
people. The increasing disparity between
the haves and have-nots, between rich and
poor, even within countries, is going to be
a challenge.
I also think they’ll live in a world where
the winners and losers will be different
from what they have been historically.
If I were to guess at what future climate
is likely to be, I would say that Canada
and Russia are likely to be major beneficiaries, and I would say the countries
in the tropics, the poorer countries, are
likely to be the major losers. Countries at
mid-latitudes, like the United States and
China, will be winners and losers. But the
idea that we have warmer winters, open
seas, longer growing seasons at high latitudes, the obvious places to benefit from
that would be the big countries at high
latitudes.
You also have to worry here—and it’s
not trivial—about the possibility of a
catastrophic collapse of some of the major land-based ice sheets. You can sit back
and say maybe that’s 100 years away.
But the fact is we’ve been significantly
and frequently surprised by how rapidly
things are happening, and it is clear we
don’t understand very well the stability
of large ice sheets. The collapse of the
[Larsen] Ice Shelf in Antarctica was not
anticipated. And the best one can tell in
retrospect is it was not caused by surface
warming, it was actually caused by some
relatively deep ocean water that was
warmer than it used to be coming into
contact underneath. That was enough to
trigger a collapse of the sea-based ice. In
turn, what does that do to the pinning
of the land-based ice? That is a problem
that serious people are seriously concerned about.
Jeff Frankel: While I definitely believe
that we ought to take action, I don’t
experience the same emotional reaction
that many others feel, to be honest. In
part, this is because I think that whenever we try to imagine the Earth as our
children and grandchildren will experience it, we always imagine wrong—and
wrong in ways that are impossible to
anticipate.
It is also because, if we have a general
continuation of the peace and prosperity
of the last half-century, even in a worst
case climate scenario, which would be
pretty bad, I think my son and his children would still probably be better off
than if they had lived in the first half of
the 20th century (World Wars, depression)
or in earlier periods of history. I hesitate
to say that, because I don’t want to understate the problem we face, but it does offer
a little perspective.
Dan Schrag: I think it’ll be different in
many ways that are hard to predict.
One of the challenges of climate
change is that thus far, it’s happening
slowly enough that we get used to it. So
my kids are growing up in New England
used to warmer winters, used to being
able to plant roses the first weekend in
April. If you were here 50 years ago, that
wouldn’t be the case.
Mostly, I think many people, especially
the more privileged among us, will bungle
through it. And I hope my children will
work hard to make the world as good a
place as it can be. But we’re passing on a
stacked deck to them.
I think climate change is the kind of
thing that at any one point in time, never
looks like the most important thing.
Healthcare or wars or deficits or who’s
the next Supreme Court justice—there’s
always a more pressing issue. I think 50
years from now when we look back—I’m
hopeful I’ll live that long—we’ll say, “Oh
my! What did we do to this planet?”
I understand this as a geologist.
We’re returning the planet to a state it
hasn’t been in for tens of millions of
years. And every living thing on Earth
will be affected.
F acult y P rofile
Colleen M. Hansel
D
ownriver from many former coal and
metal mines, water runs yolk yellow,
lava red and electric green—a stew of
heavy metals called acid mine drainage
(AMD). Toxic, unsightly, and expensive to
clean up, AMD puts vegetation, wildlife,
and entire ecosystems at risk. Colleen M.
Hansel, assistant professor of environmental microbiology at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, hopes to create
a cost-effective way to bring these ravaged
regions back to life.
Current clean-up methods, Hansel says,
involve costly and labor-intensive efforts
such as digging limestone-filled pits to
neutralize the water’s acidic pH. But the
remediators she has in mind are plentiful,
highly effective, and work for free. They
are microorganisms that metabolize and
detoxify iron, arsenic, and chromium, as
well as fungi that remove toxic levels of
manganese by making reactive minerals.
The trick is figuring out exactly how the microorganisms perform these feats and then
stimulating or seeding optimal microbial
populations in polluted habitats.
“Minerals are nature’s reagents for cleaning up contaminated surface and groundwater,” says Hansel. “What we try to do is
figure out how to use microbes to make
the needed minerals—or dissolve them—
depending on the nature of the remediation needed.” Hansel became captivated
by the idea that you could use organisms
to clean up groundwater in the late 1990s,
while studying soil chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Idaho; researchers
had just discovered that common soil bacteria such as Shewanella oneidensis could
survive miles underground without oxygen
or sunlight. “The whole idea that there were
little critters living in the soil that breathe
metals like we breathe oxygen” she recalls, “
sounded like science fiction.”
Later, while at Harvard, Hansel and collaborators at Penn State and at a nonprofit
group intent on saving Appalachian rivers
were surprised to discover that some fungi—
multi-cellular microorganisms sporting long
root-like tendrils—appear to be even better
than bacteria at removing metals from water.
Fungi come in more than 1.5 million species and are found virtually everywhere, so
it is perhaps surprising when Hansel says
that “We know essentially nothing about
metal-transforming fungi.” Researchers have
an even longer way to go to figure out how
these organisms work so that they can be
used to clean up toxins in the environment.
“But considering the magnitude of the
problem worldwide,” Hansel says, “it would
be great if we could make a magic potion
out of a mixed microbial community that
we could then introduce into these systems
to clean them up.”
—Deborah Halber
Harvard University Center for the Environment
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