Global Perspective and Climate Systems | A Pale Blue Dot under Pressure

Harvard Radcliffe Institute – Nov 4, 2022

Part 2 of the 2022 Mike and Nina Patterson Science Symposium: A Pale Blue Dot under Pressure: Climate Change, Justice, and Resilience in Our Rapidly Warming World Global Perspective and Climate Systems Debra Roberts, cochair, Working Group II, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and head, Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit in eThekwini Municipality (Durban, South Africa) J. Marshall Shepherd, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the atmospheric sciences program, University of Georgia Moderator: Hong Yang, 2022–2023 William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; Charles J. Smiley Chair Professor of Science and Technology, Bryant University

View the full program at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/eve…

For information about Harvard Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.

The Time of Slavery | Ariela J. Gross || Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Harvard Radcliffe Institute – May 16, 2022

A presentation from 2021–2022 Joy Foundation Fellow Ariela Gross Ariela J. Gross is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern California and codirector of the USC Center for Law, History, and Culture. While at Radcliffe, Gross is working on a new book, “The Time of Slavery: History, Memory, Politics, and the Constitution.” Gross is the author of numerous books, most recently Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Her book What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Harvard University Press, 2008) was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics; the J. Willard Hurst Book Prize from the Law and Society Association; and the Lillian Smith Book Award. Gross is also the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Find out more at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/peo….

This program is presented as part of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, a University-wide effort anchored at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. For information about Harvard Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.

See related:

• To Divest or Not to Divest? Harvard’s Profitable Energy Investments in Historical Perspective

Extreme Weather under Climate Change | Next in Climate Change

Harvard Radcliffe Institute – Mar 14, 2022

Next in Climate Change Extreme Weather under Climate Change: Causes and Consequences Featuring Kimberley R. Miner, scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and research assistant professor, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine Welcome and Introduction by Immaculata De Vivo, codirector of the science program, Harvard Radcliffe Institute; professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School; and professor of epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health For information about Harvard Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.

See related:

• What Can an Economist Possibly Have to Say About Climate Change?
• Building upon the “Climate Change Conversations” of the Yale Alumni Academy
• Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report
• Harvard Climate Conversations | Highlight Reel
• Recalling Some of the Chapters from the Harvard DIVESTMENT Struggle…Part 1

Blackout | Next in Climate Change | 4/6 || Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Harvard Radcliffe Institute – Mar 14, 2022

Next in Climate Change Blackout: Power Outage Distribution and Disparities Nationwide Featuring Joan A. Casey, assistant professor, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health For information about Harvard Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.

See related:

• What Can an Economist Possibly Have to Say About Climate Change?
• Building upon the “Climate Change Conversations” of the Yale Alumni Academy
• Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report
• Harvard Climate Conversations | Highlight Reel
• Recalling Some of the Chapters from the Harvard DIVESTMENT Struggle…Part 1

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Harvard Climate Conversations | Highlight Reel

Harvard Alumni Association – Feb 25, 2021

In five cross-disciplinary conversations, Harvard faculty, students, and alumni gathered to address the most pressing issue of our time – and what we can do. To watch the Harvard Climate Conversations programs in their entirety, please follow this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC…

See related:

• What Can an Economist Possibly Have to Say About Climate Change?
• Building upon the “Climate Change Conversations” of the Yale Alumni Academy
• Recalling Some of the Chapters from the Harvard DIVESTMENT Struggle…Part 1

What Can an Economist Possibly Have to Say About Climate Change?

Harvard Alumni Association – Oct 27, 2021

Climate Change Conversations is a climate-focused lecture series brought to you by Harvard Alumni Travels and Yale Alumni Academy featuring expert faculty and researchers in the field. Robert N. Stavins, the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and one of the world’s leading authorities on international, national, and sub-national policies to address the profound threat of global climate change, will offer a Travel Talk lecture, “What Can an Economist Possibly Have to Say About Climate Change?”

Community Guidelines Harvard University Alumni Affairs & Development (AA&D) programs and volunteer opportunities respect the rights, differences, and dignity of others. Those taking part in AA&D activities are expected to demonstrate honesty, integrity, and civility in those activities, and are accountable for their conduct there with University alumni, students, parents, volunteers, employees, and invitees. Harvard University Alumni Affairs & Development reserves the right to suspend services to and the exclude from participation in AA&D programs any person whose inappropriate behavior adversely affects the safety, well-being, and inclusion of community members.

See related:

• Building upon the “Climate Change Conversations” of the Yale Alumni Academy
• Recalling Some of the Chapters from the Harvard DIVESTMENT Struggle…Part 1

Building upon the “Climate Change Conversations” of the Yale Alumni Academy

“Current Climate Moment: The Movement toward Deep Decarbonization”

[An interview with Professor Daniel Esty introducing the
Yale – Harvard Program]

[This is the first of a series of videos in a “Playlist” assembled by the Yale Alumni Academy and
presented on its Yale Alumni Academy – YouTube Channel]

See related:

Professor Daniel Esty
Global Balliol

as well as:

• Past related webinars from the Yale Alumni Academy
• A Message from Yale School of the Environment’s Dean, Indy Burke
• Climate Change Conversations
• Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report
• Yale Alumni Academy – YouTube Channel
• Setting the Record Straight: The Depth, Severity and History of the Scientific Evidence on Earth’s Unfolding Climate Catastrophe

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In the future as the Yale Alumni Academy works to expand its outreach, it could choose to draw upon other voices from Yale alumni, current faculty as well as former faculty.   This effort might include, for example, the seminal insights of individuals like the Yale graduate, James Gustave (Gus) Speth.  Mr. Speth graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and subsequently graduated from Yale Law School in 1969. After a further series of distinguished achievements both in government and non-governmental organizations in Washington, D. C. Gus Speth returned to Yale as the Dean of the Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Science.

Some of his works could provide extended material for the Yale Alumni Academy in its future initiatives on climate change and the environment.  These include, for example:

• Gus Speth – “Warming Warning” (1981)
• Gus Speth & George Woodwell on Carbon Use and the Human Prospect – Thames TV 1981
• Gus Speth delivers the 2016 David Sive Annual Memorial Lecture at Columbia Law School
• Climate Change – Warming Warning – 1981 (Gus Speth, George Woodwell & others)
• Mapping the Next System Webinar – Gus Speth
• Gus Speth at DEMOS: Capitalism, Environment Crisis
• Reimagining America: An Evening with Gus Speth & Juliet Schor
• Dean Gus Speth on Capitalism and the Environment
• Dean Gus Speth on Economic Growth and Disaster
• Rhodes Scholars Warn of Dramatic Transformations Required by Global Climate Crisis

In the same year that Gus Speth graduated from the Yale Law School, another Yale undergraduate, T.C. Weiskel, was elected as a Rhodes Scholar from the Yale Class of 1969.  He, too, attended Balliol College in Oxford where he completed degrees in Social Anthropology and Modern History, returning to the United States to teach African History and Anthropology at Williams College and then at Yale until he left for Harvard to pursue research and teaching on environmental ethics and environmental justice.

At Harvard Professor Weiskel founded and directed the Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values — the first university-wide inter-faculty initiative designed to expand awareness of environmental ethics at Harvard.  In 2001with Professor William Moomaw of Fletcher School at Tufts University he organized The Climate-Talk Project as he taught courses in The Harvard Extension School on environmental ethics, environmental justice and global climate change.  To support students in these courses he created the Transition Studies network to assist their research and writing and their promote their efforts to connect with other individuals and organizations working on solving problems of the transition to global sustainability.

From his initial field-work in Africa and from what he as learned from students coming from the Global South in his courses at Harvard, Professor Weiskel has become attentive to the rapid evolution and tragic trajectory of global food and agricultural systems.  Climate change has exacerbated underlying weaknesses in these vital systems, established as a legacy of recent colonial control in many places.  Scientists are now issuing ever more urgent warning about disturbing trends that are unfolding in global food security as the climate threatens to shift in unpredictable ways in the years and decades ahead.

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Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report

Yale Alumni Academy – Streamed live on Nov 9, 2022

In this presentation, I will discuss key findings from the latest IPCC climate report including key pathways to limit global warming. Over the past decade, average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history. The 2022 IPCC climate report makes this clear: without immediate and deep emissions reductions , limiting global warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach. The good news is that we have the knowledge and tools to limit global warming, and it is possible to at least halve emissions by 2030. I will discuss the transitions that are necessary across all sectors—energy, buildings, cities, transport—in order to realize a sustainable and livable future.

See related:

• Climate Change Conversations – Yale Alumni Academy
• Madagascar: Climate Change in a Hypervariable Environment
• Climate Change Conversations
• Yale Alumni Academy – YouTube Channel
• A Message from Yale School of the Environment’s Dean, Indy Burke

Madagascar: Climate Change in a Hypervariable Environment

Yale Alumni Academy – Streamed live on Nov 7, 2022

Climate models predict that Madagascar will become warmer over the decades ahead and the south, in particular, will be significantly hotter and drier. At this time, the south is beset by extended drought and food shortages, and Madagascar was held up as a posterchild for the devastation wrought by human-driven global climate changes at the 2021 UN Conference in Glasgow (COP26).

But this characterization has been challenged: intermittent droughts have long been typical of the region, and some argue that government mismanagement and long neglect bear substantial responsibility for the current famine. I offer an additional perspective in this lecture. Climate unpredictability, including periodic failures of rainfall in the south, has characterized Madagascar for millions of years.

Evolutionary adaptations to this hypervariability are widespread among the island’s unique wildlife, and Malagasy farmers have developed strategies to cope with the uncertain conditions for agriculture. The long-term climate changes ahead are not in doubt, but both the wildlife and people of Madagascar may be better prepared to respond to them than is generally appreciated.

See related:

• A Message from Yale School of the Environment’s Dean, Indy Burke
• Climate Change Conversations
• Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report
• Yale Alumni Academy – YouTube Channel

Climate Change Conversations

https://alumniacademy.yale.edu/climate-change-conversations#Upcoming

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Alison Richard – Faculty – Yale Alumni Academy

Alison Richard – Faculty – Yale Alumni Academy

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Madagascar: Climate Change in a Hypervariable Environment

Yale Alumni Academy – Streamed live on Nov 7, 2022

Climate models predict that Madagascar will become warmer over the decades ahead and the south, in particular, will be significantly hotter and drier. At this time, the south is beset by extended drought and food shortages, and Madagascar was held up as a posterchild for the devastation wrought by human-driven global climate changes at the 2021 UN Conference in Glasgow (COP26).

But this characterization has been challenged: intermittent droughts have long been typical of the region, and some argue that government mismanagement and long neglect bear substantial responsibility for the current famine. I offer an additional perspective in this lecture. Climate unpredictability, including periodic failures of rainfall in the south, has characterized Madagascar for millions of years.

Evolutionary adaptations to this hypervariability are widespread among the island’s unique wildlife, and Malagasy farmers have developed strategies to cope with the uncertain conditions for agriculture. The long-term climate changes ahead are not in doubt, but both the wildlife and people of Madagascar may be better prepared to respond to them than is generally appreciated.

See related:

• Is it Possible to Limit Global Warming? Key Findings From the Most Recent UN Climate Report
• Further information on other available webinars in this series.
• Past related webinars
• Setting the Record Straight: The Depth, Severity and History of the Scientific Evidence on Earth’s Unfolding Climate Catastrophe

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