Climate Change and Energy: Policymaking for the Long-Term

A week at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) left me more convinced than ever that climate solutions live at the intersection of policy, public health, and community leadership—and that the relationships we build across sectors and borders are just as important as the frameworks we use. 

I recently completed the Climate Change and Energy: Policymaking for the Long-Term Program, led by Professor Robert Stavins and Professor Robert Stowe alongside an outstanding cadre of lecturers. The program moved fluidly from climate science and energy economics to corporate decarbonization, measurement and accountability, and global approaches to reducing carbon emissions and enhancing community resilience, grounding everything in real-world application and relationship building.  

My key takeaways: 

• Interactions Among Climate Change Policies. Climate change is a global commons problem, and solutions require building relationships across sectors and borders. The program reinforced the need for long-standing and durable policies that account for how they interact with one another—and how their burdens and benefits fall unevenly on the communities that contributed least to climate change but are bearing the greatest share of its impacts.

• Emissions and time. Continuing to reduce CO2 emissions is paramount. Focusing on methane—which has a global warming potential 80 times greater than CO2 over 20 years—can help slow the rate of warming in the near-term. The Harvard Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, a Research Cluster of the Salata Institute, is working to abate methane emissions immediately, helping to reduce the magnitude of climate change and give the world time to “bend the curve” on CO2. 

• Public Health. Methane gas combustion appliances in homes not only drive climate change but also pose immediate health risks through co-pollutants including NO2, CO, PM2.5, and VOC’s like benzene—risks that are sharply exacerbated in environmental justice, limited-wealth communities, and communities of color. The correlation between local pollutants and CO2 emissions is precisely where the case for a just transition is strongest. And this is exactly where Collectrify’s work sits. We focus on transitioning buildings off fossil fuels in ways that not only benefit limited-wealth and historically marginalized communities, but are led by communities on the frontlines so they can meaningfully shape the policies and solutions that impact them most. 

At Collectrify, we collaborate with leaders across energy, housing, public health, environmental justice, consumer protection, philanthropy, and beyond to build the relationships that support community leadership and drive equitable climate action. 

I left Cambridge having learned from a remarkable faculty and staff, and alongside a cohort representing an extraordinary range of roles, sectors, and countries cohort representing an extraordinary range of from different roles, sectors, and countries: Barbados, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Liberia, New Zealand, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. That diversity of perspective was itself a lesson. I am deeply grateful for the new learning and relationships both.