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MIT researchers develop tool to assess regional risks of climate change, potential impacts on local infrastructure and planning.
Climate scientists cannot attribute any single weather event — whether a drought, wildfire or extreme storm — to climate change. But extreme events, such as Hurricane Sandy, are glimpses of the types of occurrences the world could be more vulnerable to in the future. As the devastation left by Sandy continues to reverberate, decision-makers at every level are asking: How can we be better prepared?
MIT researchers have developed a new tool to help policymakers, city planners and others see the possible local effects of climate change. Its regional projections of climate trends — such as long-term temperature and precipitation changes — allow local planners to evaluate risks, and how these risks could shape crops, roads and energy infrastructure.
“As we see more extreme events like Sandy, the importance of assessing regional impacts grows,” says lead researcher Adam Schlosser, assistant director for science research at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “Our approach helps decision- and policy-makers balance the risks … so they can better prepare their communities for future impacts climate change might bring.”
For example, Schlosser says, if a community is planning to build a bridge, it should look at — and plan for — the expected magnitude of flooding in 2050.
“In areas devastated by Sandy, the rebuilding of lost property and infrastructure will come at considerable cost and effort,” Schlosser says. “But should we rebuild to better prepare for future storms like these? Or should we prepare for stronger and/or more frequent storms? There remains considerable uncertainty in these projections and that implies risk. Our technique has been developed with these questions in mind.”
Schlosser’s research partner, Ken Strzepek, a research scientist at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, notes policymakers are now often given little more than a set of extreme circumstances to consider.
“Policymakers don’t like extremes or worst-case scenarios,” Strzepek says, “because they can’t afford to plan for the worst-case scenarios. They like to see what is the likelihood of different outcomes. That’s what we’re giving them.”
Getting results
In this new method, the researchers quantify the likelihood of particular outcomes and add socioeconomic data, different emission levels and varying degrees of uncertainty. Their technique combines climate-model projections and analysis from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework. The MIT framework is itself a combined computer model that integrates an economic, human system with a natural, earth system.
“This approach allows us to widen the scope and flexibility of climate analysis,” Schlosser says. “It provides us with efficient capabilities to determine climate-change risks.”
The initial study using this approach — accepted by the Journal of Climate and available on the journal’s website — compares a business-as-usual case with a scenario that reduces emissions. The researchers find that lowering emissions reduces the odds of regional warming and precipitation changes. In fact, for many places, the likelihood of the most extreme warming from the business-as-usual case could be eliminated almost entirely.
The study finds diverse climate-change outcomes: southern and western Africa, the Himalayan region, and the area around Hudson Bay in Canada are expected to warm the most; southern Africa and western Europe see the greatest chance of drier conditions. Meanwhile, the Amazon and northern Siberia may become wetter.
Putting the method to work
Schlosser and Strzepek are pursuing partnerships with communities to put their method to work. But while it’s important for every community to begin building climate adaptation into its infrastructure plans, developing countries could reap the greatest benefits.
Malcolm Smart, senior economic adviser for the U.K. Department for International Development, who was not involved in this research, says, “This is not only an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the problem of deep uncertainty, but also a potentially very valuable tool to help vulnerable developing countries cut the cost of damages from climate change.”
Strzepek explains why: In the United States, infrastructure plans are designed based on a high standard of risk, while in developing countries projects are typically built to a lower standard of risk. “But if we find that [a developing country] will see greater flooding, and if we’re fairly certain of this, then they would save money in the long run if they built roads to withstand those flooding events,” Strzepek says.
Schlosser and Strzepek traveled to Finland earlier this fall to present their research at a United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research conference. They’ve partnered with this organization to inform developing countries of this new tool for assessing climate change.
“Our approach allows decision-makers to cut down on the level of risk they’re taking when allocating their limited funds to development projects,” Schlosser says. “This can help them see where there are economic benefits to taking a risk-averse approach today, before the damage is done.”
Related research: Climate Change: A Developing Challenge for Poor Nations
By: Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science
Photo: Dominick Reuter
In looking for ways to combat climate change and minimize the planet’s warming, atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon says it’s often helpful — and heartening — to look to the past.
Solomon points out that recent decades have seen major environmental progress: In the 1970s, the United States banned indoor leaded paint following evidence that it was poisoning children. In the 1990s, the United States put in place regulations to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide — a move that significantly reduced acid rain. Beginning in the 1970s, countries around the world began to phase out leaded gasoline; blood lead levels in children dropped dramatically in response.
During this period, Solomon herself contributed to a milestone in environmental protection: In 1985, scientists discovered that the Earth’s protective ozone layer was thinning over Antarctica. In response, Solomon led an expedition whose atmospheric measurements helped show that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals then used in aerosols and as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners — were to blame for ozone depletion. Her discovery ultimately contributed to the basis for the United Nations’ Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals.
“I find it tremendously uplifting to look back at how our world has changed,” says Solomon, now the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT.
Solomon, a renowned atmospheric chemist who worked for 30 years in Boulder, Colo., at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, is continuing her work in climate research at MIT, where she joined the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in January. In addition to her research, Solomon is teaching a course, 12.085/12.885 (Environmental Science and Society), exploring how society has tackled a range of past environmental challenges through science, engineering, policy, public engagement and politics.
“I think young people today are growing up at a time when they don’t know that we actually have made tremendous progress on a whole series of past environmental challenges,” Solomon says. “Climate change has been called the mother of all environmental issues … and I think our approach to this problem can only be better informed if we understand better what we’ve done in the past.”
Heading west
Born in Chicago, Solomon was completely taken, from a young age, with “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” a documentary series that followed the legendary marine explorer on his seafaring expeditions. “I pretty much never wavered from the decision right then that I was going to be a scientist,” she recalls.
After high school, Solomon enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Continuing her studies in atmospheric chemistry, Solomon moved west, to the University of California at Berkeley. “I had a 1977 Gremlin,” Solomon recalls. “It was one of the most awful cars, I think, ever made, but it was really cheap, and I was young and poor. I remember listening to … ‘California Dreamin’’ as I drove out west.”
Solomon received her PhD in chemistry from Berkeley in 1981, and went to work as a research scientist at NOAA. In 1985, scientists with the British Antarctic Survey discovered the ozone hole above Antarctica, prompting Solomon to lead expeditions to the icy continent in 1986 and 1987.
“It’s the next-best thing to going to another planet,” Solomon says of the harsh yet exhilarating experience. “It is the place on our planet that is the most unexplored, the most remote, the most hostile in terms of what the weather and climate is. It is so viciously cold. I just thought it was fantastic exploration, and it’s that spirit of exploration that I think is so endemic to science, and is fundamental to everything about Antarctica.”
In 2001, Solomon chronicled perhaps the most dramatic exploration of that continent in a bestselling book, “The Coldest March”: She used scientific data to examine long-held myths about Robert Falcon Scott, an early-20th-century English explorer who trekked more than 1,000 miles on foot in an effort to become the first to reach the South Pole. But Roald Amundsen, a rival explorer, beat him to the pole by a month, and Scott, along with several team members, perished on the long trek back.
While Scott’s expedition had been ridiculed — for example, by some who painted him as a “dyed-in-the-wool Englishman who only wanted to eat tinned mutton,” and therefore died of scurvy — letters and diaries from his crew told a different story. Many members of the team described eating fresh seal meat and seal liver, which have been shown to be a good source of the vitamins that ward off the disease. Solomon also analyzed weather data from 1912, and discovered that the crew likely would have survived had they not encountered extreme and unpredictable weather conditions.
“It just seemed to me that somebody needed to go back and take a closer look, with all the diaries of all the guys, and what we know from modern science,” Solomon says.
Changing the climate
In 2002, Solomon took on another monumental task: leading an international assessment of the scientific work related to climate change. Over six years, she served as co-chair of Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2007, the group released a comprehensive report on the scientific basis of climate change. Later that year, based in part on the report, the IPCC and former vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Solomon continues to seek answers to the most pressing climate challenges. In a widely cited 2009 paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Solomon and her co-authors determined that, even if humans were to immediately and completely stop emitting carbon dioxide, it would take more than 1,000 years to undo existing changes in Earth’s surface temperatures, rainfall and sea levels.
This news, while sobering, has not deterred the chemist in her scientific goals. Solomon is currently probing which places on the planet are likely to be the most affected by anthropogenic warming in the near future. In addition to her climate research, she also continues to study the stratosphere — the layer of the atmosphere in which the ozone layer is found.
“There are still fantastic surprises in the stratosphere, as there are in any field, no matter how much has been done on it,” Solomon says. “There’s always something to discover, and I love that feeling.”
Read an earlier story about a lecture Susan Solomon gave.
The New England Aquarium was pleased to welcome the MIT Lorenz Center’s 2nd Annual John Carlson Lecture to the Simons IMAX Theatre on Thursday, November 1. The speaker was Professor Timothy Palmer of the Royal Society of Research.
Whenever there’s an extreme weather event, from a hurricane to a record drought, the question always arises: Is it climate change?
MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel told Here & Now's Robin Young that it's hard to know for sure, but it is clear that as coastal waters warm up, storms will carry more rain, due to the added water vapor.
This NOAA satellite image taken on Monday shows Hurricane Sandy off the Mid
Atlantic coastline moving north. (AP/NOAA)
The 2012 drought in America brought to light the challenges we face when there isn't sufficient water to cool our nation's power plants. Conventional fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants require water to cool the steam they generate to make electricity. In 2005, power plants accounted for over 40 percent of all freshwater withdrawn in the U.S. Many power plants need a huge, steady supply of water to operate, and in hot dry summers, that water can become hard to secure.
On October 18, 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists hosted a webinar discussion on the challenges and opportunities for electricity production in a water-constrained future.
The webinar featured:
Camille Calimlim, committee staff, Water and Power Subcommittee, U.S. House of Representatives, who discussed the energy-water policy landscape and opportunities, including the Energy and Water: Connection and Conflict report prepared by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) for the Committe on Natural Resources.
John Rogers, senior energy analyst and co-manager of the Energy and Water in a Warming World Initiative (EW3), Union of Concerned Scientists, who presented on current power plant water use and highlighted the findings from the EW3 report, Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity's Thirst for a Precious Resource.
C. Adam Schlosser, principal research scientist and assistant director of science research in the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, MIT, who discussed the water implications of an 80 percent renewable energy future as articulated in the NREL Renewable Electricity Futures Study for which he was a lead author.
RELATED - News Release: Double the Benefits, Clean Energy Also Saves Water
The policy community has long prophesied about the coming water wars. But don't expect them anytime soon. More likely, tensions over access will merely exacerbate existing regional conflicts.
By: Shlomi Dinar, Lucia De Stefano, James Duncan, Kerstin Stahl, Kenneth M. Strzepek, Aaron T. Wolf
Right: Looking south over the Mediterranean and down the Nile, from the International Space Station. (NASA / flickr)
The world economic downturn and upheaval in the Arab world might grab headlines, but another big problem looms: environmental change. Along with extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and other natural hazards, global warming disrupts freshwater resource availability -- with immense social and political implications. Earlier this year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a report, Global Water Security, assessing hydropolitics around the world. In it, the authors show that international water disputes will affect not only the security interests of riparian states, but also of the United States.
In many parts of the world, freshwater is already a scarce resource. It constitutes only 2.5 percent of all available water on the planet. And only about .4 percent of that is easily accessible for human consumption. Of that tiny amount, a decreasing share is potable because of pollution and agricultural and industrial water use. All that would be bad enough, but many freshwater bodies are shared among two or more riparian states, complicating their management.
Of course, the policy community has long prophesied impending "water wars." In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon warned that "water scarcity ... is a potent fuel for wars and conflict." Yet history has not witnessed many. In fact, the only official war over water took place about 4,500 years ago. It was a conflict between the city-states of Lagash and Umma in modern day Iraq over the Tigris river. More recently, there have been some close calls, especially in the arid Middle East. About two years before the 1967 War, Israel and Syria exchanged fire over the Jordan River Basin, which both said the other was overusing. The limited armed clashes petered out, but the political dispute over the countries' shared water sources continues. In 2002, Lebanon constructed water pumps on one of the river's tributaries, which caused concern for downstream Israel. The project never provoked any formal military action, but with peace in the region already precarious, verbal exchanges between the two countries prompted the United States to step in. Both parties eventually accepted a compromise that would allow Lebanon to withdraw a predetermined amount of water for its domestic needs.
In short, predictions of a Water World War are overwrought. However, tensions over water usage can still exacerbate other existing regional conflicts. Climate change is expected to intensify droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions that jeopardize freshwater quantity and quality and therefore act as a threat-multiplier, making shaky regions shakier.
So what river basins constitute the biggest risks today? In a World Bank report we published in 2010 (as well as a subsequent article in a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research) we analyzed the physical effects of climate change on international rivers. We modeled the variability in river annual runoff in the past and for future climate scenarios. We also considered the existence and nature of the institutional capacity around river basins, in the form of international water treaties, to potentially deal with the effects of climate change.
According to our research, 24 of the world's 276 international river basins are already experiencing increased water variability. These 24 basins, which collectively serve about 332 million people, are at high risk of water related political tensions. The majority of the basins are located in northern and sub-Saharan Africa. A few others are located in the Middle East, south-central Asia, and South America. They include the Tafna (Algeria and Morocco), the Dasht (Iran and Pakistan), the Congo (Central Africa), Lake Chad (Central Africa), the Niger (Western Africa), the Nile (Northeastern Africa), and the Chira (Ecuador and Peru). There are no strong treaties governing the use of these water reserves in tense territories. Should conflicts break out, there are no good mechanisms in place for dealing with them.
By 2050, an additional 37 river basins, serving 83 million people, will be at high risk for feeding into political tensions. As is the case currently, a large portion of these are in Africa. But, unlike today, river basins within Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Central America will also be at high risk within 40 years. Some of these include the Kura-Araks (Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus), the Neman (Eastern Europe) Asi-Orontes (Lebanon, Syria, Turkey), and the Catatumbo Basins (Colombia and Venezuela).
CROSSING THE NILE
Among the larger African basins, the Nile has the greatest implications for regional and global security. Tensions over access to the river already pit Ethiopia and Egypt, two important Western allies, against one another. Egypt has been a major player in the Middle East Peace Process and Ethiopia is an important regional force in the Horn of Africa, currently aiding other African forces to battle Al-Shabbab in Somalia.
Over the years, a number of international water treaties have made rules for the basin, but they are largely limited to small stretches of it. In particular, only Egypt and Sudan are party to the 1959 Nile River Agreement, the principal treaty regarding the river. Egypt, which is the furthest downstream yet is one of the most powerful countries in the region, has been able to heavily influence the water-sharing regime. Upstream countries, such as Ethiopia and Burundi, have been left out, hard-pressed to harness the Nile for their own needs.
In 1999, with increasingly vitriolic rhetoric between Egypt and Ethiopia sidetracking regional development, the World Bank stepped up its involvement in the basin. It helped create a network of professional water managers as well as a set of investments in a number of sub-basins. Still, the drafting of a new agreement stalled: upstream countries would not compromise on their right to develop water infrastructure while downstream countries would not compromise on protecting their shares. In 2010, Ethiopia signed an agreement with a number of the other upstream countries hoping to balance against Egypt and Sudan. More recently, the country has also announced plans to construct a number of large upstream dams, which could affect the stability of the region.
By 2050, the environmental state of the Nile Basin will be even worse. That is why it is important to create a robust and equitable water treaty now. Such a treaty would focus on ways to harness the river's hydropower potential to satiate the energy needs of all the riparian states while maintaining ecosystem health. The construction of dams and reservoirs further upstream could likewise help even out water flows and facilitate agricultural growth. Projects such as these, mitigating damage to ecosystem health and local populations, would benefit all parties concerned and thus facilitate further basin-wide cooperation.
UP IN THE ARAL
Another water basin of concern is the Aral Sea, which is shared by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The basin consists of two major rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya. During the Soviet era, these two rivers were managed relatively effectively. The break-up of the Soviet Union, however, ended that. The major dispute now is between upstream Kyrgyzstan and downstream Uzbekistan over the Syr Darya. During the winter, Kyrgyzstan needs flowing water to produce hydroelectricity whereas Uzbekistan needs to store water to later irrigate cotton fields.
The countries have made several attempts to resolve the dispute. In particular, downstream Uzbekistan, which is rich in fuel and gas, has provided energy to Kyrgyzstan to compensate for keeping water in its large reservoirs until the cotton-growing season. Such barter agreements, however, have had limited success because they are easily manipulated. Downstream states might deliver less fuel during a rainy year, claiming they need less water from upstream reservoirs, and upstream states might deliver less water in retaliation. Kyrgyzstan, frustrated and desperate for energy in winter months, plans to build mega hydro-electric plants in its territory. And another upstream state, Tajikistan, is likewise considering hydro-electricity to satiate its own energy needs. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan is building large reservoirs.
Although these plans might make sense in the very near term, they are inefficient in the medium and long term because they don't solve the real needs of downstream states for large storage capacity to protect against water variability across time. In fact, both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, along with Kazakhstan, will see substantial increases in water variability between now and 2050. And so, the need to share the benefits of existing large-capacity upstream reservoirs and coordinate water uses through strong and more efficient inter-state agreements is unavoidable.
A stabilized Aral Sea basin would also benefit the United States. With its withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington has been courting Uzbekistan as a potential alternative ally and provider of stability in the region. The Uzbek government seems willing to host U.S. military bases and work as a counter-weight to Russia. Kyrgyzstan is also an important regional player. The Manas Air Base, the U.S. military installation near Bishkek, is an important transit point. The country is also working with the United States to battle drug trafficking and infiltration of criminal and insurgent groups. Regional instability could disrupt any of these strategic relationships.
If the past is any indication, the world probably does not need to worry about impending water wars. But they must recognize how tensions over water can easily fuel larger conflicts and distract states from other important geopolitical and domestic priorities. Since formal inter-state institutions are key to alleviating tensions over shared resources, it would be wise, then, for the involved governments as well as the international community to negotiate sufficiently robust agreements to deal with impending environmental change. Otherwise, freshwater will only further frustrate stability efforts in the world's volatile regions.
SHLOMI DINAR is associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and associate director of the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University. LUCIA DE STEFANO is associate professor at Complutense University of Madrid and researcher at the Water Observatory of the Botín Foundation. JAMES DUNCAN is consultant on natural resource governance and geography with the World Bank. KERSTIN STAHL is senior scientist at the Institute of Hydrology in the University of Freiburg. KENNETH M. STRZEPEK is research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. AARON T. WOLF is a professor of geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University.
Tibetan Buddhist leader urges a more enlightened view of self-interest in remarks at MIT conference.
The Dalai Lama called for increasingly enlightened stewardship of Earth’s environment and resources in public remarks on the MIT campus on Monday.
“We have the responsibility to take care of the whole planet,” said the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism, adding: “It is not a luxury, it is a matter of our own survival.”
The Dalai Lama’s remarks came during a pair of panel discussions he participated in, along with a series of high-profile scholars, focused on the ethical and social challenges of climate change and resource scarcity — including the limited availability of food and water for a global population that is 7 billion and growing rapidly.
The event was hosted by the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, in association with MIT’s Office of Religious Life, and was part of a three-day visit to MIT and the Boston area by the Dalai Lama.
‘Wise-selfish, rather than foolish-selfish’
Both panel discussions on Monday featured 10-minute presentations by four scholars, with the Dalai Lama commenting on each set of remarks. Many of the presentations converged on related questions about how members of society can balance their own material self-interest with the altruistic actions needed to slow global warming and distribute resources fairly.
In the first panel on Monday, “Ethics, Economics and Environment,” Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT, outlined the ominous trajectory of global warming.
“If we choose to do something about this, we have to make that decision very soon,” Emanuel said, adding: “How can we be persuaded to make material sacrifices to reduce the serious risk of climate change?”
The Dalai Lama suggested that educating people about the dangers was a critical part of any response to climate change — and one that falls not just upon scientists, but cultural leaders as well.
“For some people, the message from religious leaders can be more effective,” the Dalai Lama explained.
“Maybe you and I should have a road show,” Emanuel joked in response.
Rebecca Henderson, a professor at Harvard Business School, suggested that despite the pressures business executives feel to show short-term profits, most would be open to changing their practices if presented with clean-energy solutions. She also noted the possible impact: The world’s largest 1,000 firms account for 30 percent of the planet’s energy consumption. For companies or nations, she added, “To say we can’t move until the whole world moves is really a cop-out.”
In response, the Dalai Lama noted that although our actions will always have an inherently selfish element, it is still possible to act in a way that is “wise-selfish, rather than foolish-selfish.”
Penny Chisholm, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at MIT, made the case against geoengineering as a strategy for dealing with climate change. “We don’t understand enough, nor can we understand enough about our world, to be able to control it one parameter at a time,” said Chisholm, who also noted that “the risks are enormous, it is irreversible, and the gains are questionable.”
However, the Dalai Lama, while noting his own lack of scientific expertise, seemed willing to entertain the idea of such new approaches, commenting that, in general terms, “It is our responsibility to look.”
Concluding the first panel, Thomas Malone, the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, made the case for networked technologies as a means of creating solutions to our current problems, noting that networks “can harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people around the world.”
‘Maximum inner peace through inner strength’
The second panel, “Peace, Governance and Diminishing Resources,” examined specific resource-scarcity issues. Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, noted that about 1 billion of the world’s 7 billion people already suffer from a lack of food. He suggested a series of ways to address the problem, from better production efficiency to rethinking diets and reducing waste.
“We have the tools to do this, but we maybe don’t have the will or compassion or ethical framework,” Foley said.
James Orbinski, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and former head of the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, heralded the “revolution in global health” stemming from new technologies developed in the last 15 years, but noted that significant disparities in health remain in place, which he called a “morally unacceptable set of outcomes.”
Zeynep Ton, an adjunct associate professor of operations management at MIT Sloan, argued that the world suffers from another shortage as well: too few good jobs. Companies that treat employees better and pay them more, she said, can perform better as a result. Employees, she said, should be seen “not as a cost to be minimized, but as an asset to be maximized.”
John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at MIT Sloan, gave the final presentation, speaking in broad terms about the need for the world’s wealthy to reduce consumption so as to lessen greenhouse-gas emissions. Technological innovation, he said, would be a necessary but insufficient part of any climate-change solution.
“The core problem is around this sense of what it is that buys people happiness and well-being,” Sterman said. “Those of us who are so rich but not so happy can change the way we live.” Otherwise, he warned, the “spiritual pollution” of unchecked materialism means we will “destroy the planet and our own future.”
In his comments during the afternoon session, the Dalai Lama praised the scholars for not just making diagnoses about the world’s needs, but because “they also have ideas to lessen these problems.”
In response to Sterman’s observations, the Dalai Lama said “I fully agree” that people needed to re-evaluate their sources of happiness, adding, “We have to cultivate these moral principles.” Individuals, the Dalai Lama said, could find “maximum inner peace through inner strength,” not material possessions.
For many people, he added, that kind of change could come through better education. Still, the Dalai Lama added, “Some of these [civic] problems are truly urgent,” leaving an unresolved matter for everyone: “how to influence decision-makers.”
Part of the MIT Museum's Climate and Conflict Series, Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly talks about the economics behind climate change and the most cost-effective approaches to confront it.
Representatives of Obama, Romney camps lay out differences in crucial policy domains of energy and the environment.
Video: Watch the debate 
There could hardly be a more pressing issue than energy policy at a time of global warming, but it has rarely featured in this year’s presidential campaign. Until last Friday night at MIT, that is, when representatives of the Obama and Romney campaigns squared off in a crisp, serious-minded debate about energy, revealing significant differences between the candidates.
At the event, hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Oren Cass, policy director for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, summarized the challenger’s positions by noting that the former Massachusetts governor believes increased domestic fossil-fuel production should be a principal focus of energy policy.
There has been a recent “energy revolution” in the techniques used to extract fossil fuels, Cass asserted, making “energy independence on this continent … a potential reality for the first time in decades.” The pressing issue, he said, is whether “we embrace the revolution that actually has occurred … or do we attempt to stifle it?”
The Obama administration, Cass charged, has invested too heavily in promoting alternative energy, and has been insufficiently aggressive in backing fossil fuels: not opening up enough public lands and offshore waters for oil and gas drilling, and not yet approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which is intended to deliver oil to the United States from Canada.
“The administration’s policies are misaligned with the goal of increased production,” Cass said. Representing President Barack Obama, Joe Aldy, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government who served as a special assistant to Obama for energy and environment in 2009 and 2010, made the case that an “all-of-the-above strategy” is needed to address America’s energy needs — increasing production, technological innovation and efficiency.
“When I think about what the American public wants, it’s to look for the kind of balanced approach the president is pursuing,” Aldy said, adding: “We’re going to use every tool we have available. Let’s not just focus on fossil fuels. We can do a lot in renewables, whether it’s for biofuels, wind or solar. We need to be creative in how we do this. We need to take advantage of opportunities [for] energy efficiency.” While domestic oil production is at a 14-year high, Aldy said, Obama has also signed new fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s automotive fleet that will mandate an average of 54.5 mpg by the year 2025.
Cass and Aldy also presented differing views on the government’s proper role in fostering energy innovation. Cass said that Romney supports ARPA-E, the federal government’s program to develop new clean-energy technologies, which was first funded with $400 million from the economic stimulus act that Obama signed in early 2009. However, Cass noted a few times, Romney would prefer to see the lion’s share of government backing for innovation go toward early stage basic research
“Ultimately the biggest source of difference [between the campaigns] … is the question of what is the right way to promote innovation,” Cass said, adding that Romney believes in “government support in the very early stages of research, and reliance on the private sector to commercialize technologies to bring down their costs and to hopefully succeed in the market.” By contrast, Cass asserted, Obama has supported “massive subsidies for chosen industries ... which, in our judgment, has not been a success.”
Aldy countered that the Obama administration has helped advance clean energy through its ARPA-E subsidies and created 250,000 jobs in the process. “We need to continue to diversify … and continue to advance wind and solar,” he said, asserting that there is “a lot of job creation going on, it’s high-quality jobs in the manufacturing sector.”
Let moderation be your guide
The 90-minute debate, in front of a crowd of several hundred in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, was moderated by Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of Technology Review. The campaign representatives hewed closely to their time allowances throughout the debate, and Pontin permitted them a few unscheduled but concise rebuttals to address areas of particular disagreement. Four other journalists and three students from area universities offered questions as well at the forum, formally called the MITEI Presidential Energy Debate.
In addition to debating energy production and innovation, the discussion also turned to the environmental effects of industrial production. One of the sharpest areas of disagreement pertained to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, issued in 2011, which regulate emissions from coal-fired powerplants.
“The mercury standard makes incredible sense in terms of health,” Aldy said, mentioning the EPA’s estimate that the law will prevent 11,000 premature deaths per year.
Cass underscored Romney’s opposition to it, arguing that the benefits did not equal the costs of the measure, including the “unemployment of a significant number of workers” at coal plants that could be shuttered on account of the measure. All told, the measure constitutes “one of the most outrageously unjustified regulations the country has ever seen,” Cass said.
In his reply, Aldy described that characterization of the regulation as “shocking.”
Cass also repeatedly criticized Obama for not being more direct about his position on so-called cap-and-trade legislation, among other matters. In response, Aldy noted that Obama “could not find any Republicans willing to work on a bill in the Senate in 2010” involving cap-and-trade, after the House of Representatives passed legislation for it in mid-2009.
The two representatives did find common ground on a statement Aldy made early on in Friday evening’s proceedings: “There is a clear choice in this election.”