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NEWSLETTER MAY 2007
Center for Health and the Global Environment

Tenth Anniversary Global Environmental Citizen Award

The Center's Tenth Anniversary Global Environmental Citizen Award was presented to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales on January 28, 2007 at the Harvard Club of New York City for his outstanding work towards protecting the global environment. Advisory board member Meryl Streep presented the award to Prince Charles along with last year’s winner, Former Vice President Al Gore, before an audience of more than 320 guests. The event also recognized the environmental achievements of the Center’s five corporate council members: 3M, BP, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase and Swiss Re. Sustainable cuisine was served throughout the evening by award-winning master chefs Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns; Andre Soltner and Marc Bauer of the French Culinary Institute; Mary Cleaver of The Cleaver Co.; Michel Nischan of The Dressing Room; and Ana Sortun of Oleana. Eco-fashion was also highlighted throughout the evening with event staff wearing donated designs by Stewart + Brown made from surplus material and Mongolian cashmere. Visit our events page to download a copy of the Prince’s acceptance speech.

*Peruse the photographic highlights of the evening's event here*

(Photo credit: Mike Segar/Reuters)

New Corporate Council Member

We are delighted to announce the addition of JPMorgan Chase to our Corporate Council. JPMorgan Chase is a leading global financial services firm with assets in excess of $1.1 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. JPMorgan Chase’s environmental policy ensures that its business contributes to the long-term health of the communities it operates in, minimizes the environmental impacts of JPMC's business operations, and avoids or reduces impacts on socially significant assets and indigenous peoples. JPMC adopted the Equator Principles, guidelines that promote environmental and social responsibility in project financing, and has taken significant steps to protect biodiversity and critical habitats. Some examples include instituting certain "no-go" criteria in forests where high conservation values are endangered, committing itself to reducing greenhouse gases, cutting its own emissions, working with clients to develop new financial products that facilitate emissions reductions, conducting research on the financial implications of the rising cost of carbon, and deploying investment capital to businesses that reduce or mitigate greenhouse gases. Since 2003, JPMC has invested close to $500 million in wind projects and arranged almost $250 million in third party equity financing.  Read more about JPMorgan Chase’s environmental efforts.

New Advisory Board Member

We are also proud to announce the addition of William Moomaw, Professor of International Environmental Policy and Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at The Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, to our advisory board. Bill Moomaw received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from MIT, and has been translating science into policy relevant terms for 30 years. He worked on energy and forestry policy and the elimination of CFCs in spray cans while serving on a U.S. Senate staff as a Science Fellow in the 1970s. He served as the first director of the Climate, Energy and Pollution Program at the World Resources Institute. In 1989, he left the practice of chemistry to come to Tufts University to work full time on energy, climate and resource policy. He has served as a lead author of four IPCC reports including the special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage in 2005, and has published extensively on climate mitigation technologies and policies. Currently he is serving on an EPA Science Advisory Board panel on nitrogen.

Medical School Course

The tenth year of the Center’s multi-disciplinary course Human Health and Global Environmental Change drew to a close May 2, 2007. The course hosted students from Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Law School as well as Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Graduate School of Education and John F. Kennedy School of Government. Students from MIT, the Boston University Science Journalism Program and Simmons College also joined the course this year. Lecture topics this year ranged from “Symptoms of Distress: Emerging Diseases” by Mary E. Wilson M.D., Harvard Medical School, “Storms and the Oceans” by Kerry A. Emanuel, Ph.D., MIT and “Media and the Environment” by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth, NPR, to “Nutrition and Human Health” by Joan Gussow, M.Ed., Ed.D., Columbia University, and “Banking: Investing in Our Common Future” by Amy Davidsen, JPMorgan Chase. The course is open to members of the public every year and is available in its entirety online.

Policy Maker Education

The Center held a briefing in the Capitol on March 20, 2007 titled What Does 'Peer Reviewed for Scientific Publication' Mean and How Does the Process Work? sponsored by Representatives Bart Gordon, Rush Holt and Vernon Ehlers, and Senators Richard Lugar and Barbara Boxer. Representative Rush Holt introduced presenters Donald Kennedy, Editor in Chief of Science and Jeffrey M. Drazen M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. This briefing was the second in a series. The first, titled How Science Works and How Can Science Most Effectively Inform Policy? was held January 23, 2006. Watch briefing lecture videos.

The Center’s annual congressional course Environmental Change: The Science and Human Health Impacts is designed to present the latest science on global environmental change and human health to policy makers. The ninth consecutive session of the course was held April 4-5, 2007 at the City Club in Washington, DC. Agenda topics covered included carbon dioxide capture and storage, ocean acidification, green buildings, evangelical initiatives to protect “Creation,” the development of healthy and sustainable communities, and biofuel options. View detailed agenda and download lecture videos.

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity

In March, the Center with The Buckminster Fuller Institute and Free Range Graphics, launched a flash animation short titled "The BioDaVersity Code," a spoof on The Da Vinci Code that encourages people to understand how human health depends on biodiversity. As of the end of April, the short has received more than a million hits. The short was co-sponsored by several organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Coalition, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, Species Alliance, Threshold Foundation, and World Wildlife Fund. The Center has also created a "Take Action" page which is linked with the short and lists simple ways individuals can help protect biodiversity.

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity is currently in production with Oxford University Press and is scheduled for publication in early 2008. This book will be the most comprehensive examination yet available on the subject of how Nature contributes to human health. Center Director Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein M.D., a resident in the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics, are the editors. Co-sponsors of the book include the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity, and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The book will include a Foreword by Center faculty member E.O. Wilson and a Preface by former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan. Future plans include publishing and distributing a final executive summary for policy-makers, securing foreign-language editions of the book, and working with the co-sponsors to promote the book.

Climate Change Futures

Center Associate Director Paul Epstein is currently working on a new report as part of the Climate Change Futures program titled Healthy Solutions: Choosing Stabilization Wedges, a Guide for Investors, Insurers and Industries. A 60-80% reduction of CO2-equivalent emissions will be necessary to achieve climate stabilization. The report will examine the suite of energy choices available and begin to differentiate solutions that are “no-regrets” from those for which further study and trials are warranted. The report will also explore private sector financial instruments and the public policy options for creating the infrastructure, research, rules, regulations and rewards needed to propel the technologies into the global marketplace. Finally, the report will begin to identify key obstacles and misaligned incentives that must be reversed in order to transform markets onto a sustainable path.

Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans

The Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans exhibit, which demonstrates how the ocean heals, nourishes and sustains us, is currently being displayed in the Berkshire Aquarium, the EcoTarium in Worcester, MA, and the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. Center Assistant Director Kathleen Frith spoke at community events hosted by all three institutions throughout the fall and winter, where she discussed the three themes of the exhibit in greater depth. A fourth reproduction of the exhibit is now on display at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. The Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans educational exhibit was made possible by the generous support of the Massachusetts Environmental Trust.

Kathleen Frith has also been invited to help launch an ocean and human health initiative in the Middle East. She will speak at a two-day seminar in Jordan in October hosted by the Regional Organization for the Conservation of the Environment of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (PERSGA) (http://www.persga.org/default.asp). PERSGA is an intergovernmental organization governed by a Council that includes environment affairs ministers from each of the seven PERSGA member states including Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The organization has agreed to be a Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans partner and ordered two new sets of the exhibit - one in English and one in Arabic – that will be showcased at the seminar before traveling around the member states.

In other news, the two-minute Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans trailer narrated by Meryl Streep will be screened during the 14th Catalonia International Environmental Film Festival in Spain during the first two weeks of June. Meanwhile, production continues on a 15-minute film to be shown in aquariums and learning institutions. The film exemplifies the ocean’s role in nurturing all life on Earth. Future plans include developing exhibitry to accompany the film that will be displayed at partnering institutions.

Scientists-Evangelicals Unite to Protect Creation

This is a new Center program designed to develop relationships of trust and mutual respect between leading members of the scientific and evangelical communities so that they can begin to work together to protect the global environment. To date, this program has included a two-day private retreat between leading scientists and evangelical leaders that took place in December 2006 in Thomasville, Georgia and the release of an “Urgent Call to Action” on January 17, 2007 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The joint statement released by the group highlights the shared concerns about human-caused threats to the Creation and calls on all sectors-religious, scientific, business, political, and educational-to join together in this historic initiative. Future plans include a week-long trip to Alaska in August 2007 for a small group comprised of 6 scientists and 6 evangelical leaders to see first-hand the effects of climate change on local populations and ecosystems. This trip will become a program on PBS television.

Healthy and Sustinable Food

The Center is developing regional guides for New England and the Mid-Atlantic states that outline the health benefits of local and sustainable food and explain when different types of produce are available. Research for these guides has been completed and they are now moving into the editing and production phase.

The Center is also currently working with Harvard faculty members from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the School of Public Health, and the Graduate School of Design as well as directors of Harvard’s Culinary Services and the Harvard Green Campus Initiative on a proposal to create a small farm located on the University’s planned expanded campus in Allston, Massachusetts. The vision is for the farm to provide a range of learning opportunities including: experiential learning for students working on the farm about their intimate relationship to Nature, research on some of the biological, engineering, toxicological, and landscape design issues involved in developing a sustainable, organic farm in an urban setting, and outreach and access to a community garden for local residents.

Secondary Education

Program Associate Margaret Thomsen traveled to Baltimore, MD in the fall of 2006 to participate in a meeting of the National Science Teachers Association. She conducted a workshop for 35 teachers based on the Center’s secondary education curriculum, adapted from the Human Health and Global Environmental Change course held at Harvard Medical School each year, and distributed more than 250 lesson plans. In March 2007, she also conducted a workshop at the annual conference of the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society, where she presented the curriculum to more than 40 local teachers. Download secondary education lesson plans.

She will attend another NSTA meeting this fall and will also be traveling to Silverthorne, Colorado in June to take part in the Key Issues Institute summer program. The goal of this program is to provide educators with non-biased tools to investigate environmental issues and train them to present these complex issues to their students. Topics such as “Bringing Environmental Issues to the Classroom,” “Green Chemistry” and “Climate Status Investigations” will be explored.

The Muddy River: Boston’s Environmental Film Series

The Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation and the Center for Health and the Global Environment, with support from the Charles River Watershed Association and Brookline GreenSpace Alliance, are hosting an environmental film series September 23-25, 2007. This festival will serve as the Boston area’s only event showcasing the best environmental films produced in the past year. The three-day series will center around the themes of ocean, climate and food, and will feature daily screenings of a variety of environmental films in documentary, dramatic and animation formats followed by discussions with scientists and filmmakers. The film series will play at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, and will be widely publicized throughout the Boston area.

Annual Retreat

The Center’s annual retreat will take place from September 27-29, 2007 at the Glynwood Center in Cold Spring, New York. This year’s theme is focused on renewable energy and things each of us can do to reduce our own environmental footprints. We are delighted to announce that Steven J. Strong, Founder and President of Solar Design Associates, and a pre-eminent authority on integration of renewable energy systems in buildings in North America, Bill Moomaw, our latest board member (see above) and board member Bob Fox, will join us to lead discussions this year.

Media Highlights

The Center had recently been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Economist, The Boston Globe, The LA Times and Der Spiegel Online International as well as on CNN and CBS. Center Director Eric Chivian and Reverend Richard Cizik also discussed the Center’s initiative with Evangelicals on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Center Associate Director Paul Epstein was featured on NPR’s Here and Now in an interview titled “Global Warming and Public Health.” View a complete list of media appearances.

Honor Roll of Donors

We would like to honor all of the generous donors who have supported the educational programs of the Center during the 2007 fiscal year.

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