To Fight the Climate Crisis, Harvard Needs the Humanities

This is the story of the climate crisis. It is also the story of a powerful institution: Historically complicit in perpetuating that crisis but today endowed with the resources to address it.

A powerhouse in knowledge production, Harvard has recently lent its strengths in science and technology to address the global challenge of climate change. In 2008, Harvard created the Office for Sustainability to implement sustainable practices at the University. More recently, in 2022, it established the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, extending its efforts to develop technological and entrepreneurial solutions beyond the Harvard community.

Such initiatives demonstrate Harvard’s commitment to climate action. More critically, however, they also reveal a blind spot: the mistaken assumption that scientific and technological innovations are sufficient to face the challenge. If universities like Harvard want to be part of the solution to the climate crisis, they need to make the humanities part of their response.

While scientific approaches to the environmental crisis are of the utmost importance, they are certainly not enough. After all, through science, we’ve known about climate change for decades but done too little to halt its progression. Although researchers first warned of the global threat before the Senate nearly 36 years ago, scientists have long understood the atmospheric processes driving global warming. Renewable energy sources have also been viable alternatives to fossil fuels for decades, with solar panels becoming commercially available in the 1970s and the first modern wind turbines in the 1980s.

Yes, for decades, we’ve known we are facing a crisis and what we must do to fight it. This knowledge, however, has not been sufficient. Though we can make sense of these threats with increasing intellectual sophistication, we have so far failed to convince the public that we are living through a global emergency.

What this reveals is that the climate crisis is not a scientific challenge to which technology will be the solution. It is a social challenge; to solve it, we need better communication. The magnitude of the crisis calls for us to fundamentally reframe humanity’s relationship with the environment and, just as important, with each other.

This shift begins with the stories we tell — the stories that shape our values, priorities, and sense of responsibility. Without better narrative frameworks for conceptualizing the climate crisis, it will remain disconnected from our daily lives, limiting our collective will to confront it.

This is precisely the job of the arts and humanities. Humanistic approaches have long helped us imagine new ways of thinking and living. However, Harvard has failed to harness their potential in its efforts to combat the climate crisis.

The college’s curricular offerings make this evident. As it stands now, undergraduates may only pursue their interest in the environment through one of four possible concentrations: Integrative Biology, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Environmental Science and Engineering, or Environmental Science and Public Policy.

Meanwhile, students interested in critical and literary approaches to the climate crisis are limited to concentrations like English, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature, where they might encounter one or two courses focusing on the environment. Without a department or standing committee devoted to the humanistic study of the environment, Harvard discourages such forms of inquiry.

Prior efforts to change this have not been successful. In 2016, the Harvard Global Institute organized an inaugural workshop for the new Environmental Humanities Initiative. Eight years later, EHI does not even have a dedicated website.

In this respect, Harvard trails its peers. For more than 30 years, Princeton University has offered an interdisciplinary program in Environmental Studies. Yale University offers a similar major that allows students to pursue coursework across the humanities. And just this year, Brown University established a Center for Environmental Humanities.

The path forward is clear. Harvard must follow suit.

The establishment of an Environmental Humanities concentration at Harvard could have profound implications, particularly at a time when many believe interest in the humanities to be waning. By promoting interdisciplinary dialogue between scientists, social scientists, and humanists working on environmental challenges, a program like this could give the humanities a newfound sense of meaning.

To lead the fight for climate action, Harvard must educate the future generation of environmental scientists, engineers, and policy leaders. But, just as critically, it must cultivate the future generation of environmental storytellers.

Only through stories can we render legible the crisis of our times.

Andrés Muedano ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Comparative Literature and Integrative Biology concentrator in Adams House and a member of Harvard’s Council of Student Sustainability Leaders.