Climate Change and Society - Course Descriptions

U PSC 324 Sustainable Climate Policies: China and the USA, 3 cr. Offered every other year. Same as CCS 324. Open to Juniors and Seniors only. Explores historic, current, and future greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions of the United States and China, reasons why both are the two largest CO2 emitters, and prevailing national and subnational government policies and nongovernmental actions that affect emissions mitigation and adaptation. The principal constraints on and opportunities for policy change in both countries will be identified and critically analyzed within a climate-stabilization and issue-bundling framework. Attention to improved and feasible local, regional, national, or transnational GHG-mitigation or climate-change adaptation policies.

U COMM 379 Communication, Consumption, and Climate, 3 cr. Offered spring. Same as EVST 379 and CCS 379. Analyzes consumption as a communication practice, investigates discourses that promote consumption, and explores how communication shapes perception of consumption’s climate impacts.

UG ECON 445 International Environmental Economics and Climate Change, 3 cr. Offered autumn. Same as CCS 445. Prereq., ECON 111. Students will be introduced to the economics of various policy approaches towards climate change and other international environmental issues such as trans-boundary pollution problems, international trade and the environmental, and the pollution haven hypothesis.

U EVST 495 Global Climate Change Policy, 1 cr wintersession, or 2 cr on-line summer course. This class will be a quick review of climate change policy/regulation as it exists currently in the United States and internationally. Starting with some grounding material on the current state of affairs we will explore the potential for certain policy tools to solve the problem and actual policy implementation. Students will be familiar with cap and trade regulation mechanisms and international agreement negotiating positions of the parties by the end of the course. The main vehicles for student assessment in the course will be class participation, two negotiation preparation papers/statements and participation in two trading/negotiation role plays. The course assumes you know that climate change is an issue to be addressed.

UG RSCN 449 Climate Change Ethics and Policy, 3 cr. Offered fall. Same as EVST 449 and CCS 449. This course focuses on the ethical dimensions of climate change policy. It will cover the following major topics: (1) climate change, personal and collective responsibilities, (1) ethics, climate change and scientific uncertainty, (2) distributive justice and international climate change negotiations, (3) intergenerational justice and climate change policy.