The Course

Course Description: Climate change is a defining challenge for the 21st century: how we think about and act on climate change now will profoundly shape the future of civilization. This course takes an interdisciplinary and problem-oriented approach to climate change. It surveys existing knowledge and uncertainties, asks fundamental questions, seeks conceptual clarity, pays attention to media and rhetoric, and engages in normative assessments. The goal is to provide orientation: a view of the decisive features and crucial dimensions of climate change so that students have a map and guiding tools to use as they think about and act on climate change throughout their lives.

The course is organized into six modules. It begins (1) by developing some tools to map and navigate the landscape. Next (2) we shore up our knowledge with some basic climate science and important terminology. We then (3) engage in some ‘meta’ climate studies to examine media, political interests, and worldviews and their interpretive and rhetorical devices. Next (4), we look at climate policy options and their history before turning specifically to (5) climate change in the 2020 US US Presidential election. We conclude (6) with a look at climate solutions, ethics, and justice as we ask: what should we think and what should we do about climate change?

Learning Objectives: This course will help you to:

  • Gain a rich appreciation for the Earth’s climate system and the accelerating and growing human impacts on that system.
  • Understand and evaluate the varied perspectives, complex issues, and policy alternatives involved with climate change. This includes climate science and media literacy: assessing science-politics relationships, knowing where to look for credible information, and critically evaluating information sources and framing devices.
  • Grow your moral imagination and develop your own well-informed and rationally defensible views on climate change; views that strike a healthy balance of principled commitment with humility in the face of uncertainties and complexities.
  • Cultivate the philosophical skills of critical, problem-oriented, and open-minded inquiry.