Finance and the Environment

Catalog description

This course inspects the power and pitfalls of finance/capitalism, empowering students to interrogate if and how the global financial system can be leveraged to solve social and environmental problems. Whether you’re interested in nonprofit advocacy, policy/politics, consulting, investment banking, or really anything else, understanding how money works and how it flows (and the impacts this has on the environment, social issues, and by extension all aspects of human life) is critical. We begin with an overview of the global financial system, including financial instruments like money, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. We’ll then look at organizations that operate our financial system like banks, asset managers, pension funds, insurers, and financial regulators. The majority of time will be spent looking at real-world examples of how people and organizations try to use finance as a tool to solve social and environmental issues.