Environment & Politics

Catalog description

Scientists discover a large comet that is expected to collide with the Earth in six months. If not prevented, this comet is large enough to end all life on earth upon impact. What will the world's leaders do to avert the catastrophe? While this scenario is the plot of a movie ("Don't Look Up," Netflix, 2021), humans face many different environmental challenges, natural or man-made, that require policy action at a global scale like in the comet story: climate change, air pollution, pandemics, clean water access, ozone layer depletion, overfishing and deforestation all require international cooperation. Are there ways in which humans can eliminate the existential threat from climate change, and mitigate the immediate or long-term negative impacts? In this course, we will analyze the nature of different environmental issues, analyze the severity of the cooperation problem in each issue area and try to understand the sources of differences among and within societies in their preferences for environmental action. We will study the role of media and social media in facilitating environmental cooperation and policymaking. In achieving its learning objectives, this course will take a multidisciplinary approach, bringing insights from political science, history, economics, public policy, climate sciences and engineering.