The State-Of-The-Art in Climate Change Solutions

Catalog description

Most of us are likely aware that human-caused climate change is one of the most urgent and challenging problems of our time, but that it is also proving difficult to make progress against. Why is this? Are we (as humanity) having trouble with global collaboration and the high cost of solutions? Is climate change a problem too big to tackle? Has the earth passed a tipping point? This course will explore these types of questions so that you can answer them for yourself as well as evaluate and design solutions of your own. To fully understand the options for making progress against climate change, we need to learn about the natural and human systems involved. We will therefore study the past, present, and potential future suite of cutting-edge solutions in order to tell a big-picture story about our planet and our climate. Some climate solutions have garnered substantial attention across media, art, and science, and each provides an opportunity to learn about the natural and human processes they leverage. Importantly, this course will not explicitly recommend specific solutions, but you will have the opportunity to evaluate current options as well as propose new ones. New solutions are becoming implemented every day, and they all start with an idea!