Climate Change Law and Policy

Catalog description

Climate change will be a foremost theme that will influence financial activities, and policy and legal framework for years to come. In a noticeably short time span, climate change has become a global challenge calling for collective action. Climate change law is emerging as a new legal discipline. Students in this course will explore how climate change law relates to other areas of law and how climate change has elicited rulemaking process at the international, regional, national and local levels. The class will be invited to study the negotiation process, implementation and current status of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. The class will then proceed to evaluate the various legal tools that are available at national and international level to address climate change, including cap-and-trade, carbon taxation, command-and-control regulation, litigation, securities disclosures, and voluntary actions.