Coping with Climate Change: How Science, Politics and Ethics Interact
A First-Year Tutorial offered fall 2021, taught by Wayne Moyer, professor of political science and policy studies
This tutorial will analyze the global effort to address human-induced climate change. Students will conduct an inquiry into the current state of scientific knowledge about climate change and address how this knowledge combines with other factors in developing policy in the United States and the international arena. What are the forces that promote and inhibit effective action? What is the role played by technological development? How is the political process responding? How do concerns for equity, justice, and human rights play into the debate? Attention will be given to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 2007 Kyoto Protocol, the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the role of civil society and the waxing and waning of climate change as a priority policy issue in the U.S.
Why I’m Teaching This Topic
I am teaching this tutorial to better educate students about the human-induced climate change crisis that the world is just now beginning to confront. This is a crisis that is likely to persist throughout the lifetimes of current college students and will likely become much more serious before effective action is taken. Detailed knowledge about climate change will contribute to civic responsibility, and to the future policy debate.
– Wayne Moyer