At the end of the course, you will:
- have insight in the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of the climate debate;
- be able to reproduce the core insights from the various scientific disciplines in relation to the issue of climate change;
- be able to describe the practical hurdles to effective climate policy;
- be able to reflect on your own thoughts and acts in relation to climate change.
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According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we only have a decade left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change. Scientific insights about the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming are already available for more than a century. What explains our failure to act? One major challenge in the present climate crisis is that it requires input from different scientific disciplines. Therefore, in order to fully understand the case, we need to incorporate knowledge from several fields of expertise. The following topics will subsequently in the interdisciplinary course Climate Crisis:
- Introduction: setup of the course and introduction to the cultural theory of risk.
- Climate Science: what do we know about humanity’s influence on the climate system?
- Impacts and vulnerability: what are the impacts of climate change on humanity and ecosystems? Which countries are most vulnerable?
- Mitigation: which options does society have to reduce the risk of climate change? Should we mitigate, adapt or geo-engineer the climate?
- Energy system: this lecture delves deeper in the role of the energy sector in climate mitigation. What are the options for renewable energy?
- Why care about the far future? Do we owe it to future generations to prevent climate change or do we owe it to ourselves? How does philosophy look at our moral duties towards future generations?
- Psychological hurdles: climate change offers a social dilemma on a global scale. Moreover, we are evolutionary not prepared to tackle risks with the characteristics of climate change.
- Cost benefit analysis: how do economists calculate the ‘optimal’ level and speed of climate mitigation?
- Economic instruments: what are the most efficient and effective policy instruments to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases?
- International negotiations: what is the history and the state of the art regarding the international negotiations to arrive at climate agreements and international policy? How can political philosophy explain the different positions?
- What can I do? If governments are too slow to act, what can we do ourselves?
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Deze cursus is bedoeld voor tweede- en derdejaars BA-studenten. (This module is meant for second- and third-year BA students.)
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