Description
ENVS 411 – Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon
The fight against climate change is shaping politics, economies, innovation, and the flows of capital and ideas. What are these transformations based on? Where do they lead? How can we speed up change towards a more sustainable future? This ENVS 411 interdisciplinary capstone course will explore these new dynamics, as well as the rapid technological, energy, financial, political, social and ideological changes and conflicts in the country and around the world. This course posits a world in transition, working to avoid climate catastrophe. It sees deliberate actions at all levels of governance (individuals, local, state and national governments, businesses and groups from civil society, international) that, if still way insufficient, are impacting national and global political economies. It also sees political and economic actors pushing back, as well as structural and ideological constraints to change.
The course will foreground primary literature (government, scientific, business and NGO reports; treaties, laws and regulations). It will punctuate lectures with guest speakers from the field. The course also postulates pressures on energy systems, as well as the emergence of accompanying upstream and downstream technologies as one of the main indicators of change in the global and national political economy. It also conceives of climate change as a market failure, and thus foregrounds the roles of markets and the State in addressing climate change, using documents and readings from distinct perspectives.