To prevent the worst impacts of global warming, policymakers, corporations, and individuals are seeking to reduce carbon emissions by transitioning from conventional to renewable energy. Yet while this transition will reduce demand for some natural resources like coal and oil, it will increase the need for others, like copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium to produce solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. The process of mining these materials produces its own carbon emissions, and impacts the environment and society, such as by polluting water supplies and displacing vulnerable communities. In this class, you will grapple with this contradiction by learning about the clean energy transition, how mining works, and the ways climate change and mining interact. Drawing on this knowledge, you will have the opportunity to draft the report you would write if a world leader asked you, "Can we mine our way out of climate change?"
This course will introduce you to key environmental and social challenges facing the world today, and equip you with analytical tools to understand and engage directly with them. We will first explore how a geographical perspective improves understanding of environmental concerns and their relationship to society, then learn about how these issues are addressed theoretically and methodologically in four key sub-fields of Geography: Environmental History, Political Ecology, Hazards Geography, and Environmental Justice. With this foundation, we will analyze urgent human-environmental challenges facing the world today, including climate change, agricultural production, water availability, energy demand, population growth, pollution, and agricultural production. You will apply what you learn by conducting an environmental history of your hometown and analyzing a contemporary environmental challenge there.
In this class, you will explore how communities around the world are responding to unequal environmental burdens, and how these local-scale justice issues fit into broader global trends such as climate change. We will engage with key environmental issues surrounding waste, pollution, water, mining, energy, and more in regions ranging from Latin America to the Arctic and from Sub-Saharan Africa to South and East Asia. At the same time, we will consider how broader geopolitical and economic structures affect environmental justice between countries and regions. You will apply what you learn to conduct a research project on a specific environmental justice issue of interest to you, and carry out a hands-on environmental project in our own community.
While the earth's natural systems are being transformed by climate change, competing social, political, and economic changes are also emerging across the globe. This course prepares students to understand and engage with crucial issues at the intersection of these two trends through analysis of current events and literature from both the natural and social sciences. We will begin by exploring the physical science behind climate change. Next, we will study its impacts on key human concerns such as agriculture, extractive industries, conflict, health, migration, and development. We will then analyze responses to climate change, including social media campaigns, public protests, and intergovernmental cooperation, and we will carry out our own simulation of a UN climate change conference tasked with keep warming below 2 degrees C. Across the semester, we will situate readings and discussion within diverse theories of social thought. Finally, students will apply what they learn in class to carry out a research project on a social issue related to climate change of their choice, and present their findings to peers.