Tackling Climate Change

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Climate change is not only a scientific or technical problem—it is a political struggle over power, knowledge, justice, and the future. This introductory course for IPOL, CULP and STIA students (and others are welcome as well) explores how climate change is framed, governed, and contested across institutions, technologies, and social movements. Drawing on authors such as Bruno Latour, Naomi Klein, Nicholas Stern, Andreas Malm, Greta Thunberg, and Noam Chomsky, we investigate a diversity of ideas towards climate change and climate action—from global treaties and carbon markets to geoengineering, green growth, degrowth, and the Green New Deal. Students will critically interrogate international agreements, national policies, and emerging technologies, asking: Who defines the problem? Who benefits from proposed solutions? What political and economic assumptions shape “green” ideas? How do activism, Indigenous struggles, and cultural imaginaries expand — or challenge — what is possible? By engaging institutional approaches alongside grassroots movements and radical critiques, the course equips students to analyze climate politics as a dynamic field of debate and action.