Ecocide and Climate Change: The Collapse of Societies

3 units

How can we use the past to help solve modern issues of climate change? In the face of modern climate change and environmental degradation, many have turned to examining how past societies successfully or unsuccessfully responded to environmental change. This seminar-style course will survey how academic and public discourse use historical and archaeological examples of past human response to environmental change to evaluate our best options to thrive in a globally warmer environment. By reading public intellectual works by anthropologists, economists, and geographers, we will first examine current theoretical understandings of why societies collapse and the impacts that future climate change may have on our modern societies. We will then turn our attention to past societies and study how past people responded to past challenges of environmental change. By evaluating discourse between the past and the present, we will examine which methods and theories are the most helpful when using the past to inform future strategies addressing modern issues of environmental degradation and climate change.