Introductory description

Over 130 countries, 241 cities, and 820 of the world's largest corporation are now committed to delivering net zero emissions as part of the global effort to meet the United Nations Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. At the same time, many parts of the world are already experiencing significant damage as a result of climate change, inferring the need for loss and damage policies to address associated losses, whilst many are also actively working to design and implement adaptation policies.

There is, however, a highly complex politics that sits behind these, increasingly varied, attempts to mitigate for, adapt to, and pay out loss and damage funds as a result of, climate change. This is partly because the implications of climate change are experienced in such an uneven manner, responsibility for historic and current emissions is concentrated in the Global North and BRICS countries, and, crucially, because no administration, be it global, national, local or corporate, yet has all the answers regarding how to meet global targets.

As such, this module introduces students to:
A variety of policies currently in place to meet the challenges of climate change;
The main political actors responsible for climate policy making and reaching global agreement;
Orthodox and alternative political ideas about how to understand climate change and how to address it;
The main themes that dominate political debates about climate change today.

In doing so, this module offers students the tools with which to think critically about current approaches to governing for climate change, to evaluate key challenges and opportunities, and, using this knowledge, think creatively about how to meet net zero emissions targets in a just and lasting manner.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Global Climate Change Governance: the History of Compromise
Week 2: The Multi-level, Multi-actor Global Landscape of Climate Governance
Week 3: Political Ideas about Governing for Climate Change
Week 4: Climate Change Policies, Outcomes, and Relation to Other Policy Areas
Week 5: Key Theme 1: the Politics of Climate Denial, Obfuscation, and Delay
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Key Theme 2: the Politics of Fossil Fuel Phase Out and Clean Energy
Week 8: Key Theme 3: Justice & Equity in Sustainable Transformations
Week 9: Key Theme 4: Climate Change and Growth
Week 10: Alternative & Radical Approaches

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Identify the main political ideas, approaches to, and actors involved in current attempts to govern for climate change
• Critically evaluate climate change mitigation and adaptation policies
• Identify dynamic inter-relationships between climate change and other policy areas - such as energy, transport, agriculture, health, and economic policy.
• Understand the key obstacles to, and opportunities for, just and sustainable transformations
• Critically evaluate alternative political approaches to governing climate change

Indicative reading list

Beeson, M (2019) Environmental populism: the politics of survival in the Anthropocene. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan
Bernstein, S. (2001) The compromise of liberal environmentalism. Columbia University Press
Buller, A. (2022) The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Manchester University Press
Carroll, W. et al (2018) 'The Corporate Elite and the Architecture of Climate Change Denial', Canadian Review of Sociology
Dubash, N. (2021) ‘Varieties of climate governance: the emergence and functioning of climate institutions’, Environmental Politics 30:1, 1-25
Gambhir, A. (2023) ‘This really does change everything: attaining 1.5°C needs all available mitigation levers’ Environmental Research Letters 18 (2023) 022001
Geels, F.; Turnheim, B. (2022) The Great Reconfiguration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goeminne, G. (2012) ‘Lost in translation: Climate denial and the return of the political’, Global Environmental Politics 12:2, 1-8
Hickel, J. (2022) ‘Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary’, Lancet Planet Health 2020, 4: 399-404
Jacobs, M. (2023) ‘Circuses have evolved and so must UN climate summits’, Climate Home News 5 February 2023
Jacobs, M. (2021) ‘Reflections on COP26: International diplomacy, global justice, and the greening of capitalism’, The Political Quarterly Online
Jordan. A.; Moore, B. (2020) Durable by Design? Policy Feedback in a Changing Climate. Cambridge University Press
Kuzemko, C. (2016) ‘Climate change benchmarking: constructing a sustainable future?’, Review of International Studies 41:5, 969-992
Newell, P.; Paterson, M. (2010) Climate capitalism: Global warming and the transformation of the global economy. Cambridge University Press
Paterson, M.; Tobin, P.; Van Deveer, S. (2022) ‘Climate Governance Antagonisms: Policy stability and repoliticization’, Global Environmental Politics 22:2, 1-11
Paterson, M. (2021) In Search of Climate Politics. Cambridge University Press
Scoones, I.; Leach, M.; Newell, P. (2015) The politics of green transformations. Florence: Taylor and Francis
Skovgaard, J.; van Asselt, H. (2018) The politics of fossil fuel subsidies and their reform. Cambridge University Press
Stevenson, H. (2020) Global Environmental Politics: Problems, policy and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Willis, B. (2020) Too hot to handle? The democratic challenge of climate change. Bristol: Bristol University Press

Interdisciplinary

This module draws on international political economy; climate science; human geography and sociology to explain and explore the complex global politics of acting to address climate change.

International

This module takes an explicitly global view of the politics of climate change, and will cover politics and policy within a range of countries but also on the international and transnational scales. This includes non-Western views about what climate change means politically and how to solve it.

Subject specific skills

Develop an advanced knowledge of the political debates and struggles that influence political decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change
Gain tools to analyse the roles of the main political actors involved, at multiple scales, in climate change action
Develop knowledge of, and engage critically with, a range of different political approaches to climate change
Apply political concepts to reveal how climate change policy is shaped, constrained, and developed
Gain tools to identify climate solutions that take political debates, struggles, and approaches into account

Transferable skills

Specific knowledge, relevant to policymaking in governance and corporate situations, about climate change
Communication skills - both written and presentation
Critical analytical skills
Further development of the techniques of academic argument, writing and referencing
Working with others when undertaking group exercises