Course Description

The objective of this course is to critically analyze how climate science and policy activities find meaning in our daily lives. To address this objective, we will focus particularly on the roles of selected non-nation state actors in addressing global environmental change. By way of various themes addressed in the sessions over the semester, we will connect the more formal spaces of climate science, policy and politics to the spaces of the ‘everyday’. Collectively, we will attempt to understand the intricate dynamics between multilevel institutional architectures and the landscape of actors, primarily those outside national governments which are able to influence outcomes (media, cities, businesses, NGOs, etc.). As a more specific case-study example, we will focus most closely on how mass media shape understanding and engagement with the issue of climate change.

Throughout, we will examine how the formalized spaces of climate politics and policy, from international to local, permeate the everyday spaces of attitudes, perspectives and behaviors in the public sphere. Through such an approach and through this case study of climate change, I aim for us to all effectively explore the variegated spaces of (dis)engagement with this prominent and contemporary global environmental challenge.