Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the international community vowed to “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible,” and to achieve “rapid emissions reductions thereafter.” Despite that, however, global emissions continue to increase. The lack of progress has spurred interest in the possibility of removing greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere. Modelling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that atmospheric greenhouse gas removal (GHGR) could help to combat climate change in three ways. First, GHGR could be used to reduce net emissions in the short-term, while countries are in the process of decarbonizing. Second, GHGR could be used to offset residual emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors (e.g., aviation) and thus achieve net-zero emissions. Third, in the longer-term, GHGR could be used to achieve net-negative emissions if deployed at levels exceeding residual emissions.

Scientists have proposed a variety of GHGR techniques, but questions remain about their efficacy, benefits, and risks. Technical feasibility is not the only consideration as large-scale deployment of GHGR could raise a host of social, ethical, and governance issues. For example, some climate activists have argued GHGR may discourage action to reduce emissions, and further entrench fossil fuel use. Others have expressed concern about the equity and justice implications of deploying GHGR, arguing
that it could exacerbate existing inequalities and place the most vulnerable at greater risk. Existing governance frameworks may not be effective in preventing these negative outcomes nor maximizing the benefits of GHGR.

This course will explore possible technique for large-scale GHGR. We will discuss the feasibility of deploying different techniques, with a particular focus on the ethical, social, and governance issues that large-scale deployment could raise. We will also consider strategies for advancing just and equitable deployment and explore the role of different actors (e.g., governments, the private sector, and civil society) in ensuring that occurs.

Instructor: Romany Webb
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1.5 points

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CLMT GR5017

Climate Change Decision-Making

This course presents decision science to students, showing it to be a source of concepts and techniques to promote more extensive and effective climate action. It emphasizes the relevance of decision science to students who are planning professional careers in climate-focused organizations and sectors, while also being of value to students who plan future studies in academic and professional programs.

As is widely recognized, there has been insufficient progress towards the goals of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at safe levels and of adapting to existing and projected climate impacts. Understanding how individuals and organizations make decisions is a key step to reducing this gap. Decision science can help design resources (finance, regulation, governance, information and communications) in ways that promote action.

The field of decision science emerged decades ago, drawing on psychology, economics and other social science fields to address problems of poor decision-making in areas such as finance and health. Recent research has extended this field to climate action. It has clarified the obstacles that impede climate decision-making in many settings, and it has developed techniques to improve these decisions. There is an increasing body of empirical research that tests the effectiveness of these techniques in a wide variety of settings.

This course familiarizes students with central concepts and methods of decision science. The modules of the course focus on specific concepts and on techniques linked to them, drawing on concrete examples from climate-relevant domains such as disaster risk reduction, health, energy, water and food security. The readings include studies which assess the effectiveness of specific techniques to support climate decisions. The course covers a range of different approaches. It shows that each of these can be useful to address obstacles to effective decision-making, but there is no silver bullet. Instead, the course provides students with means to select the decision techniques that are effective to address specific issues in specific contexts.

Instructor: Ben S Orlove
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3 points

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CLMT GR5019

Climate Justice: Theory, Practice & Poli

Clim Justice: Theory -> P

Instructor: Sheila Foster
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3 points

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CLMT GR5023

Climatic Change: Storytelling Arts, Zeit

This course brings students from The School of the Arts and The Climate School together to explore new and compelling approaches to navigating climate solutions in the worlds we create and the stories we tell in theater, film, television, digital, visual art, and creative writing. In our current era of rapid change and transformation, artists and environmentalists have an important role to play in grasping the zeitgeist through an integrated lens of science, culture, and imagination.

Interdisciplinary collaboration in storytelling can drive feelings of understanding and agency by articulating the massive social changes that are imminent and the emotional uncertainties around climate. There’s a rapidly growing audience for these stories — but there are way too few of them. Delving into key areas of environmental concerns, students will learn how to access and analyze systems of science-based research and innovation, and build new muscles in storytelling, cultural strategies and longterm thinking for a wide range of artistic visions. Arts students will strengthen climate literacy and sciencethinking skills; Climate students will strengthen storytelling skills. We will study the connection between stories and audiences, including multi-cultural perspectives across the platforms where we consume arts and entertainment today. Together we will explore a multitude of narrative structures and styles of storytelling and we will produce fresh thinking for this generation around the role that climate storytelling can play in popular culture and adapting to change. Students will track their evolution of their vision over the span of the course, culminating in Week/Class 11: The Republic of Zeitgeist & Our Future, where students lead and co-teach this class around our collective visions for what our future should be.

Students will participate through creative writing assignments, student-led discussions and team exercises, and watching & reading climate content. We will practice collaborative strategies to explore new ways to tell creative and complex human stories in the arts and assess effective ways to shift culture to imagine and adapt to what life on a transformed global scale may become for all of us.

Instructor: Lydia Pilcher
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3 points

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CLMT G5033

Speaking Carbon: Earth Systems, Climate,

C2: Carbon & Climate

Instructor: Gisela Winckler
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3 points

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CLMT G5046

Global Food Trade, Shocks, and Migration

Global Food Trade Shocks

In this course, we examine the complex interdependencies between global food trade systems, climate-related and socioeconomic shocks, and human migration patterns. Together, we'll explore how disruptions propagate through international food networks, analyzing these systems through the lenses of agricultural economics, climate science, and geopolitics. We will investigate how various shocks—from climate extremes and armed conflicts to market volatility and pandemics—impact food security and trigger population movements across diverse regions and scales. Throughout the semester, we'll pay particular attention to climate change as a threat multiplier that intensifies existing vulnerabilities in our global food systems. By combining data analysis, case studies, and theoretical frameworks, we'll develop a nuanced understanding of the food-climate-migration nexus that shapes our modern world.

This multidisciplinary approach will enable us to examine concepts of resilience and evaluate diverse solutions for strengthening food systems' ability to absorb shocks, from diversified production and redundant supply chains to adaptive governance mechanisms and transformative policy interventions that enhance robustness across scales. We will specifically investigate how different metrics of resilience—including redundancy, diversity, modularity, and connectivity—can be operationalized in food trade networks to reduce vulnerability to cascading failures that often trigger migration responses. Through quantitative analysis and case studies, we'll assess how strategies such as regional food reserves, alternative distribution channels, and early warning systems affect both food security and human mobility patterns. This integrated approach allows us to explore interventions that simultaneously strengthen food systems and provide migration-sensitive adaptations, recognizing that human mobility itself can be both a vulnerability and a resilience strategy in the face of food system disruptions.

Instructor: Michael J Puma
h-index: 23 Info
3 points

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CLMT G5047

The Politics of Energy Transitions: From

Instructor: Leah V Aronowsky
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1.5 points

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CLMT G5048

Designing Climate Solutions: Framing Cli

The course addresses an important issue in climate action. Much progress has been made in recent decades in identifying the causes and consequences of climate change, and in developing a wide variety of approaches to address these two. Because of these advances, options for action have multiplied. In many sectors, a set of different approaches have been proposed. Before any one of those approaches is put into practice, it is useful to weigh it in comparison to the other approaches, to see whether it fits the specific context and population best.

This course critically examines key concepts to enable students to navigate contested terrains and design more effective approaches to climate action. Students will develop skills to critically assess climate narratives, concepts, and communicate with nuance and depth to important audiences in the climate sphere. The frameworks are assessed through a critical lens, looking at the challenges of bridging different languages–whether the six official UN languages, or national and Indigenous languages, or the languages of experts and everyday communities. The course has a strong environmental justice lens as well, looking at how seemingly slight variation in approaches can have significant consequences on marginalized communities. By the end of this course, students will have the tools to critically examine the role of frameworks and language to design impactful climate action.

The course goes through the main concepts, starting with Module 1: Foundational Climate Systems, which unpacks our use and understanding of the concepts that provide building blocks that the climate movement is built on: nature, environment, society, economy and politics. Central Park will serve as a case study to illustrate the connections and differences between these concepts. This is followed by Module 2: Dynamic Climate Systems, which examines the concepts that describe progress of climate action and the climate movement through time: sustainability, development, resilience, transformation and Indigenous knowledge. Elizabeth Kolbert’s book H is for Hope will serve as a resource to compare these concepts. Each concept will first be introduced through a lecture for the first half of class, followed by an integration of the concept to real-life contexts through interactive activities, grounding in documents, and projects. Module 3: Multiple Frameworks for Climate Sectors integrates the first two modules and examines their relevance for specific sectors o