University of New South Wales

In this course students garner a conceptual and methodological toolkit for interpreting and making sense of the social aspects of climate change and the often intense political arguments that surround it. The course explores the history of climate science and the more recent emergence of a global consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The course goes on to consider recent work on abrupt climate change, climate modelling, and the politics of climate change adaptation and mitigation technologies. The course draws on a multi-disciplinary framework for understanding the social, historical and political aspects of climate change, with insights from politics, sociology, and science and technical studies (STS). Students are introduced to key areas of contemporary scholarly thinking in the environmental humanities – including political ecology, the sociology of scientific knowledge, and contemporary political theory.