Spring Quarter 2002

Global Environment

INTS 2150

Monday and Wednesday        3:00pm – 4:50pm

Professor Frank Laird

Global environmental problems are much in the news.  The Bush Administration raised a firestorm of criticism last spring when it withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a treaty that few people had heard of before that.  Governments and environmental groups frequently release reports showing the loss of forest cover or the extinction of various species.  We seem to be on the verge of several crises, all of uncertain magnitude, timing, and consequences.  Individual governments working alone seem unable to solve these problems.  International institutions that try to get nations to cooperate in solving the problems face complex and seemingly intractable challenges.  Given all these difficulties, what's a planet to do? 

            This course has two goals.  First, we will gain grounding in the nature of a few of these problems, such as stratospheric ozone depletion (the loss of the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful UV from the sun), deforestation, and climate change.  We will also look at the solutions that some people have proposed to them, and the institutions that are trying to actually fashion and implement such solutions.  Second, we will examine critically existing international agreements designed to address these problems, from very successful agreements like the Montreal Protocol that protects the ozone layer to agreements like Kyoto that seem to be having a much harder time.  This second goal is not to be naysayers, but rather to use our analytical tools to probe questions about what in the agreements might work, what might not, and what is left out. 

Besides providing students with material about all these issues, the course will put an emphasis on helping the students develop their research skills in environmental issues, including how best to find information about them.  The hope is that this course will just be the beginning, not the end, of your education about global environmental policy. 

Module: GLB ENV/TECH