About the Course
Humanity has just about run out of time to address climate change. Scientists have pointed out that a rise in mean surface temperature of 2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels will put the Earth in dangerous, uncharted territory. Yet we currently are on a path toward an increase of 4º or more this century.
Fortunately, solutions exist to deeply decarbonize the global energy systems, and put the world on a 2°C pathway: improvements in energy efficiency in the building, transport and industry sectors; the generation of low-carbon electricity, through a mix of renewable energies (wind, solar), nuclear, and fossil fuels with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS); and the shift to low-carbon energy carriers in energy end-use sectors, such as electric vehicles.
During this course, you will learn about these solutions and how they can be applied in different national contexts, based on the results from the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP), a global initiative to show how countries can transition to a low carbon economy by 2050, and how the world can stay within the 2°C limit.
Please note that this course was created before the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21, in Paris. We are offering it again now because we think much of the course is still relevant.
Climate Change Science and Negotiations is a single-semester course. Please ignore all references to a second semester.
Prerequisites
None. There are no pre-requisites for this course.
Course Engagement
While we encourage students to use the Discussion Forum, the discussions will not be managed by course staff for this course. We hope students will pose questions and thoughts to each other in this format!
Please be sure to direct any technical questions to edX. Questions about course content or SDG Academy in general should be addressed to courses@sdgacademy.org, using the subject line "CCSN course question."
Materials Provided
Climate Change Science and Negotiations is an on-demand course. Rather than having a set number of weeks that a course is open, the course will be available in its entirety once you enroll. This means that all lecture videos, quizzes, and readings have been uploaded to the platform and are available to you at once. This course instance will close on August 31, 2020, so be sure to complete the course by then! To learn about new instances of this course (and others), please sign up for our newsletter!