Schedule

Single session. No class Monday 1/18 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

Session 1 — Readings

• IPCC, AR6 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers (2023), §A and §B.
• Mark Aklin & Matto Mildenberger, "Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change," Global Environmental Politics 20(4) (2020).
• Mike Hulme, "1.5°C and climate research after the Paris Agreement," Nature Climate Change 6 (2016).

In class

• Walkthrough: UNFCCC Article 2 + Paris Agreement Article 2, and the AOSIS-led campaign that put 1.5°C into Article 2.1(a).
• Norm-setting conversation. Discussion-lead and interview-series country sign-ups.

Recommended

• IPCC, Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C: Summary for Policymakers (2018) — skim.
• Carbon Brief explainer: "The history of the 1.5°C target."
• Michael Mehling, Harro van Asselt, Kati Kulovesi & Elisa Morgera, "Teaching Climate Law: Trends, Methods and Outlook," Journal of Environmental Law 32 (2020) — §3.

Session 2.A — Anchor

• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), Articles 2, 3, 4 (read closely).
• Lavanya Rajamani, "Differentiation in the Emerging Climate Regime," Theoretical Inquiries in Law 14(1) (2013).

Session 2.B — Application

• Paris Agreement (2015), Articles 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14 (read closely — Article 13 establishes the Enhanced Transparency Framework, the regime's monitoring backbone).
• Robert Falkner, "The Paris Agreement and the New Logic of International Climate Politics," International Affairs 92(5) (2016).
• In-class: treaty interpretation lab + roleplay the Lima Call drafting fight.
• Interview-series country selections due Friday.

Session 3.A — Anchor (incl. qualitative interview method workshop, ~20 min)

• David Ciplet, J. Timmons Roberts, & Mizan Khan, Power in a Warming World, ch. 2.
• In-class workshop: qualitative interview design — interview guide, cold-emailing, consent script, recording mechanics.

Session 3.B — Application

• Vanuatu-led UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/77/276 (March 2023), requesting an ICJ advisory opinion — text.
• Watch: Tuvalu Foreign Minister Simon Kofe's COP26 underwater speech (2021); Vanuatu Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu's remarks at the ICJ public hearings (Dec 2024).

Interview plan due Friday of this week.

Session 4.A — Anchor

• Robert O. Keohane & David G. Victor, "The Regime Complex for Climate Change," Perspectives on Politics 9(1) (2011).
• Elinor Ostrom, "Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change," Global Environmental Change 20(4) (2010).
• Thomas Hale, "Catalytic Cooperation," Global Environmental Politics 20(4) (2020).

In-class activity: who joins the regime complex? (~25 min)

• Bring a laptop. Open Université Laval's International Environmental Agreements (IEA) Database graph tool. It plots how many environmental agreements each country has joined against GDP per capita, natural-resource rents, democracy, trade openness, or income inequality.
• In pairs, set Graph 1 to the latest year with GDP per capita on the Y axis. Then set Graph 2 to natural-resource rents. Which relationship is stronger?
• Switch the scope between bilateral and multilateral agreements, then filter by issue area (Energy, Pollution). Does the pattern change?
• Find two outliers: a poor country that joins a lot and a rich country that joins little. Bring them back to the room. Do they support Keohane & Victor's account of the regime complex, Ostrom's account of polycentric governance, or neither?
• Watch for one trap: joining an agreement is not the same as complying with it. What would you need beyond these graphs to tell the difference?

Session 4.B — Application: climate clubs, monitoring, and the politics of measurement

• William Nordhaus, "Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-Riding in International Climate Policy," American Economic Review 105(4) (2015) — read for the political theory; skim the model.
• Joseph E. Aldy, "The Crucial Role of Policy Surveillance in International Climate Policy," Climatic Change 126 (2014).
• News set: EU CBAM implementation; G7 Climate Club; First Movers Coalition; Climate TRACE (satellite-based independent emissions tracking, 2021–); MethaneSAT (launched 2024); IFRS S2 and the SEC climate disclosure rule (2023–2024); the First Global Stocktake outcome (COP28 Dubai, 2023).
• In-class discussion question: who decides what counts? When the regime relies on self-reported national inventories, what does it mean for independent satellites and corporate-disclosure regimes to start producing their own emissions ledgers?

The framework week.

Session 5.A — Anchor (incl. Wikipedia editing workshop, ~25 min)

• Jeff Colgan, Jessica F. Green & Thomas N. Hale, "Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change," International Organization 75(2) (2021).
• Mark Carney, "Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon — Climate Change and Financial Stability," speech at Lloyd's of London (September 29, 2015) — read for the financial-disclosure-as-monitoring mechanism that catalyzed TCFD, IFRS S2, and the SEC climate rule.
• In-class workshop: Wikipedia editing. Wikipedia article topic due Friday.

Session 5.B — Application

• Robert J. Brulle, "Institutionalizing Delay: Foundation Funding and the Creation of U.S. Climate Change Counter-Movement Organizations," Climatic Change 122 (2014).
• William F. Lamb et al., "Discourses of Climate Delay," Global Sustainability 3 (2020).

Session 6.A — Anchor: national-level capture

• Matto Mildenberger, Carbon Captured, Introduction and ch. 1.
• Jonas Meckling, Nina Kelsey, Eric Biber & John Zysman, "Winning Coalitions for Climate Policy," Science 349 (2015).

Session 6.B — Application: subnational climate regulation — states, provinces, cities

• Barry G. Rabe, "Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems," Governance 20(3) (2007).
• Harriet Bulkeley, "Cities and the Governing of Climate Change," Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35 (2010).
• Leah Stokes, Short Circuiting Policy, Introduction — state utility politics.
• Case set on the course site (read one): California AB32 + the Western Climate Initiative; the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI); New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act; the C40 network and the Under2 Coalition; Québec's cap-and-trade.
• First interview memo due Sunday.

Supply-side political economy.

Session 7.A — Anchor

• Michael L. Ross, "What Have We Learned About the Resource Curse?," Annual Review of Political Science 18 (2015).
• Jessica F. Green, Jennifer Hadden, Thomas Hale & Paasha Mahdavi, "Transition, Hedge, or Resist? Understanding Political and Economic Behavior toward Decarbonization in the Oil and Gas Industry," Review of International Political Economy 29(6) (2022).

Session 7.B — Application (incl. public-writing workshop, ~25 min)

• John A. Helveston & Jonas Nahm, "China's Key Role in Scaling Low-Carbon Energy Technologies," Science 366 (2019).
• Navroz K. Dubash, "India's climate change policy," in India in a Warming World (Oxford, 2019) — excerpt.
• In-class workshop: writing for public stakes — op-ed pitches, public comments.
• Wikipedia pre-edit draft due Sunday.

Session 8.A — Anchor

• Chukwumerije Okereke, "Africa and the Climate Change Negotiations," in Handbook on Climate Change and Africa (2016) — excerpt.
• African Climate Summit, Nairobi Declaration (September 2023).

Session 8.B — Application

• Vijaya Ramachandran, "Africa needs fossil fuels to end energy apartheid," Foreign Policy (2023).
• News set: Uganda EACOP pipeline politics; Senegal/Mozambique LNG decisions.
• Public-submission track choice + topic + target outlet/docket due Sunday. Second interview memo due Sunday.

Session 9.A — Anchor

• Carol Farbotko, "Wishful sinking: Disappearing islands, climate refugees and cosmopolitan experimentation," Asia Pacific Viewpoint 51(1) (2010).
• Timothée Ourbak & Alexandre Magnan, "The Paris Agreement and climate change negotiations: Small Islands, big players," Regional Environmental Change 18 (2018).

Session 9.B — Application

• Close reading: Tuvalu PM Kausea Natano's UN speech; Vanuatu Climate Minister Regenvanu's speech at the ICJ hearings.
• Wikipedia edits go live this week.

The empirical political-science week. Read for what the data say, and where the data fight.

Session 10.A — Anchor

• Solomon M. Hsiang, Marshall Burke & Edward Miguel, "Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict," Science 341 (2013).
• Halvard Buhaug, "Climate Not to Blame for African Civil Wars," PNAS 107(38) (2010).
• In-class: methods micro-workshop on how to read causal-inference work — we anatomize the research design, identification, and what the critics actually contest.

Session 10.B — Application

• Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand, UN Human Rights Committee, Communication No. 2728/2016 (2020) — read views.
• Daniel Billy et al. v. Australia (Torres Strait Islanders), UN Human Rights Committee, Communication No. 3624/2019 (2022) — read views.
• Third interview memo due Sunday.

Session 11.A — Anchor

• Farhana Sultana, "The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality," Political Geography 99 (2022).
• Kyle Powys Whyte, "Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene," English Language Notes 55 (2017).

Session 11.B — Application

• Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Reconsidering Reparations, ch. 4.
• Inuit Circumpolar Council, Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Watt-Cloutier, 2005) — introduction and §V.
• In-class structured debate: should climate reparations be paid, by whom, to whom?
• Public-submission draft due Sunday.

Session 12.A — Anchor

• Patrick J. Egan & Megan Mullin, "Climate Change: US Public Opinion," Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017).
• Chad Hazlett & Matto Mildenberger, "Wildfire Exposure Increases Pro-Environment Voting within Democratic but Not Republican Areas," American Political Science Review 114(4) (2020).

Session 12.B — Application

• Jennifer Hadden, Networks in Contention: The Divisive Politics of Climate Change, ch. 1.
• Cases for in-class: Standing Rock #NoDAPL; Munduruku resistance to the Tapajós dam; Fridays for Future in the Global South.
• Interview synthesis paper due Sunday 4/18, 11:59 pm.

Session 13.A — Anchor

• Reinhard Mechler et al., eds., Loss and Damage from Climate Change: Concepts, Methods and Policy Options, ch. 1 (open access).
• COP28 Dubai decision operationalizing the Loss and Damage Fund (2023) — text.

Session 13.B — Application

• Vera Songwe, Nicholas Stern & Amar Bhattacharya, Finance for Climate Action: Scaling Up Investment for Climate and Development (Independent High-Level Expert Group report, 2022) — Executive Summary.
• Listen: Barbados PM Mia Mottley's most recent address to the UN General Assembly.
• Public submission goes out this week. Wikipedia reflection memo due Sunday.

Session 14.A — Anchor

• Joana Setzer & Lisa Vanhala, "Climate Change Litigation: A Review of Research on Courts and Litigants in Climate Governance," WIREs Climate Change 10(3) (2019).
• Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber (2024) — paragraphs 410–457.

Session 14.B — Application

• Asghar Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan, W.P. No. 25501/2015 (Lahore High Court, 2015) — read judgment.
• International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change (2025) — operative paragraphs + one accompanying commentary (Sands or Boisson de Chazournes).

Session 15.A — Coalition caucuses and strategy session

• No new reading. Position memos due 24 hours before this session (Sun 5/2).
• Coalitions meet to finalize opening case, cross-examination, and closing statement.
• Public-submission reflection memo (1 page) due before this session.

Session 15.B — Three-Futures Debate (Wed 5/5, last day of instruction)

• In-class debate among Carbon Continuity, Green-Growth Decarbonization, and Decolonial Just Transition.
• Final 20 minutes: full-class debrief — what do we now think Global Climate Law is for?