Climate Crisis

Course manual 2020/2021

Course content

Climate crisis

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we only have a decade left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change. However, we have known about the climate change problem for more than a century, and the negotiations on climate change have been going on for 30 years. However, these negotiations have not so far been effective enough to change our emissions of greenhouse gases drastically. What explains our failure to act? Is it because we do not know how to develop true interdisciplinary insights? Is it because some scientists and the public still doubt that there is a climate change problem? Is it because we do not like the implications of the solutions proposed by science? What are our options to deal with climate change? Should we mitigate or adapt? Or should we geo-engineer the climate? Who should do more – the rich or the poor? How can we act as individuals? Going vegan perhaps? What does economics tell us about the costs of climate policy and the most efficient policy instruments? What does politics teach us about why we fail to act? How does philosophy look at our moral duties towards future generations? All these topics will be discussed in the interdisciplinary course Climate Crisis.

Study materials

Literature

• Articles and book chapters online

Objectives

• 1. The student is able to understand the current state of scientific knowledge on climate change, including its causes, impacts and risks for different actors in different parts of the world. The student is able to understand the role of different disciplines in addressing the problem of climate change, in understanding the tragedy of the commons, and in understanding risk
• 2. The student is able to understand why climate change is considered a crisis and/or an emergency, and understand the arguments of skeptics and the related counterarguments.
• 3. The students is able to understand why humans and societies externalize impacts on other people and future generations, and how that exacerbates existing vulnerabilities.
• 4. The student is able to identify the role of international climate negotiations and economics in shaping the international positions and motivations of countries for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
• 5. The student is able to analyze the role of energy systems and identify the opportunities for and hurdles to climate change mitigation.
• 6. The student is able to reflect on the role of multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to the climate change, including one’s own position in the debate.

Teaching methods

• Lecture
• Self-study

Compulsory course material are the articles that are offered via Canvas for this course and the articles that can be downloaded from the Canvas environment via the links provided, or that can be searched in the digital library. Central subject matter can be found in the PowerPoints and is also part of the compulsory material for the final exam.

Learning activities

Attendance

Additional requirements for this course:

Students are required to attend all lectures. Absence needs to be communicated to the course coordinator before the start of the lecture (Sofie te Wierik, s.a.tewierik@uva.nl).

Assessment

The final exam is about all material covered (including literature and the slides that were discussed during the lectures) and is an online open book exam. The final exam determines 50% of the final mark. The final exam tests your understanding of the readings and power points provided in the lectures.

The other 50% of the final mark is determined by the assignment of writing an essay. The writing of the essay will comprise of two phases: at the start of the course, you submit the essay (800 words) prior to lecture one (Interim assignment 1). At the end of the course, you come back to your essay and integrate and reflect on what you learned during the course. This final essay will be submitted prior to the final lecture and comprises of a total of 2000 words. The title of the essay is: Addressing Climate Change: My Perspective. The essay must include your understanding of the seriousness of the problem, the way it can be addressed and who should act. It should also include ten additional references to literature to support your arguments. Please mark the additional references with an Asterix.

A minimum mark has been set for the essay and the final exam.

Inspection of assessed work

Grades will be announced via Canvas in line with the requirements set in TER-A and TER-B (Dutch: OER-A and OER-B)

Up to 20 working days after the announcement of the result students have the right of inspection of their work (all forms of assessment). The student can request a copy of his/her work by e-mailing the teacher/course coordinator. A Collective Assessment Evaluation is organized for the final exam. The date of the Collective Assessment Evaluation will appear in the datanose schedule.

Please note: you lose the right of feedback from the examiner when you don’t attend the Collective Assessment Evaluation without good reasons. For more information about the right of inspection, please refer to OER part A FNWI, article 4.9.

After the above-mentioned 20 working days have expired the entire exam package must be handed over to the IIS Service Desk after which the work will be archived.

Assignments

There are five interim assignments. Only the assignments submitted via Canvas are reviewed. The option to submit automatically closes promptly at 17:00 pm of the day for submitting each assignment. The interim assignments are compulsory and graded with a pass/fail. Four passes are necessary to be entitled to sit for the examination.

Note: Assignments must be made individually. Answering questions together and - more or less - submitting the same answers is strictly prohibited and can be punished with fraud / plagiarism. So make sure that you work individually on your assignment and also only submit your own work. Having fellow students read the assignments is also strongly discouraged.

Interim assignments will be published on Canvas.

Fraud and plagiarism

This course adheres to the general rules on ‘Fraud and Plagiarism` as set by the UvA. Students are expected to have familiarized themselves with these rules.

The terms Fraud or Plagiarism are to be interpreted as the copying of the work of peer-student and/or the copying of (scientific) sources of information, without explicitly referring to its source.

Fraud/plagiarism is forbidden and actively checked by staff. When one is suspected of having committed fraud/plagiarism, the exam committee of beta-gamma and future planet studies will be informed. The highest punishment for fraud/plagiarism involves the student to be disallowed to partake of any exams or examination activities within the future planet studies programme, for the duration of a whole academic year, or may even face dismissal from the programme. More information about Fraud and Plagiarism can be found at: www.uva.nl/plagiaat

Course structure

Timetable

The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.

Honours information

The IIS elective and honours courses are covered by the examination board and the OER of the Bachelor Beta-gamma. Teaching and Examination Regulations (OER) are published annually and lay down all the rules and guidelines regarding assessment and examination which the IIS pursues. The OER can be found via http://student.uva.nl/bg/az/item/onderwijs-en-examenregeling-oer.html . Students and contractors who follow courses at the IIS can draw appeal to the Board of Appeals Board (COBEX).

Additional information

This course has a Canvas website. Here you can find the necessary information like the group information of your tutorials, the assignments. Look at Canvas regularly.

You are registered for this course via SIS. This means that you are automatically registered for exams that are part of this course. For more information about SIS visit: www.student.uva.nl/sis .

NB: You only have the right to join the resit of the course when you also participated in the first  examination moment and meet all other obligatory conditions (i.e.  obligatory assignments ). When this is the case, and you don’t pass the final exam, you will be automatically registered for the resit of this exam. When you don’t meet the conditions or don’t participate in the examination (1st time) you won’t get registered for the resit, which means that you have to do the course again next year. When you cannot meet all the conditions of the course or cannot participate in the examination at the first exam moment, you have to inform your lecturer before this examination moment. In the case of compelling circumstances the examiners will look for a different solution.

Contact information

Coordinator

• S.A. te Wierik MSc

Coordinator and primary lecturer: Prof. Dr. Joyeeta Gupta
Room number: REC B4.07
E-mail: J.Gupta@uva.nl

For questions about the course, please contact:
Sofie te Wierik
s.a.tewierik@uva.nl

Staff