Coping with Climate Change: Life After Copenhagen

(SCI 31)

This ambitious team-taught course, co-sponsored by Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, will feature more than a dozen leading figures in the field of climate change discussing what is arguably the most urgent challenge facing life on Earth today. The course will begin just weeks after the international summit on climate change in Copenhagen, in which many of the course’s speakers will have participated.

Here are the facts. Over the course of the 20th century the average global temperature went up about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. We now know that this rise was primarily the result of human emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 2006 the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that in the 21st century the global temperature could increase another 2.0 to 11.5 degrees. Even at the low end of that projection, the risks of disruptions to terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, extinction of plants and animals, and increased number of extreme weather events are uncomfortably high. If the global temperature increases 6.3 degrees, the risks to all sectors of our planet, from plants and animals to economic stability, would increase dramatically.

This realization will bring 200 countries to the bargaining table in Copenhagen in December 2009, with the primary aim of agreeing on an international plan to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. The fate of our lives and the lives of future generations depend largely on the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting. It would be hard to overestimate how consequential this moment is.

Stanford is fortunate to have on its faculty and research staff many of the best climate-change scientists in the world. Terry Root and Meg Caldwell, both of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, have invited a dozen of their colleagues to join them in this course to explore the challenges and opportunities that will emerge from Copenhagen. Presentations will be made by Kris Ebi, Chris Field, Mark Jacobson, Jon Krosnick, Mike Mastrandrea, Pam Mattson, Roz Naylor, Steve Palumbi, Erica Plambeck, Terry Root, Steve Schneider, John Weyant, Meg Caldwell, and Dave Patton.

Syllabus:
(This may be subject to change)

January 14: Copenhagen: The Meeting and its Consequences with Meg Caldwell

January 21: Our Oceans: Oops, There Goes Another Gastropod Shell, speaker TBA

January 28: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with Kristie Ebi

February 4: Rapid Global Warming: Yes the Climate is Changing with Stephen Schneider

February 11: Contrarians: What is Fact and What is Fiction?
The Great Global Warming Swindle with Martin Durkin, Director
Australian Broadcasting Company’s Rebuttal, Tony Jones, Moderator

February 18: Identifying the Facts, Values, Lies, and Fiction, speaker TBA

February 25: The General Public: Why Such Resistance, speaker TBA

March 4: Copenhagen Politics: State and National, speaker TBA

March 11: International Implications of Copenhagen with Lisa Curran

March 18: Where Are We Heading after Copenhagen? with Terry Root

Please note: This course cannot be taken for a Letter Grade.

Meg Caldwell, Exec Director, Center for Ocean Solutions, Woods Institute

Meg Caldwell is the Director of Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program at the Stanford Law School. She is also the former chair of the Californiathe former chair of the California Coastal Commission, and served as a board member of the California Coastal Conservancy and on the California Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force. Her research focuses on coastal law and policy, and marine resource policy development and implementation.

Terry Root, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute

Terry Root works on large-scale ecological questions with a focus on impacts of global warming. She actively works at making scientific information accessible to decision makers and the public, and was a lead author for IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1999, she was chosen as an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, in 1992 as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, and in 1990 she received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. She is a professor, by courtesy, of Biological Sciences at Stanford.