New Teaching Tool for the Politics of Climate Change

[Jeff Colgan]

Hi GEP-ers,

I want to share a new tool that we’ve just released from the Climate Solutions Lab to help teach the politics of climate change. If you have a course on that topic, you might already teach some core ideas like collective action problems or social movements. Max Bradley and I want to encourage your students to also think about different “theories of change” for how countries or societies move from a carbon-based economy to a more decarbonized one. We think there are, implicitly, different theories of change underlying policy moves like the Kyoto Protocol or the various Green New Deal efforts.

There’s a quick video about our framework and you can download in-depth materials here. There’s also a feedback form if you feel we’ve missed important work (including your own!) or you have other ideas about how we can improve it. 

Hope you find it helpful in the coming year! In some ways, teaching the politics of climate change has never been harder, or more important. 

All the best,

Jeff Colgan
Richard Holbrooke Professor of Political Science, Brown University
Director, Climate Solutions Lab
Web: www.jeffcolgan.com