Dr Kai Spiekermann CON.517

This course is available on the MSc in Environmental Economics and Climate Change, MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy, MSc in Political Theory and Master of Public Administration. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

No formal requirements, but an interest in the formal analysis of political, philosophical and economic questions and a willingness to study contributions from various disciplines, including the natural sciences, is expected.

This course analyses political and philosophical questions arising in the context of environmental change. The approach will be interdisciplinary, and the course will engage with normative-philosophical, positive-analytical and empirical literature, drawing on methodologies from political science, philosophy, economics and the natural sciences. Among the topics discussed will be climate change, overpopulation, food and water scarcity, deforestation, desertification and the loss of biodiversity. The course will address dilemmas of co-operation such as the ‘tragedy of the commons’, public good and collective action problems, intergenerational justice and discounting, global and environmental justice, cost-benefit analysis, the precautionary principle, and the analysis of complex systems.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the LT.

Students will be expected to produce 2 essays in the LT.

Nicholas Stern (2009) A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, London (Bodley Head)

John Broome (2012) Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, New York (W.W. Norton)

Mark Maslin (2004) Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford (Oxford University Press)

Stephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue, eds. (2010) Climate Ethics: Essential Readings, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007 / 2013) Fourth and Fifth Assessment Report, Available at www.ipcc.ch

Dieter Helm and Cameron Hepburn, eds. (2009) The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, Oxford (Oxford University Press)

Robert N. Stavins, ed. (2005) Economics of the Environment, 5th ed. New York (W. W. Norton)

David G. Victor (2011) Breaking the Global Warming Gridlock, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press)

Stephen M. Gardiner (2011) A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, Oxford (OUP)

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the ST.