3.0

Average Course Rating

Scientific consensus tells us human induced climate change is a fact and that continuing with business as usual constitutes an existential threat to our social order, perhaps even to our species. And yet, these pronouncements have had little impact on our politics or everyday behavior. This suggests that understanding climate change does not depend on scientific data alone but on the perspectives that we have on such data, the meaning and significance our culture and personal values ascribe to it. In this course we will study a range of such perspectives, from ethics and politics to forms of belief and literary imagination, in order to examine both why we have failed to act and what adequate action might require. This class counts toward the requirement of concept-based courses for the minor in Comparative Thought and Literature.