70049 - Global Environmental Challenges

Learning outcomes

umans have become a force of nature reshaping environmental processes on a planetary scale. This course identifies and describes some ecological issues that poses a challenge for sustainability. It studies their interconnection with economic and political processes. The program builds around three topics: local and global commons, biodiversity, and climate change. The course objective is to provide the tools to understand some ecological challenges at the global level regarding the economy and politics of this generation. Other relevant environmental issues are excluded from the course, such as energy topics, methods for cost-benefit assessments, pollution from toxic chemicals.

Course contents

The course objective is to provide the tools for the understanding of the economics of climate change at the national and global level. It studies the interconnections of ecological issues with economic and political processes.

Lectures will be organized around the following topics:

• The Anthropocene

• The science of climate change

• Social and economic impacts of climate change

• Mitigation as a social dilemma

• Economic models of climate change

• Mitigation as risk management

• Inequality in climate responsibilities and impacts

• Mitigation between the present and the future

• Ecological transition using carbon prices

• Ecological transition as a system transition

• The political economy of climate policies

• Adaptation

• Geoengineering

Readings/Bibliography

Lectures and readings will be in English. The textbook is William Nordhaus (2013) The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, Yale University Press

Other readings will be made available on Virtuale: some are required while others only recommended. The site will be updated continuously and it is recommended to check weekly.

Teaching methods

Lectures with slides presentation

In-class activities

Assessment methods

This is an intermediate-level economics class. The class will require a considerable effort, especially if you aim at a good grade. The assessment will be about your level of understanding and your ability to work with the concepts. Memory is a pre-requisite to a successful exam, but the ability to repeat concepts will not be the crucial element.

Midterm exam. The midterm is written and will comprise 4-6 questions about topics/lectures 1-9. Answers are short essays that focus on defining concepts, illustrating theories, reporting empirical evidence, providing interpretations, solving numerical exercises. The focus will be on the material in the required readings and the slides. The midterm counts for half of your overall grade. There will be only one opportunity to take the midterm exam, on March 29^th. The grade earned in the midterm will be valid until the end of the solar year (2022). If you fail the final exam, or reject the overall grade, you will have to re-take the full final exam as if you never took the midterm.

Final exam. If you have taken the midterm, the final exam will be only about the second half of the program (topics/lectures 11-29) and will count for half of your overall grade. The full final exam is written and will comprise 8-12 questions. Again, answers are short essays that focus on defining concepts, illustrating theories, reporting empirical evidence, providing interpretations, solving numerical exercises. The focus will be on the material in the required readings and the slides.

Teaching tools

Slide presentations
Frontal lectures

 

Office hours

See the website of Marco Casari