Designed for undergraduate courses in climate change politics within environmental studies, politics, and international relations curricula, for which there presently is no basic textbook. The text will integrate science and policy within each chapter by considering technical issues but also their political implications. Moving beyond the Does climate change exist? question this text seeks to present the questions students need to address in an interdisciplinary approach seldom used in textbooks. Specialized texts are currently available to explain the scientific scope of the problem, the natural resource economics and the international diplomacy or public administration dimensions. But none explains all of these. This text will address these broad approaches, as well as considering the broad philosophical and ethical debates behind the specific issues raised. The premise of the book is that while the science of the problem is well understood, with several chapters devoted to solutions, climate change is also increasingly a political problem.
The text will address the collective action problem early in the text, discuss the strength of the scientific evidence, the failure to come to terms with related social and political problems, and discuss the scope of the problem and will address why so little has been done. The text will also consider the clash between theories of collective action and interest group theories, and the increasingly prevalent view of climate change as a security threat affecting some groups and countries more than others.
The second part of the book discusses that there is no single magical solution, but there are many partial measure solutions which are already underway. We also discuss forms of solving the associated political problems but note that different solutions produce different winners and losers. Changes to how we produce and consume energy will be driven by market forces and by steady efforts to inform the public. The best indications are that sacrifice-based solutions do still exist but that we all need to be informed and make choices that will lead us in that direction.
