Tag Archives: Anthropocene
Climate change communication, energy politics, and journalism: Syllabus and schedule
September 1, 2016–In this advanced seminar, students apply research and best practices to communicating about and reporting on climate change and energy issues. Course work prepares students for careers in journalism, advocacy, government, and strategic communication. Students analyze major debates over the environment, climate change, and related technologies; assessing how they are portrayed by experts, advocates, Continue Reading »
A call for greater diversity of thought in Environmental Studies courses
May 15, 2015 —Even before Jacqueline Ho enrolled in her first environmental studies course at college, her thinking about climate change had been shaped during her years growing up in Singapore reading books by the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben. At college, ideas first planted by McKibben were reinforced in courses where she read classics Continue Reading »
Universities in the Anthropocene: Engaging students and communities
January 28, 2015 —There is a growing movement among writers, scientists, and scholars to pin a new label on our modern era. According to these thinkers, pressing environmental problems like climate change are a sign that we have crossed a major threshold in Earth’s long history, entering a unique stage in geological time that requires a Continue Reading »
Naomi Klein or Al Gore? Making sense of clashing views on climate change
October 15, 2014 —Earth is “fucked” and our insatiable growth economy is to blame. So argues Naomi Klein in her intentionally provocative best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein is the latest among an influential network of like-minded authors who have declared that modern society is at war with nature in a battle that Continue Reading »
Engaging in science policy controversies: Insights from the U.S. debate over climate change
August 4, 2014 —Nearly forty years ago, sociologist Dorothy Nelkin commissioned a series of case studies examining the nature of controversies over science and technology (1978; 1984; 1992). In the decades since, research inspired by these original studies has identified a generalizable set of insights that inform our understanding of today’s leading controversies such as those over Continue Reading »
A new model for climate advocacy: Pragmatism and compromise are needed
November 26, 2013 — In an essay last month in Ensia magazine, Jonathon Foley offered an urgent reality check for environmentalists. Foley contrasted the long-standing ambitions of those arguing for action on climate change who have focused on the “wholesale transformation of the world’s economy and energy systems” with the prevailing dysfunction in Washington and Continue Reading »