Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The purpose of this course is to develop understanding and guide student research of human and environmental systems. In class we will explore agriculture, conflict, and human health. Study of each topic will involve introduction data, mathematical models, and analysis techniques that build toward addressing a major question at each interface: How does climate change influence agricultural systems? Has drought or other environmental factors caused conflict? And how does the environment shape health outcomes? These topics are diverse, but are addressed using common analytical frameworks.
An advanced language and culture class that examines literature and films portraying the political, sociological, financial and environmental impact of multinational companies doing business in Latin America
In response to climate change, some experts suggest the key to our survival is curbing mass consumption and working toward a “no-growth” economic model. Yet consumption levels continue to rise globally. We can’t stop ourselves from buying more stuff. To help us better understand why, this course traces the rise of mass consumer culture in modern Europe from the 19th century industrial revolution to the late twentieth century.
The course is designed as an in-depth study of the place of Central Asia in Eurasian and global politics, and the policies of key external actors, such as Russia, the United States, China, the European Union, Turkey, Iran, Japan, South Korea and India, toward the region.
You are part of the so-called “pivotal generation” for preventing the worst effects of climate change. While global carbon emissions continue to rise yearly, there remains a small window of time for action. What options are available to you for responding to climate change and the unequal burdens it creates?
This course analyzes what role the government plays and should play in a market economy. It covers topics such as tax policy, health care policy, retirement policy, environmental protection, and state and local policy. The course emphasizes recent empirical research on policy issues and teaches students how to conduct such studies. Much of the material we will cover relates directly to ongoing policy debates.
This course tries to understand why this is so by examining the role that nationalism plays in peoples’ identities and the effects of globalization on nations and nation-states.
This course explores the culture and politics of imperialism in the Americas from the early 19th century to the present, with particular attention to race and ethnicity.
Climate change puts pressure on conceptualizations of place, world, and planet. As humans confront the force of the non-human world and the planetary scale of the crisis, we must also contend with the ambivalent legacies of both place and planet.
This research seminar examines the impacts of globalization on attempts to address key social, political, and environmental problems, including climate change, focusing in particular on the roles played by multinational corporations.
This course revisits structures, refines speaking and writing skills, and advances critical linguistic exchanges through the discussion of environmental, cultural, economic, and social issues of sustainability.