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June 2004
| Author: | David G. Victor, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Science and Technology |
|---|
Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing policy-makers today. David G. Victor, a leading expert on environmental policy, takes a fresh look at this issue and persuasively marshals arguments for three distinct approaches to combat the problem, casting each as a presidential speech. A must-read for environmentalists, educators, and anyone else interested in the issue .
What is a CFR Academic Module?
Academic Modules—featuring teaching notes by the authors of CFR publications—are designed to assist educators in creating or supplementing a course syllabus. The modules are customized packages built around a primary CFR text, such as a book or report, and include teaching notes; additional readings; video, audio, and transcripts of CFR meetings; Foreign Affairs articles; and other online resources. Use of these modules is free of charge. They may be used in part or in their entirety.
June 2004
Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing policy-makers today. David G. Victor, a leading expert on environmental policy, takes a fresh look at this issue and persuasively marshals arguments for three distinct approaches to combat the problem, casting each as a presidential speech. A must-read for environmentalists, educators, and anyone else interested in the issue, Climate Change is a most useful reference in the growing public debate about how best to meet this environmental challenge.
By David G. Victor
The Council on Foreign Relations’ Climate Change Council Policy Initiative (CPI) was designed, in part, with collegiate teaching in mind, and it may also be useful in some advanced high school classes. This note offers some suggestions for using the CPI in four types of courses:
General Courses on Environmental Policy and International Relations
The climate issue is an ideal way to close a general course because it addresses a key issue in environmental policy and international relations. Climate is a complex scientific and political issue. Students (and government officials) must weigh the economic and moral trade-offs between policies that adapt climate change and those that seek to stop or diminish it by controlling emissions. Climate change also raises the question of the effectiveness of international treaties and institutions—and especially whether the United States should have withdrawn from the Kyoto Accord. As a result, the CPI can help students in environment classes to think about the larger economic and political context in which environmental policies are made. It can also help students in an international relations class evaluate the relative merits of unilateral action (what is called “bottom up” in the CPI) versus multilateralism.
Instructors in courses on environmental policy may want to supplement the CPI with additional material on the science of climate change. The CPI focuses on policy, but numerous sources listed in the first section of Appendix E and on the 'Related Links' section of this module offer accessible sources on the science. If you want just a brief introduction to the science, Appendices B and C, along with the material in the main text of the CPI, should do fine.
Discussion Questions
The “Memorandum to the President” that begins the CPI provides useful background reading for a lecture that you give to the whole class. The “three speeches” format is ideal for small group discussions. The discussion leader can use the three speeches to prompt student discussion on three key topics:
Specialized Courses
In a specialized course, the students will know much more about climate change or international relations, enabling them to play a larger role in class discussions. In addition to the suggestions outlined above, the CPI can be used in the following ways:
1. Debate
Choose a focused topic, choose small teams, and conduct a normal debate with three to four minute opening arguments, three to four minute rebuttals, five to seven- inutes of questions from the floor (the rest of the class), and three to four minutes of closing arguments. The whole debate should last half an hour. If you can hold two to three of these debates in each class (each on a different topic), then students will cover most climate-change issues. You can end the debate with a class discussion that addresses the questions identified above.
Here are some ideas for possible resolutions to start the debate:
2. Op-eds
Assign your students to write an op-ed on some aspect of the climate issue. The standard to meet is importance of the topic, clarity in presenting a specific point of view, and brevity (650-750 words). Because the op-ed is short, it requires different writing skills from a conventional term paper—the point must be made within the first or second paragraph, the writing style is usually more argumentative than in term papers, and the writing must be simple even as the ideas advanced are sophisticated. Students will need help in focusing the argument—which is best done before writing—because most students choose arguments that are either too sprawling or esoteric for good op-eds. Circulate half a dozen examples of good op-eds to give students a template to emulate.
3. Mock Cabinet Meeting
Assign your students to write a memorandum to the president. The memorandum should give an overview of the climate change situation, lay out the pros and cons of each policy option, and recommend a course of action. You can then have your students reenact a Cabinet meeting: Assign them different roles and have them defend the positions outlined in the Climate Change CPI.
Geopolitics and Energy: Key Trends 2000-2020,
by Anthony Cordesman
Center For Strategic and International Studies
April 2002
April 2004
Selected by The Globalist as one of the top ten books of 2004, The River Runs Black is the most comprehensive and balanced volume to date on China’s growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country’s development.
September 2001
Task Force Report No. 33B
At the start of President Bush’s first term in office, Vice President Dick Cheney chaired a high-level government task force on energy, several months after the Council on Foreign Relations released its independent Task Force report, “Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century.” The Council’s initial report is updated here, taking into account the Bush administration’s energy policies during its first six months in office.
April 2001
Task Force Report No. 33
There could be more Californias in America’s future unless the U.S. government adopts a long-term, comprehensive energy policy now, according to an Independent Task Force report cosponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University in Houston and the Council on Foreign Relations.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
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Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
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