Home |
Site Index |
FAQs |
Contact |
RSS
|
Podcast
home > by publication type > academic modules > Academic Module: Climate Change: Debating America's Policy Options
Email
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 .
|
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, 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of the effectiveness of international treaties and institutions—and especially whether the United States should have withdrawn from the Kyoto Accord.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
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
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.
July/August 2003
| Authors: | Boyden Gray Timothy E. Wirth John D. Podesta |
|---|
Summary
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.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.
In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.
Complete list of Council Special Reports.
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.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.
Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.
You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
