Environmental issues are a “perfect storm” of challenges for governance: they involve market failures; require coordinated action on all scales; involve complex scientific, economic, and social issues and uncertainties; engage core economic interests of self-interested groups; emerge on time scales in which near-term actions can have long-term consequences; evoke competing ethical or moral claims; and involve personal choices by and affect the livelihoods of everyone on Earth. Climate change has garnered most of the attention, but other problems include air pollution, water pollution and shortages, ozone depletion, overfishing, deforestation, biodiversity loss, habitat loss, and plastics and other wastes and toxins.

Negotiations have had some successes in addressing these problems, but have not yet resulted in policy changes sufficient to prevent major damage. At the same time, improvements in science, technology, and economics are creating opportunities to markedly reduce future damage done by greenhouse gases and other pollutants at modest economic costs.

While this is not a course in climate science or environmental economics, we begin with a brief discussion of these topics for context. We will then explore the role of path-dependent politics on energy transitions, environmental and energy politics in and outside the US, international environmental negotiations and institutions, the politics of other environmental problems, the resource curse, and related conflict.