Course description
Climate change is the defining environmental issue of the 21st century, as well as one of the most profound social and economic challenges facing the planet. This interdisciplinary course – encompassing policy, natural sciences, economics, and law – is be an up-to-the-minute treatment of this cross-cutting subject matter. The course consists of a systematic exposition of all aspects of the climate problem by an instructor with formal training in all these disciplines, and decades of first-hand experience in government, international organizations, and the non-profit sector.

International dimensions of the problem, including the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and ongoing negotiations in the Paris Conferences of the Parties (COPs) will be emphasized. The course will also address domestic legal and policy challenges in considerable detail, including energy policy, transportation, and state and local measures. The course will analyze a variety of legal responses, such as litigation, including potential legal remedies, as well as private voluntary initiatives, corporate responsibility, risk disclosure, and the role of socially responsible investing. The course is entirely free-standing and does not assume any prior familiarity with environmental law.

There are no prerequisites, and no prior familiarity with climate science, law, or any other discipline is assumed. Basic principles in both areas will be elaborated by the instructor as necessary to facilitate discussion. The course may include some brief simulations, the purpose of which is to focus and enhance students' appreciation for the role of law in international discourse on environmental issues.

The course will likely include a 3-round simulated negotiation on hypothetical problem that could be addressed in the ongoing Paris COPs. The simulation will not be graded as such, but your active participation in it assumed as an explicit component of the course requirements.

Learning outcomes
This course introduces students to the basic doctrines, theories, and methodologies of climate policy and law. By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a basic grasp of the substantive content of climate policy and law, including sources of law, modes of policy- and law-making, and domestic and international dispute settlement;
• Possess a general awareness and understanding of the principal international, European, and U.S. approaches to addressing climate policy, and how they are evolving:
• Assimilate the structure of decisionmaking processes in which climate policy and law is made, applied, enforced, and implemented;
• Actively work with sources of U.S., European, and international policy and law to determine the manner in which climate policy and law is discerned, made, implemented, and applied;
• Appreciate and be able to analyze the advantages and disadvantages to a variety of policy and legal approaches to addressing climate change, including command-and-control regulatory approaches, cap-and-trade regimes, and carbon pricing systems;
• Demonstrate the capacity to interpret, apply, and critically evaluate primary documentation related to climate policy and law, such as treaties and other international instruments;
• Appreciate and develop facility for the intersection of climate change, justice, and equity;
• Develop an appreciation for the structure and operation of intergovernmental organizations;
• Understand the interrelationship among international climate policy and law, European policy and law, and the domestic policy and law of the United States;
• Utilize an understanding of climate policy and law as a vehicle for integrating comprehension of larger international issues on the world stage;
• Appreciate the role of non-state actors in crafting and implementing international, EU, and domestic climate policy and law; and
• Actively participate in and contribute to practical problem-solving exercises and simulations as a means to facilitate skills development through active learning;

Course website and readings
There is no text required for purchase. A Moodle website will be established for the course. The website will contain this syllabus, a cumulative list of assignments to date, and other documentation as announced in class. If you are uncertain of the current assignment, consult the documentation on the website. I may also communicate between sessions via announcements on the Moodle website, so be sure to check your e-mail account regularly.

Evaluation, grading, and attendance
This course will be evaluated by two in-class examination exercises, one a midterm which will count 35% of the grade, and an in-class final examination which will count 55%, with the remainder (10%) consisting of class participation. The in-class midterm exercise will likely be held in week 7, and the final examination during the formally-scheduled examination period.

Examination questions and sample answers from previous years will be posted to the course website.

It is expected that you will routinely attend, be prepared for, and participate in all class sessions. Your contribution to the simulated negotiations will not be graded as such, but may affect the evaluation of your class participation.

Syllabus and reading assignments
The tentative reading assignments and their approximate treatment during the class sessions are as follows. We will move through the assignments and the syllabus in sequential order, covering all of the material in class by the end of the course. Material that may not be completed in class one day will be held over until the next class. In other words, we will complete discussion of all the material, even if the class discussions do not correlate precisely with the assignments.

This syllabus is subject to further modification as reflected in individual class assignments. Any modifications to the reading assignments as set out below will be clearly announced in class and/or on the Moodle website (see above).

Week 1, class 1

For the first class in Week 1, please prepare the following:

A news clip on a topic of current relevance to the subject matter will be assigned to be read before the first class, long with discussion prompts. Come to class prepared to discuss the piece by reference to the prompts.

Week 1, class 2

Science of Climate Change and Its Effects, excerpt from AR6, working group 1 (excerpted on class website). Provides an overview of the science and effects of climate change.

Perform the CALI lesson entitled "Climate Change 1: Introduction to Climate Change".

Instructions to be supplied. This is designed to be an accessible introduction to the material for non-technical experts and generalists.

Week 2, class 1

IPCC 1.5º report, 2018 (excerpts). This report re-oriented the international climate debate from a focus on the 2-degree (Celsius = 3.6º F) target in the Paris Agreement to the 1.5-degree alternative in that agreement, originally intended as a fallback option. Based on your reading of this excerpt, how would you characterize the consequences of the 0.5º C (slightly less than 1º F) difference between the two scenarios?

Week 2, class 2

Mitigation (course website). This excerpt introduces the general strategies to pollution control, including command-and-control regulation, cap-and-trade, and carbon taxes. It is useful to discuss these approaches at the outset, before exploring the strategies governments have actually employed, so that students have a big picture understanding of how to approach climate change mitigation.

Please perform (only) the first 5 questions of the second CALI exercise, Climate Change 2 —Mitigation, the International Dimension (instructions to be supplied).

Week 3, class 1

Sectoral approaches (course website). This excerpt discusses more targeted interventions designed to address emissions of greenhouse gases from various sectors -- e.g., agriculture, transportation, electricity generation – which are fundamentally different in kind from the broad-gauge macro approaches discussed in the previous section.

Please give some thought to strategies for the following sectors:

• Commercial and residential buildings
• Industry/manufacturing
• Forestry
• Agriculture

Week 3, class 2

Economics of climate change (course website). This excerpt suggests one approach to evaluating the costs of climate change by comparing them to the benefits, and include a critique of that approach. The associated PowerPoint for this material will be posted on the course website (as will all PowerPoints).

Please complete CALI lesson no. 2, Mitigation: The International Dimension, beginning with question no. 6.

Question for class discussion: What difference would the choice of discount rate make in a cost-benefit analysis? (E.g., Lord Stern, 0.1% vs. Nordhaus, 7%)?

Week 4, class 1

The entirety of this class session will be devoted to round 1 on of the simulated COP negotiation.

Week 4, class 2

Adaptation, including international aspects (course website). This excerpt introduces another principal theme of climate science and policy, namely adaptation to those changes that cannot be avoided through mitigation. This passage emphasizes national approaches to adaptation. Coordinated multilateral approaches to the problem of adaptation raise particular institutional and legal challenges, which are also explored in this excerpt.

Week 5, classes 1&2, Week 6, class 1

The subjects of these class is the international legal and policy architecture for climate change under the auspices of the United Nations.

Reading: Wirth, The Multilateral Climate Regime, in Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (course website). Read pp. 49-61, beginning at "VI Paris Agreement," and ending at "C. The United States and the Paris Agreement."

Papa Francesco, Laudato si' (2015) (Focus on Paragraphs 13-15, 93-95, 115-123, 188-201, 216-232)

Papa Francesco, Laudate Deum (passages to be identified) (2023).

• Remarks of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Ma. & double Eagle!) on Laudato si', at Boston College, Sept. 28, 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaRvXjvSQTY>

NOTE: An edited transcript of his remarks is posted to the course website.

• What is – or should be – the role of Holy See (Vatican) and Pope Francis in international policy debates about climate, both structurally and in substance? Laudato si' not coincidentally appeared during the final stages of negotiation of the Paris Agreement. What is or should be its policy impact. Senator Markey's remarks provide some insight. He is a Double Eagle who is the principal Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal legislation.

• John Holdren's presentation on the Encyclical criticized it for characterizing its analysis of climate science as "rather understated" and a "bit too dismissive" on some key policy issues, such as the use of market mechanisms. Note in particular the passage beginning "Talk about from science to policy . . ." at 19:35 in the Youtube video and .page4 of the transcript.
• How, if at all, does this affect your analysis of the Encyclical?
• The Holy See (Vatican) is an "observer state" at the climate negotiations, and is a full party to important multilateral treaties, such as the Convention Against Torture. How does this status fit into your understanding of the international legal system, or does it present some questions?

Week 6, class 2

The topic of this class and the accompanying excerpt is federal regulation.

CALI lesson no. 5 (Addressing Climate Change Through Existing Environmental Statutes), question 1-5 (all of which address the Clean Air Act). This exercise is designed to provide an introduction to the Clean Air Act for generalist and non-technical audiences.

Focus on excerpts from Massachusetts v. EPA, 2007. What precisely is the holding of Mass v. EPA, and what precisely does the Court require EPA to do? If you are the General Counsel of EPA, what options could you identify to the Administrator (your client) after this holding?

Week 7, class 1

West Virginia v. EPA, 2022 (course website). This case successfully challenged the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. What was the Clean Power Plan, what was it designed to do, and how would it have accomplished its goal from a legal and policy point of view? Why might it have been so controversial? What is left of Massachusetts v. EPA after this holding?

Week 7, class 2

The entirety of this class will be devoted to the in-class mid-term exercise.

Week 8, class 1

[This class will focus on U.S. domestic policy and legal developments post-West Virgina. As of this writing, that would be primarily the Inflation Reduction Act, but there will no doubt be subsequent developments before this course is delivered.]

Week 8, class 2

The entirety of this class session will be devoted to the second round of the simulated COP negotiation.

Week 9, class 1

Please answer questions 11-15 in CALI Lesson no. 5, Climate Change 5: Addressing Climate Change Through Existing Environmental Statutes.

Other federal laws related to climate change, as addressed in excerpt. Focus on the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. Discussion of the two statutes will be roughly evenly divided between the two statutes – i.e., NEPA on Wednesday, the 28th, and ESA on Monday, the 2nd. As with our discussion of the Clean Air Act, think about how issues of regulatory design facilitate or (more likely) limit the utility of these authorities in tackling climate change.

Week 9, class 2 & Week 10, class 1

Excerpt (website) addresses the topic for this class, which is EU climate policy, and particularly the European Trading System (ETS), originally designed to track the structure of the Kyoto Protocol.

Also look at the EU's updated NDC: https://unfccc.int/documents/632583.

Compare that for the U.S.: https://unfccc.int/NDCREG

How would you expect the implementation mechanisms for these two NDCs to differ one from the other? (Hint: Rather dramatically…)

Also (course website):

• The EU's Climate and Energy Package.
• Why Europe Leads on Climate Change.
• Federalism, Multilevel Governance and Climate Change Politics across the Atlantic

All three are posted on the course website under the date of this class under "Course Materials."

Week 10, class 1

[Reserved for intervening developments/guest speaker]

Week 10, class 2

Subnational regulation in the United States: the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act and Kain v. DEP, http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/474/474mass278.html. In this case, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected the interpretation of the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act from two administrations, one Democratic and the other Republican? In exactly what way? How does this case compare with Mass v. EPA in the U.S. Supreme Court (apart from dealing with state law, as opposed to federal)?

Week 11, class 1

The entirety of this class session will be devoted to the third and final round of the simulated COP negotiation.

Week 11, class 2

Carbon border adjustment mechanisms in the United States and India. Reading (website): Wirth, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms as a Tool of Economic Statecraft in a Multipolar World, __ Maryland J. Int'l L. __ (2024) (in press).

How do CBAMs work as policy and legal mechanisms? Why might they be especially controversial in countries of the Global South, like India?

Week 12, class 1

Geoengineering. Reading (website): Wirth, Engineering the Climate: Geoengineering as a Challenge to International Governance, B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 413 (2013).

This analysis basically argues that multilateral attempts at overseeing geoengineering efforts have been thin and likely ineffectual. How would you structure a multilateral response so as to (1) analyze the risks and benefits of climate engineering on the international level; (2) regulate geoengineering efforts so as to capture the benefits (if any); and (3) structure a multilateral response so as to prevent rogue deployment of geoengineering technologies?

Week 12, class 2

Q&A Review for final examination.

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: August 6, 2026