The Ecological Disaster: What to Do?

This course intends to study the ecological / environmental challenges that humanity faces at this very moment, linked to climate change (global warming), the depletion of natural resources (including air and water), pollution by plastics and chemicals, etc.

This course is fact-based, so students study the data at hand and the causes of the phenomena involved; further they put an emphasis on the potential solutions that have been proposed, or that can be envisaged by the students themselves. The course looks at the problems on the global and, whenever possible, Russian level.

We aim at a systemic treatment of the matter, integrating knowledge from different scientific disciplines. Indeed, since coping with climate change and the other enormous ecological problems we face is a highly complex and interdisciplinary enterprise, this course will touch upon a variety of disciplines, such as ecology, climate science, technology, philosophy, ethics, sociology, political science, economics, etc. Perhaps the greatest challenge that awaits this and the coming generation is to cope with climate change, so an important part of the course will be dedicated to this topic.

Students will study the mechanisms behind climate change, the causes, the most relevant scientific data available, and we will aim at identifying potential solutions, such as the use of ‘renewable’ or ‘green’ energies. A few classes are dedicated to technological aspects of renewable energies.