Spring 2013 ENVIR 479 PoE Honors Seminar- 2 credits
(Un)Making a Green Argument: Climate Policy and Environmental Advocacy
Last June, Rolling Stone published an essay by climate activist Bill McKibben titled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” As a piece of popular advocacy, the essay is extraordinary in its clarity of argument and power of persuasion. It has received over 123,000 likes on Facebook and launched a nationwide movement encouraging “divestment” of fossil-fuel corporate stock by public pension systems and university endowments.
In this seminar we will critically examine this popular essay as an extended case study of modern environmental advocacy. Over the course of 11 weeks, we will work through the essay’s factual claims, its reasoning, its rhetorical frames, and its policy conclusions. We will critique how the essay was assembled and disassemble it into constituent pieces. At the end of the class, students will reassemble the same pieces to reach their own policy conclusions. Along the way, we will take tours of major proposed fossil-fuel developments and the current debates surrounding them—namely development of the Albertan tar sands, oil drilling in the Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas, and construction of proposed west coast coal terminals.
The purpose of this seminar is to encourage students to think about policy arguments from multiple perspectives and to consider how a given argument works. What relative roles do logic, science, and rhetoric play in a given argument? What facts do advocates highlight, how related are those facts to the advocates’ conclusions, and what policy alternatives are left behind? This is not a seminar endorsing any particular environmental policy. It is a quarter-long study in claims, counterclaims, strategies, and tactics used in current climate policy debates. Diverse viewpoints will be welcomed and encouraged.
Class Day/time: Tuesdays 3:30-5:20
Taught by Todd A. Wildermuth, Scholar in Residence, UW School of Law
Open to Honors Undergraduates.