(310 home)

Week 1 (climate change)

Assigned readings

• Tim Flannery. 2005. The Weather Makers. NY: Grove Press (Chapters 1-3, pp 11 – 35).
• Christina Gerhardt. 2023. Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Introduction)

Lecture material

• Climate change: a whirlwind primer 

Video content

• C. Harrison, J. Diamond, P. Coyote, T. Lambert, 2005. Guns, germs, and steel. National Geographic (episode 1: Out of Eden). 
• Neil deGrasse Tyson. 2025. How I think about climate change. Youtube.com

Week 2 (climate change)

Readings

• Keith Griffin. 1979. Underdevelopment in history. Pp 77-90 in C. Wilber (ed) The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment (2nd edition). New York: Random House.
• Paul Horn. 2024. These graphics help explain what climate change looked like in 2024. Dec 29, Inside Climate News. 
• Paul Hawken. 2017. Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reduce global warming. NY: Penguin. (‘Solutions‘)
• David Gelles, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer. 2025. ‘Full on fight club’: How Trump is crushing US climate policy. March 2, New York Times (pdf).

Lecture material

• Mitigating climate destabilization

Video

• Drawdown.org (you might find a video or two here that supports your research)
• Bill McKibben. Do the math. youtube.com.
• NOVA/PBS. 2021. Three solutions that can slow or stop climate change. 

Week 3 (Geography of Risk, migration)

Readings

• W. Neil Adger, Ricardo Safra de Campos and Colette Mortreux. 2018. Mobility, displacement and migration, and their interactions with vulnerability and adaptation to environmental risks. Pp 29-41 in Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration (R. McLeman and F. Gemenne, editors). 
• Christina Gerhardt. 2023. Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (pp 119-23, 59-61, 131-37).

Lecture material

• Ulrich Beck: From prosperity to risk (pdf)
• Geography of risk in maps (pdf)
• Migration and related concepts (pdf)

Video

• PBS: Weathered, Earth’s Extremes. 2024. The riskiest places to live in the US as our climate changes. 
• Cyclones, Typhoons, Hurricanes
• Drought (the American Dust Bowl)
• Wildfire (Southern California, 2024, and more recent)

Week 4 (Migration)

Readings

• Jake Bittle. 2023. The Great Displacement: Climate change and the next American migration. NY: Simon & Schuster (‘After the Flood‘).
• Allison Crimmins. 2023. The National Climate Assessment in 15 maps. 

Video

• PBS: Weathered, Earth’s Extremes. 2024. The riskiest places to live in the US as our climate changes. 
• The Atlantic. 2019. Tangier Island: Among the first US climate refugees? Youtube.com.

Week 5 (migration)

Readings

• Etienne Piguet. 2018. Theories of voluntary and forced migration. Pp 17-28 in Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration (R. McLeman and F. Gemenne, editors).
• International Organization for Migration. 2024. World Migration Report. 
• Human Rights Watch. 2024. The Darien Gap: Where people risk their lives in search of a better future. Youtube.com
• PBS Newshour. 2021. What migrants face as they journey through the deadly Darien Gap. Youtube.com.

 Videos

• Human Rights Watch. 2024. The Darien Gap: Where people risk their lives in search of a better future. Youtube.com
• PBS Newshour. 2021. What migrants face as they journey through the deadly Darien Gap. Youtube.com.
• CocoNetTV. 2024. The Forgotten Pacific (‘Tuvaluans say ‘Climate change won’t move us’). 
• Ai WeiWei. 2017. Human Flow.