Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Climate Solutions Lab

The Politics of Climate Change

UCLA

Political Science

Spring 2021

Prof. Michael Ross

Doctorate

This course will introduce graduate students to recent scholarship on the political dimensions of climate change. Although this is nominally a Comparative Politics course, it will pay equal attention to research in other subfields, notably American Politics and International Relations. The politics of fossil fuels is at the center of the course, and we will consider its significance from a variety of angles – as a source of undemocratic power and corruption in oil and gas producing countries, as a conduit for extraordinary corporate influence in oil and gas-consuming countries, and as a profound but often hidden impediment to climate action at all levels.