Course Catalogue

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What is really driving our current climate crisis, and what can we do about it? "Understanding the Climate Crisis" is a dynamic, interdisciplinary course designed to address a major societal challenge, the global climate emergency. The course challenges disciplinary silos by exploring the complex interactions underpinning the crisis, including climate science fundamentals, economics, technology, ethics, and climate justice. It is inherently linked to sustainability themes and encourages students to utilise their existing disciplinary learning and skills, working with others to arrive at interdisciplinary solutions.

This is more than a course. It's a call to awareness, action, and empowerment in the face of a global emergency. The climate crisis is real. Are you ready to understand it?

2 x 2 hours per week, one hour will focus on group exercises in most weeks. 

No mandatory requirements. This course is recommended (but not required) to be taken with Understanding the Nature Crisis offered in semester 2.

None

None

1. Two in-person class tests. Each assessment is worth 30% of the course grade (60% total).

2. Moodle multiple choice quizzes. The quizzes count towards 40% of their grade, and the lowest two grades will be dropped. Students will be able to miss two of the quizzes without submission of an extenuating circumstances request.

Three themes are developed in this course provide students from interdisciplinary backgrounds with the building blocks of knowledge for:

1. Observations, processes and causes of past, present and future climate change

2. Understanding the impacts of climate change today, and in the future.

3. Potential solutions to the climate crisis.

The course fully utilises the IDEA framework through: 

■ Interacting across disciplines and with external actors to co-produce sustainable futures that engage with climate justice and challenging conventional assumptions.

■ Disrupting established ways of learning and knowing, particularly concerning rights violations.

■ Enhancing students' awareness of their positionality, community issues, and responsibilities as global and local citizens.

■ Appling their learning to confront societal challenges by generating solutions and developing transferable skills for policy change.

This focus aligns strongly with university strategy of being a Change Maker (driving solutions), a Global Citizen (conveying complex ideas strategically), a Creative Leader (using evidence-based arguments), and a Social Innovator (fostering new ways of thinking). 

■ Explain the drivers of historical and contemporary climate change and categorise their distinct impacts across natural, social, and economic systems.

■ Interpret data from authoritative sources (e.g., IPCC reports) to infer specific implications of the climate crisis for nature, society, and the economy.

■ Apply climate science concepts to formulate evidence-based strategies for real-world problems, demonstrating the ability to collaborate effectively in a multidisciplinary context.

■ Evaluate the viability of potential climate solutions by differentiating between technical limitations and socio-economic barriers to adoption.