Though thoroughly researched and debated for over a half-century, the last several years have seen an accelerated focus on issues associated with or resulting from climate change. A problem created by humans now has collectives of humans in the forms of governments, firms, advocates, and others seeking pathways. These pathways are needed to limit warming to levels the scientific consensus has concluded are necessary to thwart the most disastrous effects.
These solutions are being discussed in more than just the halls of government and Fortune 500 boardrooms. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are making decisions colored by the realities of climate change. At the same time, a growing and diverse stakeholder community has coalesced around the need for immediate action. However, these actions generate many questions past simply feasibility and efficiency. What are the costs, and who pays for them? What externalities are created by these solutions, and how are they distributed? And what happens to the firms, industries, and people dependent on fossil fuels for their existence?
How individuals, firms, markets, and the State (at all levels) come together or grow apart in answering the above questions needs an examination through the traditional tools acquired in business school and the sausage-making of politics and the various parties with skin in the game.
This course will attempt to address some of these questions. However, the course will not focus on the firm’s perspective, the customary starting point for most Business School courses. Instead, the course will center on the State, meaning various governmental entities. The firm represents one of the actors influencing and influenced by the State. However, we will also consider other actors: policymakers, politicians, financers, lobbyists, the courts, workers, communities, and advocates. As politics is an exercise in coalition building, how these actors work with or against each other is critical to understanding the potential solution set while also considering the disproportionate way climate change impacts particular communities and people. To that end, a traditional profit-maximizing firm’s interests may conflict with others’ interests.
As many students will soon be entering firms, marrying the fundamentals of how carbon emissions are created/reduced with the needs and goals of various actors who have a voice in this debate will be vitally important. The course hopes to help students in that endeavor.
