Resources

The resources referenced below include both those contained on this website and elsewhere. This list is meant to help provide access to, and increase awareness of, useful collections of information. Inclusion of links to other websites does not necessarily imply endorsement of those organizations or their content, although reasonable attempts are made to ensure that the suggested sites are helpful and reliable.

Related Links

A storehouse of links relevant to some aspect of the climate change issue or related education.

For MIT Students

An introduction intended for MIT students interested in the Joint Program.

Publications Database

The search interface for the Joint Program's collection of documents, images, and data.

Global Climate Change: Economics, Science, and Policy is an interdisciplinary course taught at MIT by the Program co-directors. It is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students from a broad range of backgrounds and draws extensively on Joint Program research. Course materials are publicly available through MIT OpenCourseWare.

The subject introduces scientific, economic, and ecological issues underlying the threat of global climate change, and the institutions engaged in negotiating an international response. It develops an integrated approach to analysis of climate change processes, and assessment of proposed policy measures. Students use computer models and participate in group as well as independent projects. This course has been offered in Spring semester for more than a decade and is jointly listed in the Sloan School of Management, the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and the Engineering Systems Division (Technology and Policy Program). The class draws students from a number of MIT departments as well as from Harvard and Tufts Universities.

Independent Activities Period

The Joint Program also promotes educational outreach among the MIT community by sponsoring climate change lectures and activities during MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January. These sessions are usually organized and presented by graduate students affiliated with the Joint Program.

Past Program-sponsored sessions during IAP have included lectures on climate change science, a seminar on domestic climate policy, a mock climate policy negotiation, and a series of sessions in which participants designed and built an educational boardgame about climate change. In a prior year the students led an innovative walking tour of Boston that utilized landmarks as touch-stones to highlight potential risks of climate change. The "Climate Change: Boston Underwater" tour spanned issues from local to global: the "Tragedy of the Commons" was explained at a stop on Boston Common; the potential impact of climate change on the insurance industry was the theme in the Financial District; regional greenhouse gas regulation initiatives were reviewed on the steps of the State House on Beacon Hill; and ecosystems impacts and intergenerational issues were the focus of discussion in front of the Make Way For Ducklings statue.