Climate Change Syllabus
A complete climate education in one curriculum — walking from the physical science, through the public debate, into the ethics, and finally to the engineered systems we are building in response. Fourteen courses: four that establish how the climate works, what we argue about, and what we owe; ten that examine the infrastructure of mitigation and adaptation, from the power grid to the observation satellites.
14Courses
141Chapters
850+Topics
Foundations: The Science, the Debate, the Ethics
Before the engineering response, four courses establish the ground: how the climate system physically works, what is genuinely contested, what we owe to each other and to other species, and where things currently stand.
1 Climate Systems and Atmosphere 10 ch.
- Earth's Atmosphere
- The Greenhouse Effect
- Weather Versus Climate
- Global Circulation Patterns
- Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions
- Climate Change Evidence
- Climate Models and Predictions
- Climate Impacts
- Mitigation: Reducing Emissions
- Adaptation: Living with Climate Change
2 The Climate Question 13 ch.
- What Do We Actually Know?
- How Urgent Is the Crisis?
- Who Should Pay and How Much?
- Carbon Pricing: Solution or Snake Oil?
- Nuclear Power: Risks & Rewards
- Renewables: Promise and Limits
- Should We Engineer the Climate?
- Individual Action vs. System Change
- The Politics of Climate
- Trump's Climate Reversal (2025-2026)
- Developing World Dilemmas
- Adaptation vs. Mitigation
- Media, Messaging, and Trust
3 Environmental Ethics: Nature and Obligation 8 ch.
- Anthropocentrism: Nature as Resource
- Leopold's Land Ethic: Thinking Like a Mountain
- Deep Ecology vs. Shallow Environmentalism
- Climate Change: The Hardest Ethical Problem
- Environmental Justice: Race, Class, and Pollution
- Indigenous Environmental Philosophy
- Sustainability, Degrowth, and the Limits of Green Capitalism
- Extinction, Rewilding, and Our Obligations to Other Species
4 Global Climate and Environment 10 ch.
- Climate Science and Warming Trends
- International Climate Policy
- Energy Transition and Technology
- Adaptation and Local Impacts
- The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Politics of Delay
- Climate Finance: Who Pays for the Transition
- Climate Migration and Displacement
- Climate in the Courts: Litigation and Activism
- Climate Disinformation and the Information War
- The Geopolitics of a Warming World
The Engineering Response: Climate Infrastructure
Ten courses on the engineered systems that mitigate and adapt to climate change — not the science of the problem, but the infrastructure of the response. How we actually build our way through it.
5 Grid Decarbonization: Rebuilding the Power System 10 ch.
- The Grid We Inherited: Why a 20th-Century System Resists 21st-Century Power
- Wind and Solar at Scale: The Intermittency Problem and What It Actually Costs
- Energy Storage: The Battery Bet and Its Hard Limits
- Transmission: The Permitting Wall That Stops Clean Power From Moving
- The Smart Grid: Sensors, Software, and the Move From Supply-Following to Demand-Shaping
- Nuclear Power's Second Act: SMRs, Plant Life Extensions, and the Cost Problem
- Geothermal, Hydro, and the Firm Renewables Toolkit
- Retiring Coal and Gas: The Stranded-Asset Problem and the Workers Left Behind
- Paying For It: Market Design, Subsidies, and Who Bears the Cost
- Decarbonization Endgame: What a Net-Zero Grid Actually Looks Like
6 Carbon Capture and Storage: Engineering the Drawdown 10 ch.
- The Premise: Why Capture Carbon Instead of Just Not Emitting It
- Point-Source Capture: Pulling CO2 From Smokestacks
- Direct Air Capture: The Hardest Version of the Problem
- Moving the Carbon: Pipelines, Ships, and the Transport Bottleneck
- Geologic Storage: Putting Carbon Back Underground for Good
- Nature-Based Removal: Forests, Soil, and the Ocean
- Hard-to-Abate Industry: Cement, Steel, and Chemicals
- The Economics: Carbon Prices, Tax Credits, and the Cost-Per-Ton Question
- The Verification Problem: Proving Carbon Stayed Removed
- Scale and Skepticism: Can CCS Ever Be More Than a Rounding Error?
7 Flood Defense and Coastal Infrastructure 10 ch.
- Rising Seas, Rising Stakes: The Threat Coastal Infrastructure Was Never Built For
- The Dutch Model: Living Below Sea Level by Design
- Seawalls and Storm Barriers: Hard Defense and Its Limits
- Living Shorelines: Wetlands, Reefs, and Natural Defense
- Urban Drainage: When the Rain Comes From Above
- Managed Retreat: The Defense Nobody Wants to Talk About
- Ports, Power, and the Critical Coastal Assets
- Forecasting and Warning: Buying Time Before the Water Arrives
- Paying for Protection: Insurance, Buyouts, and the Affordability Crisis
- Designing for a Coastline That Won't Hold Still
8 Climate-Resilient Agriculture 10 ch.
- The Stress Test: How a Changing Climate Breaks a Food System Built for Stability
- Breeding for a Hotter World: Drought-Tolerant and Heat-Resistant Crops
- Water on the Farm: Irrigation Infrastructure Under Scarcity
- Soil as Infrastructure: Building the Ground's Capacity to Absorb Shocks
- Precision Agriculture: Sensors, Satellites, and Data-Driven Farming
- Controlled Environments: Greenhouses, Vertical Farms, and Indoor Agriculture
- Livestock and Climate: Heat Stress, Methane, and Adaptation
- Storage, Cold Chains, and Loss: Saving the Food Already Grown
- Diversification and Local Systems: Resilience Through Redundancy
- The Adaptation Gap: Who Gets Resilient Agriculture and Who Doesn't
9 Water Infrastructure Under Climate Stress 10 ch.
- The Water System We Built for a Climate That's Gone
- Reservoirs and Dams: Managing Storage When the Hydrology Shifts
- Drought Infrastructure: Engineering Through Scarcity
- New Supply: Desalination, Reuse, and Stormwater Capture
- The Leaky Pipe Problem: Why Conservation Starts Underground
- Water Quality on a Warming Planet
- Wastewater and the Energy-Water Nexus
- Transboundary Water: Sharing Rivers in an Age of Scarcity
- Pricing, Rights, and the Politics of Water
- Designing Water Systems for an Uncertain Future
10 Cooling a Warming World: Urban Heat Infrastructure 10 ch.
- The Urban Heat Island: Why Cities Cook Themselves
- Cool Surfaces: Roofs, Pavements, and the Albedo Fix
- Urban Forests: Trees as Climate Infrastructure
- Cooling Centers and the Public-Health Response
- Air Conditioning: The Solution That Worsens the Problem
- Designing Cities That Shed Heat
- The Equity of Heat: Who Bears the Burden
- Indoor Heat: Buildings That Become Ovens
- Measuring and Mapping the Heat
- A Cooling Strategy for the Century Ahead
11 The Electrified Transportation System 10 ch.
- Why Transportation Is the Hardest Sector to Decarbonize
- The Charging Network: Building the New Fuel Infrastructure
- EVs and the Grid: A Two-Way Relationship
- Batteries, Minerals, and the Supply Chain
- Mass Transit: The Decarbonization Tool Hiding in Plain Sight
- Freight: Trucks, Trains, and the Logistics Backbone
- Shipping: Decarbonizing the Invisible 90 Percent of Trade
- Aviation: The Sector With No Easy Answer
- The Policy Engine: Mandates, Subsidies, and Standards
- The Transportation System of 2050
12 Climate-Adapted Construction and Building Codes 10 ch.
- The Building Stock We're Stuck With
- Building Codes: The Hidden Lever of Climate Adaptation
- Building for Fire: The Wildland-Urban Interface
- Building for Wind and Water
- Building for Heat: Passive Survivability
- Materials: Building With and For a Changing Climate
- Retrofitting: The Unglamorous Core of the Problem
- Where We Build: Land Use and the Hazard Map
- The Cost and Equity of Resilient Construction
- Designing Buildings for an Uncertain Climate
13 Disaster Response and Early-Warning Systems 10 ch.
- From Disaster Response to Disaster Readiness
- Early-Warning Systems: The Science of Buying Time
- Forecasting the Hazard: Models, Satellites, and Sensors
- Communication Infrastructure When It Matters Most
- Evacuation: Moving People Out of the Path
- Critical Facilities: Hospitals, Power, and the Things That Cannot Fail
- The Response: Logistics, Coordination, and the First 72 Hours
- Community Resilience: The Infrastructure That Isn't Concrete
- Recovery: The Long Tail Nobody Budgets For
- Designing a Readiness System for a Higher-Risk Century
14 Climate Monitoring: The Observation Infrastructure 10 ch.
- Why You Cannot Manage What You Cannot Measure
- The Keeling Curve: How One Measurement Changed the World
- Eyes in Orbit: The Satellite Observation System
- The Ground Network: Stations, Buoys, and Sensors
- Counting Carbon: Emissions Monitoring and the Verification Problem
- Turning Observation Into Prediction: Climate Models
- Detection and Attribution: Proving the Cause
- The Data Infrastructure: Storing, Sharing, and Standardizing
- The Fragility of the Record
- The Observation System the Century Needs