Confronting the Climate Crisis, a new course launching in January 2025, aims to give undergraduate students a clear-eyed understanding of the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis and the tools to deal with that understanding, psychologically, politically, and sociologically. Professor Steve Easterbrook, director of the School of the Environment, developed the course in response to an initiative at the University of Barcelona to create a mandatory course on the climate crisis.
“Increasingly, our students are demanding that Universities respond to declarations of a climate emergency (e.g. by the Federal Government and the City of Toronto) by re-thinking how our programs are preparing them with the resilience and skills needed in a world that will be radically re-shaped by climate change in the coming decades,” said Easterbrook.
The course is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary introduction to the climate crisis open to any undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. Using a mixture of lectures, hands-on activities, group projects, online discussion, and guest speakers, the course examines the climate crisis from scientific, social, economic, political, and cultural perspectives, from the physical science basis through to the choices we now face to stabilize the climate system.
Piloted last year as a small-seminar, first-year undergraduate course, Confronting the Climate Crises was featured over several segments on the February 9, 2024 edition of CBC’s Metro Morning. Producer Mary Wiens interviewed students about their experiences. Keenan Ardhito took the course to deepen his knowledge. “I would like to know how, myself, I can help change the situation,” he said. Lily Houghton found that the course would benefit all students. “I think it’s very important to have more climate literacy. Having this foundation in the first year would help everyone no matter what subject you’re in,” she said.
The Course has since expanded to accommodate 200 students with the idea of eventually expanding it to all first-year undergraduate students at the University of Toronto. While this may not be possible in the short term, Professor Easterbrook hopes to start a discourse about how the university is preparing all students for a climate changed world. What do different departments and programs need to do in response?
“If other departments want to add this course to their undergrad programs, I’ll be delighted. Or if they want to create versions of the course that are more specifically tailored to their own students’ needs, I’ll be equally delighted,” said Easterbrook.