Our Carbon Debt: A Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Education on Climate Change

Abstract

Although academic departments often prepare students through education on the scientific foundations of climate change from the perspectives of such fields as conservation biology, environmental geoscience, or environmental geology, our college aims to provide a broader perspective on the climate change issue. To do so, we engage students in a more targeted manner, based on their disciplinary and program focus. For some students, this involves application of geotechnology and modeling applications so they are more informed on the technology necessary for monitoring greenhouse gases and their related impacts. For others, we focus more on promoting dialogue on the educational and societal implications of climate change by integrating perspectives from environmental economics, entrepreneurship, art, and social foundations of education through active learning activities. In this chapter, we present an interdisciplinary perspective on sustainability rooted in the concept of climate debt.