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under 10 minutes
 International Treaties on Climate Change
low-res stream | med-res stream | QuickTime movie
Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University
A fast overview of two major international treaties on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997), including guiding principles, the position of the US, and the future of international treaties.
(6 minutes, July 2009)

The Copenhagen Accord
low-res stream | med-res stream | QuickTime movie
Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University
This short clip overviews the 2009 Copenhagen Accord including its goals, its final guidelines, and important advances made at that meeting.
(5 minutes, February 2010)
longer
 The Policy Challenges of Climate Change *
Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University
What does climate change have to do with politics? What can we do, what are we doing, and how well are we doing? How do the approaches of the US and the EU differ? What is the cost of inaction when it comes to global warming? The answers to these questions and more are covered in this interesting discussion.
(25 minutes, November 2007)

Climate Change Politics and Policy Making *
Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University
A lucid, interesting, and thorough explanation of the politics of climate change on the global, national, state, and local levels. Political scientist Betsill's topics include competing arguments about what counts as fair, the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, policy changes by recent US presidents, US versus EU approaches to climate change, cap and trade, and what Colorado, other states, and cities like Fort Collins are doing. The slides, unfortunately, did not get recorded properly, but Dr. Betsill’s talk is clear.
PDF file (4MB)
(46 minutes, April 2009)
READ
books
articles & essays
 China Demands U.S. Taxpayers Clean Up Its Air
Gordon G. Chang, Forbes, January 2013
A good, short, general overview of China's position in the international political debates, including questions of money.

websites
 Your Warming World
New Scientist
 Type in or click on your current location and see a graph of temperature changes for that spot over the last 100+ years. (The data come from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.)

Moms Clean Air Force
Grassroots activist and blogging site for (and by) parents who want cleaner air for their children"‒with lots of attention to climate change.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions: Policy
This excellent site (run by the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change) offers resources divided by level: international, US federal, and US state and region. It also includes a section on the relations between climate change and economics and a varied policy blog.

World Resources Institute: Energy, Climate and Transport
This prominent think tank works at the intersection of environment and economic development, and their website covers a range of levels of policy issues: international (finance, climate justice, emerging economies, etc.), US federal (legislation, EPA, etc.), and US state and regional (offering, for instance, a "Power Almanac of the American Midwest"), and many other important topics.

Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Energy Economy
Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2009
 This extensive, detailed, and readable analysis offers recommendations for jumpstarting the transition to a low-carbon economy while saving money for every region and household. Thoroughly researched and peer-reviewed; extensive references; useful for both lay-persons and professionals.

International Climate Policy
  • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
    The key source for detailed information on existing treaties and fairly detailed information on current international negotiations. Includes sections on adaptation, finance, and scientific methods, a calendar of meetings, daily schedules of meetings as they occur, selected articles from the world press, and many other interesting resources.

  • Earth Negotiations Bulletin‒Climate Change
    International Institute for Sustainable Development, Reporting Services Division
    Current news about international meetings. Part of a larger project and website covering the "latest news, information and analysis from international environment and sustainable development negotiations," including background documents, links to resources, and archived reports of meetings beginning with the Rio Earth Summit 1992.

  • Climate Action Network
    This organization of 700 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world offers "resources to drive international action on climate change," including discussion papers, policy positions, letters to governments, and "interventions made at the negotiations that are designed to inject the most salient points into the debate."

  • U.S. State Department: Global Climate Change
    This official government site offers information about international negotiations; press releases; reports on finance, water, and many other topics; streaming video of talks at the US Center at the annual international Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC; and other interesting resources.

United States Policy
  • Climate Change at the National Academies: America's Climate Choices
    The National Academies of Science and of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council offer many clear, informative, and authoritative resources, including reports such as "Advancing the Science of Climate Change," "Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change," and "Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis."

  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
    This section of the EPA's climate change website addresses the question "What is EPA Doing About Climate Change?" with information about regulations, voluntary programs, partnerships, and so on. Other offerings at the site include news and a breakdown of impacts and adaptations by region and some kinds of ecosystems.

  • US Global Change Research Program
    One-stop shopping for materials from 13 top-level federal agencies from this program whose job it is to integrate federal research on global change and climate change, including preparing (every four years) the National Climate Assessment. Also offers a regional breakdown of expected impacts from climate change.

Regional, State, and City Policy
TEACH
classes
 Global Environmental Politics (Climate Change)
Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University
This semester-long upper-division course is taught by Dr. Michele Betsill, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University. It focuses on "developing effective policy responses" to climate change, "one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century" and "a highly political process involving conflicts over competing values and interests."

resources
 The Climate Change Novel: A Faulty Simulator of Environmental Politics
Adam Trexler, Policy Innovations, November 2011
A thought-provoking discussion of what recent novels about climate change can contribute to our thinking about various policy options for dealing with this issue, with a handful of examples drawn from Trexler's extensive reading in more than 200 novels on the topic. He notes that novels typically explore the "interrelated personal, aesthetic, social, and political choices people make as they react to changes in the climate around them" and concludes that "we need new ways of envisioning political alliances, blending technocratic and utopian aspects of policy." Policy Innovations is a publication of the Carnegie Council Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

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