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Courses - Spring 2027
GEOL
Geology Department Site
GEOL125
Wicked Problems and Solutions in Climate Change
Credits: 3
Grad Meth: Reg, P-F, Aud
Cross-listed with: AOSC125.
Credit only granted for: GEOL125 or AOSC125.
If you were born after 1970, climate change is a part of the world you know. Why has it been so difficult for individuals, communities, nations and the global community to mitigate, adapt and reduce societal vulnerability to its present and future dangers? Climate change is a wicked problem: difficult to unravel because it has so many tangled dimensions. Using Kim Stanley Robinson's climate fiction novel "Ministry for the Future" to introduce the complexity of climate problems and solutions, we will develop the scientific, economic, psychological and social aspects of not only the wicked problem but wicked solutions - pathways to sustainability in the 21st century - your century. Along the way we will role play the conditions, choices, actions and events by which these same problems, illustrated on the UMD campus, could untangle the wickedness of the problem and illuminate the wickedness of plausible solutions.