PLCP 4500

I took the Politics of Climate Change in Fall 2023 and did really enjoy this class. However, it definitely is a bit different from traditional comparative politics classes. Rather than covering theory or state-state interactions, this class was more of a deep dive into the development of climate policy such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Professor Reifsnyder has taken part in many policymaking roles himself, co-chairing the working group that developed the Paris Agreement himself. He is incredibly knowledgable on all things climate policy, and has a wealth of life experiences to share with the class.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the way this class was run - each class meeting, one or two students would present on that week's readings, summarizing them and their main takeaways. There were a couple of problems with this. First, some of the weekly readings were excessive. Some weeks involved 200+ pages of DENSE reading (from law journals, legal documents, treaties), and it was a bit hard to grasp the main points when the professor didn't explicitly go over it. The grading was dependent on 4 quizzes (worth 5% each), 3 papers (each worth 15%), and class participation (35%) which I thought was very fair.