Summer 2018: Sustainability Leadership

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Sustainability Leadership

Course: BIOL/OEAS/IDS 467, BIOL/OEAS 567 (three credits)
CRNs: 35510, 35861, 35874, 35855, 35856
Course title: Sustainability Leadership
Instructors: Dr. Hans-Peter Plag, Dr. Tatyana Lobova, Dr. Eddie Hill
Term: Summer 2018 (season 1)
Time: Mondays and Wednesday, 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Location: BAL 2068 -- SRC 1009

Class 5 (05/30/2018): Part 1: Risk assessments. Part 2: Vulnerabilities

Class slides

Part 1: Risk assessments

Risk assessments are a tool to better understand potential threats that could lead to loss of property, livelihood and lives, and lead to an undesirable future.

Analyze how risk is managed, understood, ignored in different cultures and how physical laws are integrated in risk assessments.

Reading List

Mandatory Readings

Paul Smith: Gaining a Better Understanding of How to Cope with Extreme Low Probability and High Impact Shock Events — And What About Sea Level Rise? Presentation at 3RC Event, September 16, 2015. pdf.

Ripple et al. (2017)

Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992

Additional Readings

Berger, A., Brown, C., Kousky, C., Zeckhauser, R., 2011. The Challenge of degraded environments: How common biases impair effective Policy, Risk Analysis, 31(9) 1423-1433. pdf.

Rusbridger, A., 2015. Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre. The Guardian. March 6, 2015, see html

Anderson, J., 2017. The psychology of why 94 deaths from terrorism are scarier than 301,797 deaths from guns. Quarz, html

Simonetta, J., 2016. The Other Side of the Global Crisis: Entropy and the Collapse of Civilizations. See here

The threat of terrorism:

Bouzar, D., Escaping Radicalism. Scientific American Mind, May/June 2016, 41-43.

Dutton, K., Abrams, D., 2016. Extinguishing the threat. Scientific American Mind, May/June 2016, 44-49.

Reicher, S. D., Haslam, S. A., 2016. Fueling Extremes. Scientific American Mind, May/June 2016, 35-39.

Lewandowsky, S., June 21, 2016. Why is populism popular? A psychologist explains. https://theconversation.com/why-is-populism-popular-a-psychologist-explains-61319.

Part 2: Vulnerabilities

Analyze the vulnerabilities of your system.

Reading List

Plag, H.-P., Jules-Plag, S., 2013. Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Ecosystems. In Pielke Sr., R. A., Seastedt, T., Suding, K. (eds.): Vulnerability of Ecosystems to Climate, Volume 4 of: Climate Vulnerability: Understanding and Addressing Threats to Essential Resources, 163-184, Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-384703-4.00105-2.

Shellenbarger Jones, A., Bosch, C., Strange, E., 2009. Vulnerable Species: the Effects of Sea-Level Rise on Coastal Habitats. In Titus, J. G. et al. (eds.): "Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region", U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.1, 73-83.

Karl, T. R., Melillo, J. M., Peterson, T. C. (eds.), 2009. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Cambridge University Press.

Kelly, P. M., Adger, W. N., 2000. Theory and practice in assessing vulnerability to climate change and facilitation adaptation, Climatic Change, 47, 325-352.

EEA (2017)

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