About
A new undergraduate course, “Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions” follows the interdisciplinary nature of UC's groundbreaking report Bending the Curve: Ten scalable solutions for carbon neutrality and climate stability, as well as the university's Carbon Neutrality Initiative, which seeks to reach operational carbon neutrality for the UC system by 2025. Designed by Veerabhadran “Ram” Ramanathan from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and taught on 6 UC campuses, the course hopes to attract students from various academic backgrounds and fields of study to have them work together in identifying and exploring solution-focused projects related to climate change.
Bending the Curve
Under 2C Living Laboratories
Fifty-two cities, sixty-three businesses, and several universities have become living laboratories for ambitious climate mitigation programs. By 2050, the total annual emissions for the fifty-two cities will reduce by 407 MMTCO2e (million metric tons), compared with their base period (ranging from 1990 to 2013) emissions, which is equivalent to making the entire state of California, the sixth largest world economy, nearly carbon neutral. Case studies reveal that between 2000 and 2014, California and Sweden grew their Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) by nearly 30% while their CO2e emissions declined by 5% and 24% respectively. Such reductions employ a multitude of action plans, which we place in the context of the Ten Solutions for Carbon Neutrality and Climate Stability published by the University of California. The technologies deployed by the living laboratories include: improving end-use efficiencies; conversion to renewably generated electricity; solving intermittency of solar and wind power with batteries, fuel cells, and hydrogen; developing micro-grids for distributed power generation; expanding use of electric vehicles; recycling reform; capturing agricultural/landfill emissions for conversion to gas; and food waste reduction. The living laboratories have demonstrated that scalable technologies are available now to drastically reduce world-wide carbon emissions. However, doing so requires fundamental behavioral changes.
Learning Companion to Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions
The Learning Companion to Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions can help all readers gain the most from this book. This resource includes questions for review and discussion which help connect ideas, understand key concepts, and to increase the ability of readers at all levels to effectively discuss and explain climate change solutions.
The Learning Companion provides review questions that can be used to assess familiarity with key concepts, ensuring all readers are ready to apply what they’ve learned. These questions can also help instructors identify areas of learning that may require additional explanation. The Learning Companion also provides questions for discussion which can help facilitate both classroom and public discourse, and expanding each reader’s learning about climate change solutions
We recognize the importance of public communication and education to help promote a broad culture of climate action. Using the questions in the Learning Companion can help you take action, and to collaborate with others as a learning community, focused on climate change solutions.