Anthony Patt: Catalogue data in Autumn Semester 2020

Award: The Golden Owl
Name Prof. Dr. Anthony Patt
FieldClimate Policy
Address
Professur Klimaschutz & -anpassung
ETH Zürich, CHN J 74.2
Universitätstrasse 16
8092 Zürich
SWITZERLAND
Telephone+41 44 632 58 21
E-mailanthony.patt@usys.ethz.ch
DepartmentEnvironmental Systems Science
RelationshipFull Professor

NumberTitleECTSHoursLecturers
701-0029-00LEnvironmental Systems II3 credits2VA. Patt, H. Bugmann, N. Gruber
AbstractThe lecture provides a science-based exploration of three important environmental systems: Inland waters, forest, and of food systems.
ObjectiveThe students are able to explain important functions of the three environmental systems, to discuss critical drivers, trends and conflicts of their use and to compare potential solutions.
ContentAquatic ecosystems and their function, water use and its impact, water pollution and water treatment, water and health, water technologies, water & energy.

Forests and agroforest systems, trends and drivers of land use changes, sustainable forest management.

The main functions, trends and challenges of agricultural and food systems are discussed based on the four dimensions of food security (availability, access, utilization of food and stability of the food systems).
Lecture notesLecture notes or other documentation are provided by instructors and accessible via moodle.
701-1563-00LClimate Policy6 credits3GA. Patt, S. Hanger-Kopp
AbstractThis course provides an in-depth of analysis both of the theoretical underpinnings to different approaches to climate policy at the international and national levels, and how these different approaches have played out in practice. Students will learn how legislative frameworks have developed over the last 25 years, and also be able to appraise those frameworks critically.
ObjectiveClimate change is one of the defining challenges of our time, touching all aspects of the environment and of society. There is broad recognition (although with some dissent) that governments ought to do something about it: making sure that emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) stop within the next 30 to 40 years; helping people to adapt to the consequences of the climate change to which we have already committed ourselves; and, most controversially, perhaps taking measures to actively remove GHG’s from the atmosphere, or to alter the radiation balance of the Earth through solar engineering.

It’s a complicated set of problems, especially the first of these, known as mitigation. Fundamentally this is because it means doing something that humanity has never really tried before at a planetary scale: deliberately altering the ways the we produce, convert, and consume energy, which is at the heart of modern society. Modern society – the entire anthropocene – grew up on fossil fuels, and the huge benefits they offered in terms of energy that was inexpensive, easy to transport and store, and very dense in terms of its energy content per unit mass or volume. How to manage a society of over 7 billion people, at anything like today’s living standards, without the benefits of that energy, is a question for which there is no easy answer. There are also other challenges outside of energy. How do we build houses, office buildings, and infrastructure networks without cement, a substance that releases large amounts of CO2 as it hardens? How do we reverse the pace of deforestation, particularly in developing countries? How do we eliminate the GHG emissions from agriculture: the methane from cows’ bellies and rice paddies, together with the chemicals that enter the atmosphere from the application of fertilizer?

These are all tough questions at a technical level, but even tougher when you consider that governments typically need to employ indirect methods to get these things to happen. Arguably a government could simply pass a law that forbids people from using fossil fuels. But politically this is simply unrealistic, at least while so many people depend on fossil fuels in their daily lives. What is to be done? For this, one needs to turn to various ideas about how government can and should influence society. On the one hand are ideas suggesting that government ought to play a very limited role, relative to private actors, and should step in only to correct “market failures,” with interventions designed specifically around that failure. On the other hand are ideas suggesting that government (meaning all of us, working together through a democratic process) is the appropriate decision-making body for core decisions on where society can and should go. These issues come to the fore in climate policy discussions and debates.

This course is about all that. The goal is to give students a glimpse into the enormous complexity of this policy area, an understanding of some of the many debates that are currently raging (of which the debate about whether climate change is actually real is probably the least complicated or interesting). We want to give students the ability to evaluate policy arguments made by politicians, experts, and academics with a critical eye, informed by a knowledge of history, an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings, and the results of empirical testing of different strategies. A student taking this course ought to be able to step into an NGO or government agency involved in climate policy analysis or political advocacy, and immediately be able to make an informed and creative contribution. Moreover, by experiencing the depth of this policy area, students should be able to appreciate the complexity inherent in all policy areas.
LiteratureThere will be daily reading assignments, which we will then discuss critically during the class sessions. All of these will be posted in PDF format on a course Moodle. In addition, there will be three books to be read over the course of the semester. One of these can be accessed in PDF form free of charge, whereas the other two will need to be purchased. Those two are:

The Climate Casino, by William Nordhaus. Yale University Press.

Transforming Energy, by Anthony Patt. Cambridge University Press.
701-1565-00LQuantitative Policy Analysis and Modeling6 credits4GA. Patt, R. Garrett, S. Pfenninger, B. Pickering
AbstractThe lectures will introduce students to the principles of quantitative policy analysis, namely the methods to predict and evaluate the social, economic, and environmental effects of alternative strategies to achieve public objectives. A series of individual assignments, and one group project, will give students an opportunity for students to apply those methods to a set of case studies
ObjectiveThe objectives of this course are to develop the following key skills necessary for policy analysts:
- Identifying the critical quantitative factors that are of importance to policy makers in a range of decision-making situations.
- Developing conceptual models of the types of processes and relationships governing these quantitative factors, including stock-flow dynamics, feedback loops, optimization, sources and effects of uncertainty, and agent coordination problems.
- Develop and program numerical models to simulate the processes and relationships, in order to identify policy problems and the effects of policy interventions.
- Communicate the findings from these simulations and associated analysis in a manner that makes transparent their theoretical foundation, the level and sources of uncertainty, and ultimately their applicability to the policy problem.
The course will proceed through a series of policy analysis and modeling exercises, involving real-world or hypothetical problems. The specific examples around which work will be done will concern the environment, energy, health, and natural hazards management.