‘Climate Finance’ Degree: Only at Columbia University

“Lisa Sachs repeated refusal to address intellectual diversity and the need for balanced debate on open climate questions speak for themselves. It is climate propaganda at Columbia U.”

Yesterday’s post focused on Lisa Sachs, Director of Columbia Climate School’s Masters in Climate Finance. What is the course, and what is missing from a scholarly viewpoint? First, the parent’s Mission Statement:

The Columbia Climate School’s mission is to further knowledge and educate leaders to achieve equitable and just solutions to the changing climate and related sustainability challenges.

Education: The Columbia Climate School educates future climate leaders to address the urgent challenges facing our planet with graduate degree programs and offers other powerful learning opportunities for students, educators, and professionals.

Research: The Columbia Climate School nurtures and supports innovative research in the science, consequences, and human dimensions of climate change, including the methods of achieving a more sustainable and just world.

Impact: The Columbia Climate School translates its academic work into evidence-based analysis and advice to inform decision- and policy-makers in communities, governments, industries, and nonprofits in the US and globally.

Professor Sachs’ course is described on the Columbia Climate School’s website:

The Master of Science (MS) in Climate Finance is a one-year, 39-credit professional degree program offered by the Columbia Climate School in close collaboration with the Columbia Business School. This interdisciplinary degree integrates climate science with fundamental financial management practices that equip students with the financial decision-making skills to respond to climate change.

Equipped with a robust understanding of climate science, and the costs, risks and opportunities associated with climate change, graduates will be uniquely suited for senior positions in public, private, and intergovernmental institutions, navigating their organizations to success while supporting a more rigorous and coherent approach to climate finance more generally.

Comment

This all sounds reasonable, but where is the “first, check your premises” caveat? Greater speed to the wrong destination is not a virtue, as the founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the late Fred Smith, stated. Path dependency and ‘the tyranny of the status quo” in climate research and understanding can ruin a student’s time and subsequent career path.

Lisa Sachs repeated refusal to address intellectual diversity and the need for balanced debate on open climate questions speak for themselves. It is climate propaganda at Columbia U.

Appendix: Climate Realism Resources

There is no substitute for a climate degree program to not have a critic of the narrative of alarm and forced energy transition. One or more such professors can both teach courses and be a resource for students who are taking activist/alarmist courses. The “power of opposites” is very effective learning.

A second recommendation is to have debates for students between CO2/climate optimists and pessimists. In person or on Zoom. This is not nearly as good as having opposing professors, but it is necessary to reduce the present bias.

Third, key books should be texts for climate courses, as well as ‘skeptic’ articles and websites (Climate Etc., WUWT, MasterResource ….). The websites of Alex Epstein, Robert Bryce, and Bjorn Lomborg are useful, as is Roger Pielke Jr.‘s Substack. The Modernizing the EPA project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is research-worthy, as is the global warming work of CEI over the years and decades. Finally, many energy issues regarding the ‘transition’ are covered by the Institute for Energy Research.

Here are several books of note:

Judith Curry, Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response (Anthem Environment and Sustainability (2023)

Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less (2022)

Steven Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (2021)

Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurkmak, Population Bombed!: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change (2018)

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