MSc in Climate Change: Policy, Media and Society At Dcu In 2019 With Diarmuid Torney

What was the thinking behind this course?

We established the MSc in Climate Change: Policy, Media and Society last year because, although much of the research and teaching on climate change at third level focuses on science and technology, in fact many of the challenges inhibiting our collective response to climate change stem from the political, institutional and societal dimensions of climate change.

To put it another way, we aren’t failing to adequately respond to climate change primarily because we don’t know how severe the problem is. There is certainly more to discover and learn about in terms of climate science and green technologies, but we also urgently need to better understand how our systems of governance, regulation and communication around climate change can better enable our response to the climate crisis.

What topics will be covered specifically? (is it science-based or arts or a mix of both?)

The programme includes a module on the science of climate change to give students a solid grounding in that area, but the predominant focus is on the social science dimensions of the climate crisis. This is what makes the programme unique in an Irish context. No other Master’s programme in Ireland provides such a thorough grounding in the social science dimensions of the climate crisis.

Here in DCU we have strengths in climate change politics and law, where we try to understand how our systems of governance can better facilitate climate action. We also have a lot of expertise in how climate change can be better communicated, including through traditional and new media. Finally, many of my colleagues work on how climate change can be integrated into our education systems to empower the next generation to become climate champions.

What is your own area of expertise?

My research and teaching focuses on climate change policy and governance. I am interested in how governments and societies in different jurisdictions are responding to the climate crisis, and how those responses can be strengthened.

I began over a decade ago studying the politics of climate change at a global level, looking at how the EU was trying to work with China and India to encourage them to respond to climate change. Over the past five years, I have increasingly focused on climate change politics in Europe and here in Ireland, including looking at how Ireland compares to other similar sized European countries.

The one-line summary is that Ireland does not compare well, but there is a new momentum over the past year or so as evidenced by the Citizens’ Assembly, the Oireachtas committee on climate action, the school strikes and movements like Extinction Rebellion, and most recently Richard Bruton’s all of government climate plan.

I’ve become increasingly interested in innovative climate governance initiatives such as Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly. I was a member of the Expert Advisory Group to the Citizens’ Assembly for its deliberations on climate change, and I am working with colleagues here in DCU on an ongoing research project funded by the Environmental Protection Agency examining lessons that can be drawn from the Citizens’ Assembly model.

Drawing on these research interests, I teach courses on DCU’s MSc in Climate Change on “climate change policy and governance” and on “environmental change and world politics”.

Do you look at renewables/green/ clean tech? & also reduction of energy usage OR other elements?

We don’t look at renewable energy or energy reduction technologies, but we do look at the policies and regulations needed to support the development of these technologies. While we certainly need more technological innovation, many of the technologies we need to address the climate challenge already exist. A key challenge is to provide policy frameworks to enable their roll-out.

Some of the most intractable challenges relate to the behavioural and governance aspects of climate change: How we get individuals and communities to change what they do and how they do it, and how governments can enable them to do so. Our MSc in Climate Change equips students with the knowledge and analytical capacity to contribute to addressing these governance and behavioural challenges.

How severe is the climate change issue & can it even be addressed in time by human actions?

We are in the midst of a climate and biodiversity emergency. In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the risks involved in exceeding 1.5 degrees of heating, including more extreme droughts and floods, as well as severe impacts on ecosystems and the human communities that depend upon them.

The picture with respect to protection of the natural world is similarly bleak. The Living Planet Report 2018, published by WWF, reported a 60% decline in the size of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians in just over 40 years. Last month, a major UN assessment of biodiversity warned that nature is declining at unprecedented rates globally, with approximately 1 million plant and animal species threatened with extinction, many within decades.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that it absolutely can be addressed by humans, but time is not on our side. We need to make profound transformations in our energy, food and transport systems. This transition will not be cheap or easy. If it were, we would have done it long ago. But what is beyond doubt is that it is necessary and achievable.

How do people find out more about it?

Full details of the MSc in Climate Change: Policy, Media and Society can be found here. It is available as both a full time programme over one year and a part time programme over two years. We schedule classes for our part time students on a single weekday afternoon to make it more compatible with our students’ work commitments.

The closing date for applications of 28 June is fast approaching. Anyone looking to apply for entry in September should do so soon.

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