Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions is a course that focuses on scalable solutions for carbon neutrality and climate stability. The course adopts climate change mitigation policies, technologies, governance and actions that California, the UC system, and cities around the world have adopted as living laboratories and challenges students to identify locally and globally scalable solutions. It also adopts the Ten Scalable Solutions as determined by fifty faculty from the 10-campus UC system under UC’s CarbonNeutrality Initiative.  Climate change solutions provide tools to students, so they can bend the curve & preserve nature for future generations.

The course also represents the vision and passion of Professor Veerabhadran "Ram" Ramanathan. Dr. Ram is a Distinguished Professor of Climate Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University ofCalifornia, San Diego. There, he leads innovative research projects involving climate change and mitigation. He is the 2013 United Nations Environment Program’s Champion of Earth for Innovation and Science. He was the Science advisor of Pope Francis’ delegation for the UN climate summit at Paris in 2015 and at Marrakech in 2016. He advises California Governor Edmund J. Brown Jr. on climate solutions.

 

Students participate in an interdisciplinary group capstone project throughout the course. This eScholarship site serves as a repository for student final projects which instructors have identified as meeting a high standard of scholarship and innovative approach to climate change solutions. Dr. Ram has been an innovator in providing an opportunity for Bending the Curve students to publish their work through this site. He believes that the solutions which may bend the climate change curve may come from some of the student projects and papers published here.