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Energy geopolitics

Teaching Unit (for year 1): Elective #2

Work in progress

Face-to-face time

⁠
`24`
⁠
hours

Student workload

⁠
`60`
⁠
hours

ECTS

⁠
`3`
⁠
⁠

Responsible Teacher

Adel EL GAMMAL

⁠

Aims of the teaching

The energy transition requires solving a difficult democratic problem. It implies making various difficult decisions that combine sharp scientific information and strong political will, and are backed up by a large consensus if they are to be adopted and really put at work. While there is a general agreement about the need of an energy transition, one cannot but notice the current inability to follow the adopted orientations. Further, various tensions or controversies often hamper potential advances.

This teaching aims at introducing the students to key concepts within political science and epistemology to analyse these tensions and to investigate why such decisions are difficult to make and apply within democratic societies. The course will also include lectures devoted to the environmental philosophy and environmental ethics, anthropocene, as well as to anthropological, ontological and moral consequences of human transformations of the surrounding world.

The course will engage students into a series of normative considerations, including the place of norms and values within technoscience, the role of experts at the interface between science and society, the critical analysis of technological controversies, anti science rhetoric, the strategies of merchants of doubt to propagate scientific denial, and the difficult interactions between the political and scientific spheres and their actors, who are neither organized nor prepared to interact directly and fruitfully around these issues.

Intended Learning outcomes (measured by the assessment)

At the end of the teaching module, the student should:

understand which types of actors need to interact to elaborate energy policies and what their roles should be, if these interactions are to be successful;

be more attentive to the scientific, social, and human dimensions of the processes, decisions, policies or technologies that come with the energetic transition;

be capable of singling out the norms and/or preferences that are implicitly built in scientific and technological studies and in energy policies and the crucial technological or scientific facts that should frame democratic discussions about energetic choices;

be able to present balanced and argued descriptions of democratic controversies concerning energy policies and related technologies;

understand what political problems and pitfalls the launching of energy policies raises for democratic societies and which factors favour or deter transversal interactions between actors;

be perceptive of distinct ways of organizing expertise and elaborating energy policies at the institutional level across countries.

Learning activities and approach

E-learning (online)

Analysis of relevant texts, multiple-choice questions about the texts and discussion of answers

Lectures (onsite)

values in science & technology

scientific responsibility

public expertise and its ways

technological debates in democratic societies: how

environmental ethics

Tutorials (onsite)

discussion of problems related

to the analysed texts

group presentations, controversial technologies with local implantation, simulated debates.

Useful information

Location

Practical work equipment

Personal computer with an internet connection

Other information

Assessment method

2 reports about material relevant to the topic of the class (typically scientific papers), one possibly about a film (700 words + 300-word discussion)

an oral group presentation about a subject-matter relevant to the class, typically about controversial technologies

a final written exam

Related literature

Douglas, Heather E. Science, policy, and the value-free ideal. Pittsburgh (Pa.), Etats-Unis d’Amérique: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.

Fishkin, James S., et Robert C. Luskin. « Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion ». Acta Politica 40, no 3 (2005): 284-98.

Gardiner, Stephen, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson, et Henry Shue. 2010. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. Oxford University Press.

Jasanoff, Sheila. Designs on nature: science and democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, N.J., Etats-Unis, 2007.

Controversies in Science and Technology, series edited by Daniel Kleinman.

Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London: Verso.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010

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