For your midterm, you will compose an essay that relates some of these themes to the course’s core concept: the “world’s regions.”

For your midterm, you will compose an essay that relates some of these themes to the course’s core concept: the “world’s regions.” You have the option of picking between two essay prompts. The first addresses the regional and global dimensions of climate change

Option 1: Climate change

Climate change is sometimes presented as the ultimate “collective action problem”: a pressing and potentially existential crisis that requires international coordination to address—coordination which is often frustrated by the divergent national and regional interests of the actors involved in shaping climate policy at global fora like the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference (COP). Everywhere is affected by a warming planet, but different countries and regions have varying institutional and financial capacities to respond to it. Debates rage in the halls of power and beyond about the historical and current responsibility of different countries for producing carbon emissions; the relationship between globalization, economic growth, and climate change; and the development pathways available to poorer countries in the Global South in a world with a constrained “carbon budget.” In the meantime, the resource strains and patterns of human migration triggered by the physical impacts of a warming world are increasingly approached by states and regions as geopolitical and security threats.

Your essay should be between 1200 and 1800 words (roughly 4-6 pages double-spaced).

You are expected to draw on readings from the course as well as some independent research to make your argument. You must use at least one reading from the course thus far and at least four additional sources (a minimum of five total). Outside sources can be peer-reviewed academic articles, but can also include popular reporting in major news outlets, policy papers from think tanks, reports from international organizations, documentary films, and so on.

Citations can be in any style you choose (APA, MLA, Chicago) as long as they are consistent throughout. If you are citing parenthetically—for example, (Wallerstein, 2004: 8)—be sure to include a works cited with the full citation at the end of the paper

below I have attached (PDF) the one reading from the course that must be used in the paper, in addition to the four additional sources