2026 Fall
Instructor: Peter Garrett
Thursdays • 9/24 – 10/22 • 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Class size 5-20 students
20 seats remaining
Location: Klahr 103
This is a five-part course discussing Earth’s Changing Climate. We humans must take responsibility for today’s rapid changes, even though the climate has always changed over time. Our human economic system will make climate restoration difficult. For discussion of climate changes we will refer to essays in Greta Thunberg’s “The Climate Book”.
Class Outline: five (two hour) classes will cover the following areas:
Class 1. How climate works, and has worked in the distant past;
Class 2. How and why our planet is changing now;
Class 3. How a changing climate affects us;
Class 4. What we can do about it (on a personal level, and as a society); and
Class 5. What we must do about it and why.
The Course Text will be “The Climate Book” created by Greta Thunberg. It comes in paperback, hardcover, eBook, or audiobook formats, with prices ranging from $11 to $30. Order from major retailers or from your local bookstore. First published in 2022, it may be available secondhand.
Greta divides the book into 5 sections, which we’ll follow in 5 classes. Greta not only summarizes each section and subsection, but there are also short articles written by many of the international scientists she has met during her journey into Climate.
Earth’s Changing Climate
Peter Garrett has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Earth Science, and enjoys making Earth Science understandable, despite its complexities.
While interested in climate since boyhood, soon after his arrival to Maine in 1979, he started writing a weekly column called “The Weatherlog” for the Morning Sentinel, while building a passive solar home in Winslow. Some of you may have attended his “Climate Garden Parties” in mid-August over the past 6 years, with international speakers on climate topics.
Involved with Citizens Climate Lobby since 2014, he has advocated before our Members of Congress for necessary political and economic solutions to climate change.