With the threats of climate change and air pollution looming large, the need to understand the politics behind them becomes increasingly critical.  This graduate-level seminar surveys and synthesizes existing and emerging approaches to study environmental politics, spanning across the subfields of comparative politics, international relations, and American politics.  The seminar is mainly comprised of two interrelated parts: 1) how politics shape environmental policies and outcomes; 2) how environmental change influences politics.  Topics include the domestic and international sources of environmental policymaking, the political determinants of environmental policy implementation, climate & environmental change and conflict, comparative environmental behavior, and emerging techniques to study environmental issues.  The seminar concludes with a reflection on how the study of environmental politics contributes to and engages core political science discourse and debates.  Furthermore, the seminar offers an opportunity for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students to develop their research projects related to the topic of environmental politics with an emphasis on research design.