气候变化是当今世界面临的主要环境和人类问题之一。冰川的融化和海岸线向陆地移动的上升海洋是问题的一方面，不断变化的温度和湿度模式以及地球生物群系对这些变化的响应加剧了这一难题。问题的另一方面是人的方面，包括影响和响应。人类为全球变暖和环境退化做出了贡献，只有人类才能通过全球范围内局部地区的成功政策举措为这些问题提供解决方案。解决气候变化引起的许多问题的方法只有在了解了控制气候和人类文化的过程后才能找到。减缓气候变化的成功政策决策将基于与文化相关的坚实科学和社会科学。社会科学家在协助州，国家和世界决策者了解环
Climate Change is one of the leading environmental and human problems facing the world today. Melting glaciers and rising oceans with landward-moving shorelines are one side of the issue, and shifting temperature and moisture patterns and the responses of earth's biota to these changes add to the dilemma. The other side of the problem is the human dimension, both with regards to impact and response. Humans contribute to global warming and environmental degradation, and humans alone can provide solutions to these problems through successful policy initiatives at local through global scales. Solutions to the many problems arising from climate change will only be found with an understanding of the processes that govern both climate and human culture. Successful policy decisions to mitigate climate change will be based on solid science and social science related to culture. Social scientists have an extremely important role to play in assisting state, national, and world decision makers in understanding environmental problems and finding solutions to them. Social scientists work with policy makers, conduct research among local populations around the world, and on the basis of this work devise policies that take into account the social and cultural implications of policy decisions from local to international scales. With core faculty situated in the Anthropology Department, this degree program addresses these important dimensions of climate change. Anthropologists draw their data from all known human societies. Social anthropologists conduct extended periods of fieldwork in communities around the world, physical anthropologists and archaeologists reconstruct those of the past. As a result of this work, anthropologists have built up robust models and explanations of similarity and variance across cultures. They are unusually well equipped to investigate and understand responses to climate change by people whose cultural backgrounds may be radically different from those of the western world. They have a detailed knowledge of how environment and climate shape cultures, and of how cultures shape their environments. They are also able to devise policies that take cultural differences into account in devising and managing climatic solutions.