This course is organized around the idea of "capitalist nature."¹ Specifically, the course is concerned most centrally with six questions: 1) What are the unique political, ecological, and geographical dynamics of environmental change propelled by capital accumulation and the dynamics of specifically capitalist forms of "commodification"? 2) How and why is nature commodified (however partially) in a capitalist political economy, and what are the associated problems and contradictions? 3) How do the contemporary dynamics of environmental change, environmental politics, and environmental justice shape and help us understand transformations in markets, commodity production regimes, and capitalist social relations and institutions more broadly? 4) How can we understand the main currents of policy and regulatory responses to these dynamics? 5) How do prevailing ideas about nature (non-human as well as human) reflect, reinforce, and subvert capital accumulation? 6) Is there or can there be any such thing as "green capitalism"? ¹ O'Connor, M. (1993). On the misadventures of capitalist nature. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 4(3), 7-40.