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Climate change is an urgent global issue, characterized by rising temperatures, melting glaciers, and extreme weather events. Writing a thesis on this topic requires a clear and concise statement that guides the reader through the significance, focus, and scope of your study. In this piece, we will explore various examples of good and bad thesis statements related to climate change to guide students in crafting compelling research proposals.

Good Examples

Focused Approach: “This thesis will analyze the impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, using data from the last three decades.” Lack of Focus: “Climate change affects weather patterns.”

The good statement is specific, indicating a focus on hurricanes and providing a time frame. In contrast, the bad statement is too vague, covering a broad topic without any specific angle.

Clear Stance: “Implementing carbon taxes is an effective strategy for governments to incentivize companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Not So Clear: “Carbon taxes might be good for the environment.”

The good statement takes a clear position in favor of carbon taxes, while the bad statement is indecisive, not providing a clear standpoint.

Researchable and Measurable: “The thesis explores the correlation between the rise in global temperatures and the increase in the extinction rates of North American mammal species.” Dull: “Global warming is harmful to animals.”

The good statement is researchable and measurable, with clear variables and a focused geographic location, while the bad statement is generic and lacks specificity.

Bad Examples

Overly Broad: “Climate change is a global problem that needs to be addressed.”

This statement, while true, is overly broad and doesn’t propose a specific area of focus, making it inadequate for guiding a research study.

Lack of Clear Argument: “Climate change has some negative and positive effects.”

This statement doesn’t take a clear stance or highlight specific effects, making it weak and uninformative.

Unoriginal and Unengaging: “Climate change is real.”

While the statement is factual, it doesn’t present an original argument or engage the reader with a specific area of climate change research.

Crafting a compelling thesis statement on climate change is crucial for directing your research and presenting a clear, focused, and arguable position. A good thesis statement should be specific, take a clear stance, and be researchable and measurable. Avoid overly broad, unclear, unoriginal, or unengaging statements that do not provide clear direction or focus for your research. Utilizing the examples provided, students can navigate the intricate process of developing thesis statements that are not only academically rigorous but also intriguing and relevant to the pressing issue of climate change.

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Across UBC, faculty and students contribute to research on climate change. See below for recent theses on a few select topics, and search cIRcle , UBC's open access repository, for publications, theses/dissertation, and presentations to find more.

RSS feed searching the UBC Theses and Dissertations Collection for: "Global warming" OR "Climate change" OR "Greenhouse gas" OR "Renewable energy":

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Recent Submissions

• AN ACCUMULATION OF CATASTROPHE: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES  Dockstader, Sue ( University of Oregon , 2024-03-25 ) This dissertation is an environmental sociological study of wildland fire in what is now the western United States. It examines wildfire management from roughly the 1900s to the present time employing a Marxist historical ...
• Managing Life's Future: Species Essentialism and Evolutionary Normativity in Conservation Policy, Practice, and Imaginaries  Maggiulli, Katrina ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) Folk essentialist and normative understandings of species are not only prevalent in popular layperson communities, but also end up undergirding United States conservation policy and practice due to the simplistic clarity ...
• Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos  Fink, Lisa ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) This dissertation traces environmental thinking about invasive species from Western-colonial, diasporic settlers of color, and Indigenous perspectives within U.S. settler colonialism. Considering environmental discourses ...
• Futuremaking in a Disaster Zone: Everyday Climate Change Adaptation amongst Quechua Women in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca  Moulton, Holly ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) Indigenous women in Peru are often labeled “triply vulnerable” to climate change due to race, gender, and economic marginalization. Despite Peru’s focus on gender, Indigeneity, and intersectionality in national adaptation ...
• Land Acts: Land's Agency in American Literature, Law, and History from the Colonial Period to Removal  Keeler, Kyle ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) This dissertation examines land’s agency and relationships to land in the places now known as the United States as these relationships appear in literature and law from early colonization to the removal period. Land Acts ...
• PALEOTEMPERATURE, VEGETATION CHANGE, FIRE HISTORY, AND LAKE PRODUCTIVITY FOR THE LAST 14,500 YEARS AT GOLD LAKE, PACIFIC NORTHWEST, USA  Baig, Jamila ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-09 ) The postglacial history of vegetation, wildfire, and climate in the Cascade Range (Oregon) is only partly understood. This study uses high-resolution analysis from a 13-meter, 14,500-year sediment core from Gold Lake to ...
• On Western Juniper Climate Relations  Reis, Schyler ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Western juniper woodlands are highly sensitive to climate in terms of tree-ring growth, seedling establishment and range distribution. Understanding the dynamics of western juniper woodlands to changes in precipitation, ...
• Stories We Tell, Stories We Eat: Mexican Foodways, Cultural Identity, and Ideological Struggle in Netflix’s Taco Chronicles  Sanchez, Bela ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Food is a biological necessity imbued with numerous social, cultural, and economic implications for identity production and everyday meaning-making. Food television is a unique medium for the meanings of food and foodways ...
• Soil Nutrient Additions Shift Orthopteran Herbivory and Invertebrate Community Composition  Altmire, Gabriella ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Anthropogenic alterations to global pools of nitrogen and phosphorus are driving declines in plant diversity across grasslands. As such, concern over biodiversity loss has precipitated a host of studies investigating how ...
• Multispecies Memoir: Self, Genre, and Species Justice in Contemporary Culture  Otjen, Nathaniel ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Liberal humanism articulates an individual, rational, autonomous, universal, and singularly human subject that possesses various rights and freedoms. Although the imagined subject at the heart of liberal humanist philosophy ...
• Understanding How Changes in Disturbance Regimes and Long-Term Climate Shape Ecosystem and Landscape Structure and Function  Wright, Jamie ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Long-term and anthropic climatic change intersecting with disturbances alters ecosystem structure and function across spatiotemporal scales. Quantifying ecosystem responses can be convoluted, therefore utilizing multiproxy ...
• Ikpíkyav (To Fix Again): Drawing From Karuk World Renewal To Contest Settler Discourses Of Vulnerability  Vinyeta, Kirsten ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) The Klamath River Basin of Northern California has historically been replete with fire-adapted ecosystems and Indigenous communities. For the Karuk Tribe, fire has been an indispensable tool for both spiritual practice and ...
• Grassland Restoration in Heterogeneous, Changing, and Human Dominated Systems  Brambila, Alejandro ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Ecological restoration is a powerful tool to promote biodiversity and ecosystem function. Understanding underlying system variability and directional change can help predict outcomes of restoration interventions. Spatial ...
• Restoring What? And for Whom? Listening to Karuk Ecocultural Revitalization Practitioners and Uncovering Settler Logics in Ecological Restoration.  Worl, Sara ( University of Oregon , 2022-05-10 ) What does it mean to restore a landscape degraded by settler colonialism? How might a well intentionedprocess like ecological restoration end up causing harm from underlying settler colonial logics? This thesis explores ...
• Instigating Communities of Solidarity: An Exploration of Participatory, Informal, Temporary Urbanisms  Meier, Briana ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) This dissertationexamines the potential for participatory, informal urbanisms to buildcollaborative relations across ontological, cultural, and political difference. This research contributes to thefield of urban, environmental ...
• The Holy Oak School of Art and Ecology: A Proposal for Arts-Based Environmental Education Programming  Best, Krysta ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The following is a proposal for arts-based environmental education programming in elementary schools, after-school programs, and day-camp programs, entitled the Holy School of Art and Ecology. Ecophenomenological, arts-based ...
• Settler Colonial Listening and the Silence of Wilderness in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area  Hilgren, Bailey ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The Boundary Waters Canoe Area soundscape in northern Minnesota has a long and contested history but is most often characterized today as a pristine and distinctly silent wilderness. This thesis traces the construction and ...
• Species Dynamics and Restoration in Rare Serpentine Grasslands under Global Change  Hernandez, Eliza ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) Conserving rare serpentine grasslands is a challenge with ongoing nitrogen deposition. Nutrient-poor patches are fertilized by nitrogen-rich smog and exotic grasses can rapidly spread. Water resources are also being altered ...
• Place-making and Place-taking: An Analysis of Green Gentrification in Atlanta Georgia  Okotie-Oyekan, Aimée ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) Despite the benefits of urban greenspace, Atlanta’s Westside Park is causing gentrification and displacement pressures in Grove Park, a low-income African-American community in northwest Atlanta, Georgia. This study used ...
• Prairie Plant Responses to Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest  Reed, Paul ( University of Oregon , 2021-09-13 ) Understanding how plants respond to climate change is of paramount importance since their responses can affect ecosystem functions and patterns of biodiversity. At the population level, climate change may alter phenology ...

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Thesis Topics

The dissertation projects of the DK  (in the first phase from 2014 to 2018) contribute to finding answers to three questions:

• How do we understand and deal with climate change uncertainties in the natural and social sciences as well as from the perspective of normative theories?
• What are critical thresholds of environmental, social and economic systems considering their vulnerability and how are these thresholds related to the normative threshold of sufficiency, that is, the threshold of well-being below which persons’ basic rights are infringed or violated?
• What are scientifically sound, technologically and institutionally feasible, economically efficient, and ethically defensible and sustainable strategies to cope with climate change, particularly taking into account the problems of implementation in an environment characterized by uncertainties and thresholds?

Phd projects dealing with research question 1

Phd projects dealing with research question 2, phd projects dealing with research question 3.

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Sustainability Dissertation Topics

Students can use the campus to test solutions to real-world sustainability challenges as part of a Living Lab project. Here are some sustainability dissertation ideas.

19 November 2022

Dissertation topics

Living lab for a positive climate .

Our goal is to have net zero-arbon buildings by 2024 and to be a net zero-carbon institution by 2030.

Research topics include:

• Review UCL buildings for climate change resilience and implement adaptation measures
• Research into enhancing video conferencing for large events
• Sourcing renewable energy providers for gas to enable a zero-carbon heating supply
• Research on academic travel reduction initiatives
• Research on UCL’s new Climate Accountability Scheme (combining a carbon price with behavioural nudges) to incentivise climate action by departments.
• Reducing the climate impact of UCL’s hospitality

Living lab on reducing waste and consumption

Our goal is to reduce waste per person by 20% and to become a single-use plastic-free campus by 2024.

• How to eliminate plastic across UCL
• How to increase recycling at UCL (campaign)
• Labels and messaging on food

Consumers are becoming more aware of sustainability considerations in food production and consumption. In addition to the traditional dietary and nutritional requirements, consumers are seeking labels and certifications to know where and how food is made, what it is made from, its carbon footprint and sustainability credentials. UCL would like to investigate what information we should supply, how this should be displayed, communicated and marketed, to allow our communities to make informed decisions and promote a flexitarian diet. It is anticipated this would require the following activity:

• Developing questionnaires for opinions on carbon footprinting, carbon pricing and other sustainability information they want to know about, to inform point-of-sale purchasing choices in outlets.
• Comparing marketing of food as “vegan” or “plant-based” and the impacts on consumer’s perceptions.
• Investigating the notion of “label fatigue “where consumers are overwhelmed by information on packaging, and the impact of the project on this.
• Baselining data on food choices.
• Developing a labelling system for packaging/ refectory display boards – using data and survey responses.
• Trialling the labelling system.
• Surveying responses.
• Recording food choices and comparing to baseline, to identify behavioural change.

Living lab on biodiversity

Our aim is to create 10,0000m2 of extra biodiverse space by 2024 – equivalent to more than one and a half football pitches as well as increasing health and wellbeing for the Bloomsbury community.

Research topics include: 

• Research on different types of green infrastructure e.g. green walls, roofs, community gardens, and where UCL could implement them.
• Research on biodiversity and wildlife across UCL’s estate.
• Research on air pollution levels across UCL’s estate

Dissertation guide 

Step 1: choose your topic.

• Take a look at the sustainability research topics list to see if they interest you.
• If you require data on energy, travel, procurement, UCL’s sustainability engagement programmes or water please email Sustainable UCL to request this.
• If you have alternative research topic ideas for a sustainable living lab dissertation or project please contact us.

Step 2: Discuss with your department

• Speak with your supervisor or someone in your department about undertaking a living lab dissertation and refining your topic.
• They can advise you on scales, time scales and marking criteria.

Step 3: Contact Sustainable UCL

• Arrange a meeting with Sustainable UCL to ensure your project can make a valuable contribution to UCL.
• Sustainable UCL can provide data and put you in touch with relevant operational staff such as catering members and plumbers to test out your ideas.
• You can invite your supervisor to this meeting, but it is not a requirement.

Step 4: Undertake your dissertation

• Sustainable UCL can meet a further 2 times or 2 hours maximum to support your dissertation or project.

Step 5: Sharing data and findings

• One of the principles of the Living Lab Project is to make available any additional data you generate for others to build on, so the work can keep ‘living’
• Once your dissertation is completed, we require a concise 2-3 page briefing or presentation on your findings so that we can implement your ideas onto campus or future students and staff can build on your research. Living Lab projects usually spark plenty of ideas for further research, including aspects you were not able to cover during the project.

Sustainable Education