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Critical thinking skills are widely considered to be important transferable skills gained from taking college-level economics courses that are also highly valued by employers. Yet, the literature on intentionally teaching critical thinking skills in undergraduate economics classes is still relatively sparse. The author of this article outlines an innovative approach to teaching critical thinking skills through class participation activities designed to promote critical reading of outside sources in an interdisciplinary climate economics course. The course goal is to equip students with the skills to articulate how economists contribute to the thinking on climate change and apply basic economics tools to explain and evaluate climate policy.

The article explores the preliminary investigation on the prevalence of environmental justice in North West (NW) Indiana in relation to exposure on toxic releases. It mentions the definition given by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on environmental justice as a fair treatment and significant involvement of all people with respect to the implementation of laws, regulations and policies. It adds that the investigation involves the spatial clustering in toxic releases and demographic and low-income groups wherein autoorrelation in racial, income and housing variables were showed. Furthermore, the benefits and the cost of environmental policy has also been identified.