Intersection of Economics and Sustainability: Tips and Traps

Summary: This page informally guides the students in Ecology, Economics, and Ethics toward the successful execution of the assignment on the intersection of economics and sustainability.

The course syllabus defines the goals, mission, and requiremens of Ecology, Economics, and Ethics. The course schedule displays the sequence of activities and provides links to material and activities within the flow of the course. Note that the assignment's length has been reduce to 6 pages. I have linked to a sample model paper from the fall, 2012, semester.

Course Material: The Basics For Review

Your interpretive essay should reflect the course material in the schedule. Here is a list that should refresh your study:

  1. The Anthropocene provides a foundation by which to connect economic and earth hsitory. This article should be foundational to your interpretive essay. Please use my PowerPoint presentation that offers my notes on the Anthropocene that frame Ecology, Economics, and Ethics.
  2. The film Banking on Disaster makes essential links among economic development under neoliberalism, economic globalization, and the destruction of the Amazon. The film glimpses the situation that contirbuted to the background concern expressed in the Brundtland Report.
  3. The Brundtland Report provides the seminal statement of sustainable development that defined sustainability as a paradigm challening the orthodoxy of neoliberalism: see the Overview. This conceptual step critically redefined the meaning of development and sustainability and has endured. My PowerPoint presentation focuses on the meaning of the Brundtland Report.
  4. The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and my supplementary notes fills out the connection between sources and sinks, basic to ecological economics. Please see my presentations on the Introduction, Extraction, and the rest of the materials cycle. The Story of Stuff fits the assignment on intersection of economics and sustainability: Use The Story of Stuff to inform your interpretive essay.
  5. A foundation of your interpretive essay should be my article, Economic Strategies for Sustainability, which was distributed in class. This was written expressly to inform sustainers about economic thought. Use it, please. My supportive background notes on approaching economics for sustainability have been presented in PowerPoint format. This presentation should not be excluded. We will go over the presentation in our class on November 6. I also offer an overview of my approach to ecological economics for ENST30501.
  6. To introduce ecological economics, use Herman Daly: Economics in a Full World, Scientific American, September 2005, Vol. 293, Issue 3. Then peruse the summaries by Peter Montague: Sustainable Development in Six Parts: Part I, II, III, IV. (We will skip Parts V and VI.)
  7. I will abbreviate and make optional the controversial discussion of economic globalization. Use Herman Daly, Globalization and Its Discontents and my economic globalization presentation.
  8. Finally, include in your interpretive essay the paper by Wolfgang Sachs, Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainability. (Recommended: the full version of Wolfgang Sachs, Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainability.) See also my presentation: Fair and Fragile. We will go over the presentation in our class on November 13.

What How to Approach the Interpretive Essay

  1. In class I have explained how to use the style toolbar of Microsoft Word. Please provide headers, lists, and other structural elements in a clearly expressed and coherent essay. Use blockquotes but don't overwhelm your essay. You may paraphrase but identify the source.
  2. Use the basic sources and do not make this a research paper. You may use external sources but make sure that you reference the basic material in the schedule and the list above. Your goal is to convince me that you are familiar with the substance of the course and not to go off on tangents. Ancillary sources must complement and not replace the material presented in course.
  3. Don't provide opinion until you reach your conclusion, but keep that short. No long-winded introductions but get into the susbtance of your interpretive essay in the first paragraph. Try to specify your sources, but since we all know where the basic course material comes from, there is no need to cite in the paper. Regard this as an extended open-book essay.

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