World Sustainability Syllabus, Summer 2010
ENST20951 #30076 | V 1.0

Introduction: The Challenge of World Sustainability

World Sustainability provides an analysis of the contemporary global crisis within a framework for restoration and transition to a sustainable world. World Sustainability will challenge us and our children for decades to come. The course examines three interacting destructive tendencies of the modern period, all exacerbated by exponential population growth:

1. The ecological crisis: The potentially catastrophic degradation and contamination of our planetary home;
2. The social crisis:The polarization between globalized rich and localized poor; the exclusion of most of the world's inhabitants; the eclipse of community; and increasing violence and misery;
3. The economic crisis: The systemic imperative of economic globalization to ceaselessly grow despite overshooting the limits to endure exponential demands on resources and on vulnerable and vital ecosystems.

The axial concept of the course is sustainability, an alternative societal path poised to replace economic growth as the fundamental organizing principle. To see the need for switching paths, we require the critical abilities to see past dominant sources of information that actively distort relevant facts and obstruct sustainability. Sustainability means learning to live within our means rather than depriving future generations. Our future depends on grasping the need for a transition toward a sustainable society and forging this new direction. To do so, we require both the knowledge and the wisdom to live sustainably in the future. Establishing this "global ecological literacy" is the primary function of this course. Ramapo's Professor Emeritus Trent Schroyer says it well:

When we talk about 'world sustainability' we are concerned not only with getting our metabolism with nature right and creating an equitable world but also with maintaining an ethos of evidence and truthfulness, of public accountability and transparency in which legitimate democratic discourse and political action can change the rules and establish human rights.

World Sustainability examines the ecological, social, and economic crises of our time, relates these to the emerging critique of the dominant strategy for economic globalization (called the Washington Consensus in other parts of the planet) that grew out of the 1980s, and then contrasts it to the counter-views and interests of the excluded "Others" -- poor, Third World, and traditional peoples.

Learning Goals ^

The learning goals of World Sustainability are:

1. A thorough understanding of the concept of sustainability: The student will explain sustainability in the global context and provide examples.
2. An empirical grasp of the nature and extent of the current global crisis: The student will define timely and comprehensive aspects that indicate the extent of the unsustainability of our current civilization and anthropogenic systems.
3. A critical interpretation of how modern civilization resists, even obstructs, sustainability: Students will explain how modern civilization creates barriers that resist sustainability.
4. An appreciation of how people and organizations take actions toward sustainability: Students in Part II, the enabling analysis, will discover how citizens and organizations make decisions and gain skills helpful in making their lives sustainable, promoting sustainable communities, and achieving a sustainable world. In particular, we will explore the potential of citizenship and civil society responses.

Each of the goals will be built into the course schedule. To achieve these goals, the following skills must be attained or refined:

to read and analyze complex writings to find and evaluate information from multiple sources to integrate information coming from multiple and diverse sources to think critically

to understand the meta-levels of communication to work effectively in groups to understand the process of democratic action to present information effectively.

Part I: From Economic Globalization To World Sustainability ^

ENST209 contains two major sections, each of which ends in a brief paper that demonstrates the student's learning in that part of the course.

Part I.B.: The Global Ecological, Economic, and Social Crisis ^

We must explain the nature and extent of the current global crisis. We will examine timely and comprehensive data that indicate the extent of the unsustainability of our current civilization. The student will be asked to apprehend a world in constant whirl, changing rapidly while becoming more integrated. The problems of unsustainability will be divided into these categories:

1. The ecological crisis of resource depletion, exhausted waste disposal sinks, overshoot of carrying capacity, and climate change.
2. The social crisis of unmet human needs, growing inequality, the plight of women and children, desperately poor regions, failed states, the AIDS pandemic, wasted potential, and exclusion.
3. The economic crisis of ideological hegemony of the Washington Consensus and accelerating corporate domination of the international order.

Part I.C.: The Disabling Circumstances ^

The third section of the first part of the course reconstructs some of the major planetary transformations that have created these contemporary crises. We examine the dynamics through which this process occurs, explaining how people worldwide are dis-abled and disempowered as a result.

How does disabling block people from achieving psychological and moral-ethical consciousness, even forcing regression toward progressively less mature forms of behavior? How does domination distort reality via the production of disinformation and propaganda?

Part II: Creating World Sustainability ^

We turn to the enabling analysis: People around the world have responded to the disabling characteristics of economic globalization by engaging in grass roots activism. The second main part of the course focuses on the innovative learning that is emerging from awakening civil societies around the world, innovations in public policies, and green business models.

Resources, Grading, Attendance, and Assignments ^

The extensive on-line format allows the incorporation of Internet material, including multi-media and a dedicated World Sustainability Wiki site maintained by your professors and with your collaboration. Books required for the course are:

1. Lester Brown. Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. New York: Norton, 2009. (Note: do not use Plan B 3.0).
2. Bill McKibben. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Times Books, 2007.

Each part of the course will culminate with an essay of 8 double-spaced pages defined in an on-line memorandum provided near the beginning of each section. Four points will be deducted for each week of late submission of papers. The topics for the assignments and their relative weight toward the final grade are:

1. The Sustainability Graphic Organizer: This is an exercise to allow you to test your understanding of the concept of sustainability and demonstrate it to us using short sentences and examples and three well developed paragraphs. This counts 16 points toward your grade.
2. The Global Crisis Essay will unite the three parts of the first section, discussing the shift from Economic Globalization toward Sustainability. You will clearly define and use the concept of sustainability, explaining how the sustainability crisis we now face has emerged from the global ecological crisis, as well as interconnected social and economic crises. In doing so, you will clearly describe examples of disabling. That is, you will try to answer the nagging question of why humans have allowed their home planet to be destroyed and acquiesced to the inequities and ideology involved in our economic system. How could we do that? Disabling explains how we have entered a system that deprives us of choice and power and where our abilities become irrelevant. Experts decide for us. Draw heavily upon your course readings, lectures, movies and discussions, citing in your text and in a bibliography. The resulting paper should be around 8 pages and will count 32 points.
3. The Enabling Essay will integrate the second section of the course, examining the role of civil society, public policy, and business in moving the world toward sustainability. This culminating assignment draws heavily upon your course material. The resulting paper should be around 8 pages and will count 32 points.
4. Participation counts 20 points and will be assessed in proportion to the contribution of the student to the class as a whole and to the interaction promoted in class by the student as noted in email and wiki comments.

Grading Criteria: Written work is graded on these criteria:

1. Depth, creativity and critical thinking: The papers should analyze the topic so as to reveal depth of understanding and your ability to think through the essential issues pertaining to the topic.
2. Integration: The paper should weave together various sources, including reading and observations/experience, into a tight, logical outline.
3. Writing style: The paper should avoid spelling and grammatical errors and generally be well written.
4. Content and sources: Source material from books, journals, government documents, selective web sites and other appropriate sources shall be utilized to support your conclusions and demonstrate your grasp of the topic. All sources shall be properly cited in the text and provide a bibliography using either MLA or APA format.

Grades will be scaled as follows: A = 93 and above; A- = 90 to 92; B+ = 87 to 89; B = 83 to 86; B- = 80 to 82; C+ = 77 to 79; C = 73 to 76; C- = 70 to 72; D+ = 67 to 69; D = 60 to 66; F < 60.

Plagiarism policy: Members of the Ramapo college community are expected to be honest and forthright in their academic endeavors. In compliance with the college policy (see catalog) on academic integrity, suspected evidence of plagiarism shall be reported to the Provost Office and will result in failure of the course. The instructor reserves the right to use electronic aids to confirm that work is original.

Students having special needs are invited to notify the instructors. [ ^ = returns to top]

---

The World Sustainability Web Site | © Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | Page:
Initialized: 4/25/2010 | Last Update: 05/21/2010