World Sustainability Syllabus, Spring 2010 | ENST20901

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Course information: Your teacher is Professor Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. Our class number is ENST20901, CRN 20190. We meet in ASB 135 on Monday evenings from 6:00 to 9:15 P.M. My contact information is listed at the end of this syllabus. An essential course resource is our schedule.

World Sustainability provides an analysis of the contemporary global crisis within a framework for restoration and for 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 and the decoupling of economic growth from human well-being and security.

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 the facts and obstruct sustainability. Sustainability means learning to live well 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 as modules. Thus, Learning Goals, Learning Modules, the schedule, and grading instruments tightly integrate.

To achieve these goals, the following skills must be attained or refined:

to think critically to present information effectively. to read and analyze complex writings to find and evaluate information from multiple sources

to integrate information coming from multiple and diverse sources to work effectively in groups to understand the process of democratic action

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.

The accelerating planetary crisis invokes our theme of world sustainability, a potential turning point in world civilization. The nature of that crisis will be explored in Part I, but a groundwork that introduces sustainability must first be laid. The abstract concept of sustainability invites confusion but the concrete recognition for the call for world sustainability opens up a path for a promising future for our children. An exploration of the theme of world sustainability is our first task.

Two related and essential oppositions will frame Part I:

1. Economic globalization versus world sustainability: economic growth versus the limits to growth.
2. The origins and significance of World Sustainability.

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.

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 domination distort reality via the production of disinformation and propaganda? Are global institutions eroding sovereignty? Is economic ideology obscuring democracy and human well-being and security?

Part II: Creating World Sustainability

We turn next 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. Students will research and report about citizens' groups and movements in civil society and evaluate how these social innovations contribute to the resolution of current crisis tendencies. The study of grass roots activism and movements as forces for social learning will allow for an evaluation of such social innovations, offering hope of resolving the contemporary crises and avoiding future ones.

Students will present oral reports on case studies of civil society organizations that respond to the need for sustainability within a specific region and nation.

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. Resource and books for the course are:

1. Lester Brown. Plan B 4.0. 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.
3. The course uses the World Sustainability Web Site.
4. A new World Sustainability Wiki Site facilitates the interactivity required of our course.

Attendance, of course, is mandatory and essential to your participation. Absence for four classes can result in failure and requires that the student initiates consultation with the professor. Excused absences, counting as half an absence, may be granted for good cause, but may require documentation and should be arranged in advance whenever feasible. Holy days will be respected. The rules of academic integrity set forth in the Student Handbook will be enforced.

Each of the two main parts of the course will culminate with an essay of about 8 double-spaced pages defined below. Four points will be deducted for each week of late submission of papers. The topics for the essay and their relative weight toward the final grade are:

1. A graphic organizer and short questions that together define sustainability and provide the context for World Sustainability. This counts 16 points and is due on February 22.
2. The global crisis essay, counting 32 points, is due on March 12 -- just before spring break.
3. Each student will make an oral presentation reporting on a case study of civil society organizations that respond to the need for sustainability within a specific region and nation. The oral report of five minutes or less carries 10 points and is scheduled for April 26 and May 3.
4. The enabling analysis, carrying 32 points, requires that the student reports on an organization or a significant event that responds to a challenge with a program aimed as sustainability. Typically, this is a civil society organization outside the USA. Due between May 4 and May 11.
5. Class Presentation on the contribution of a civil society organization to creating sustainability is required and will count as 10 points.
6. Participation counts 10 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.

The tentative descriptions of the paper assignments are:

1. The 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.
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 8-10 pages.
3. The Enabling Essay will integrate the second section of the course, examining the role of Civil Society and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in balancing the power of government and business and moving the world toward sustainability. Each group will have selected a continent and each person within that group a country on that continent. Your research into CSO actions toward sustainability within that country will serve as the basis for your part in the group's presentation on grass roots sustainability movements on their continent. In this paper, you will encompass this case as an example within a thorough discussion of the concept of enabling, the role of civic action, the threefolding relationships in creating sustainability, and the outcomes. Draw heavily upon your course readings, lectures, movies and discussions, citing them in your text and in a bibliography. The resulting paper should be around 8-10 pages.

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.

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 on academic integrity, suspected evidence of plagiarism shall be reported to the Provost Office and may 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 discuss these with the instructors.

Contact Information

Your teacher is Professor Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. My office is G-231 and my hours are: Monday 12:30-3:00 P.M.; Thursday 12:00-1:30 P.M.; and other times by appointment. I dedicate a gmail address to this class: enst209@gmail.com. My office phone is 201-684-7751.

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The World Sustainability Web Site | © Michael Edelstiein, Ph.D. and Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | 03/08/2010