Learning Module #4: The Enabling Analysis | V. 1.1

Schedule |Learning Objectives TOC: #1 | #2 | assignment #4
Learning Module #4 should be the most challenging and engaging part of World Sustainability: How can citizens and organizations make decisions and gain skills helpful in making their lives sustainable, promoting sustainable communities, and achieving a sustainable world. What public policies can be formulated and implemented that promote world sustainability?

Context: Concluding World Sustainability

Let's review where we are at this point in World Sustainability:

  1. Learning Module #1 introduced us to sustainability, sustainable development, and world sustainability, grounding us in alternatives validated on a global scale for prospective human development within a restored global ecosystem.
  2. Learning Module #2 introduced the global crisis, but as an empirical context within which world sustainability might unfold. Learning Module #2 remained neutral about larger implications and interpretations.
  3. Learning Module #3 posed critical questions: Are there specific institutions and interests vested in maintaining a system that creates a disabling situation for ourselves and for others? Does our culture inhibit our gaining control over our lives?

We are now poised to take the next and final step through defining Learning Module #4. This may be the most exciting and challenging part of World Sustainability. We commit our concluding of ENST209 to generating feasible options in civil society, public policy, and business that demonstrate the potential of world sustainability.

Learning Goal #4

An appreciation of how people and organizations take actions toward sustainability: How can citizens and organizations make decisions and gain skills helpful in making their lives sustainable, promoting sustainable communities, and achieving a sustainable world. What public policies can be formulated and implemented that promote world sustainability? In particular, we will explore the potential of citizenship and civil society responses.

Two Learning Objectives are pursued here:

  1. The student will be able to identify and to explain how citizens and civil society organizations take actions and build capacities that make their lives sustainable, promote sustainable communities, and build a sustainable world.
  2. The student will be able to define and analyze proposed public policy initiatives and alternatives that promote world sustainability.

To demonstrate this, students will write a culminating essay explaining how a sustainable world is being built through initiatives by civil society organizations. The essay will explain how these initiatives integrate the themes of the course. The final essay counts 25 points.

November 13: Learning Objective #1: Civil Society and World Sustainability ^

We will start with a YouTube clip of Van Jones at the recent American Association of Sustainability in Higher Education Conference that Professors Edelstein and Hayes attended with several Ramapo College Students. Professor Edelstein will explain how Ramapo College students and faculty created The Alternative Energy Center at the college.

We will go through the presentation by Prof. Wayne Hayes: How Can We Transition to World Sustainability?

View a film that connects us to the introduction of the course: PBS Wide Angle: The Burning Season, especially Part VI, The Bali Conference.

An introduction to civil society organizations is found on our wiki page. Note also the links to the work on Social ThreeFolding by Ryan Savino, a student from an ENST209 class in the spring, 2008. A notgeworthy example of a sustainability-oreinted civil society organization is EcoTrust, a bio-regional group in the Pacific Northwest.

Please also read these articles from Schroyer and Golodik, Creating a Sustainable World:

  1. Schroyer: Sustainability as Regenerating Knowledge Systems, pp. 135-142
  2. Siddhartha: Cultural Alternatives to Development in South India, pp. 175-188
  3. Lewitt: Participatory Democracy and Porto Alegre, pp. 253-262
  4. Schroyer: Sustainability as Capacity Building and Democratization of Wealth, pp. 215-222
  5. Makofske: The 21st Century Transition to Sustainable Energy, pp. 279-292
  6. Gussow: Creating Sustainable Agriculture and Relocalizing Food Systems, pp. 263-278
  7. Schuman: Going Local: How Can We Create Viable Local Economies?, pp. 223-242
  8. McKibben, Deep Economy, Ch. 1 and 2, pp. 1-94

November 20: Learning Objective #1: Public Policy, Eco-Economy, and World Sustainability ^

The student will be able to define and analyze proposed public policy initiatives and alternatives that promote world sustainability.

Public policy readings are:

  1. Brown: Chapters 7-13, pp. 131-288: This is the core reading for this Learning Outcome.
  2. Wayne Hayes: Lecture notes on Plan B
  3. McKibben: video clip on economic growth
  4. McKibben, Deep Economy, Ch. 3, 4, 5, and afterword, pp. 95-232
  5. Review in Schroyer and Golodik articles by Montague, Hayes, and Sachs for public policy aspects.

The assignment for Learning Module #4, worth 25 points, is due on the last day of class, December 11. Send them to our class e-mail account, enst209@gmail.com. Please save your documents as MS Word 2003 documents. We do not use MS Vista, so we may not be able to open documents saved in .docx format. We cannot open documents saved in other formats, so strictly avoid them. If you are stuck, use RTF (Rich Text Format).

© Michael Edelstiein, Ph.D., and Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | Initialized: 6/13/2008 | Last Update: 11/20/2008