Course Director: Brian Milani <bmilani@web.ca> Office Hours: 4-5:15pm & 8:30-10pm Wednesdays or by appointment |
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Description of this
Year's Course Perspectives on
Green Business is an overview course that
examines the role of business both in contributing to our social &
environmental problems, and in providing solutions to them. It does this by focusing on a combination
of key sectors and issues. Since there
are far more sectors and issues than we can include in one term, the course
tries to highlight key principles, tendencies and potentials. This year's main theme concerns the
increasing roles of both human creativity and the
Commons in the creation of a postindustrial
economy, and how this affects both the business models and regulatory forms that can
unleash or support growing green economic potentials and eventually
regenerative economies. Classes are a
mix of lecture, discussion, and videos.
[Note: Readings subject to change. Check each week.] Week 1, September 10,
Introduction: student introductions and
statements of interest, with an overview of key issues and relationships in
green business. ·
Brian Milani, “What is Green Economics?”,
Synthesis / Regeneration, #37 (Spring 2005); and Race, Poverty and the
Environment: A journal for social and environmental justice (2006) Video: Ray
Anderson: The Business Logic of Sustainability
Week 2, September 17, Perspectives on
Sustainability & Business Jonathan Rowe and David Bollier, "The Missing Sector:
Enlarging our sense of 'the Economy'," On the Commons, October 24, 2010 Walter Stahel, “The
Business Angle of a Circular Economy,” Ellen MacArthur Foundation / Product Life
Institute, May 2012 Eric Assadourian,
“When Good
Corporations Go Bad,” World Watch
magazine, May/June 2005 Gary Gardner and Thomas Prugh,
“Seeding the Sustainable Economy,” Chapter 1, The State of the World 2008, NY/Washington: Worldwatch
Institute, 2008 Joel Makower, The
State of Green Business 2014 overview , GreenBiz.com Majorie Kelly, "Can
There be "Good" Corporations? When companies are owned by workers
and the community–instead of Wall St. financiers—everything changes,"
Yes! magazine Spring 2012 Neal Gorenflo & Jeremy Adam Smith, "10
Ways Our World Is Becoming More Shareable," Yes! magazine, June 22, 2010 Optional:
Blue-Green
Alliance, Building
Ontario's Green Economy: A road map,
2012 David Korten, The
Pursuit of Happiness: A new development paradigm, contribution to the
Government of Bhutan's New Development
Paradigm report presented to the UN, 2013 Adam Parsons, "From
sharing cities to a sharing world," STWR website, Feb. 7, 2014 The Great
Transition, executive summary, New Economics
Foundation report, October 2009 Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart, “The Next
Industrial Revolution,” Atlantic
Monthly, Oct. 1998 Green
Growth or No Growth, CBC radio IDEAS
program, featuring Peter Victor & Tim Jackson Michael Connor, Sustainability
Progress: More ‘Words’ Than ‘Action’, Business
Ethics, Sept. 6, 2013 Polly Cleveland, "Sustainability
Squared: How we can sustain both the
environment and the people, " Dollars
& Sense magazine, January/February 2014
Week 3,
September 24, The Corporation: Problems & Strategies Jonathan Rowe, “Is the
Corporation Obsolete?”, Washington Monthly, 2001 Eric Assadurian, “The Role of
Stakeholders,” Worldwatch magazine, Sept./Oct.
2005 John H. Richardson,
"Saving
Capitalism from Itself: Inside the B Corp Revolution," Esquire,
August 23, 2010
Catherine Ruetschlin
& Amy Traub, A
Higher Wage is Possible at Wal-Mart, summary and update of Demos report, June
4 2014 Ashley Renders, "Setting
a global transparency standard is like herding cats," Corporate
Knights, July 9, 2014 Justin Fox / Don Tapscott, "Why Apple
Has to Become More Open," Harvard Business Review blog, March 11,
2013 Ron Robins, "Does Corporate Social Responsibility
Increase Profits?", Business Ethics, May 12, 2011 Optional: Stefan Heck and
Matt Rogers, "Will a Natural Resource 'Revolution'
Create a Trillion Dollar Opportunity?," Business
Ethics, May 28, 2014 Les Leopold, "The
Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out,"
AlterNet, March 23, 2011
--Pay
Violations Rampant in Low-Wage Industries Despite Enforcement Efforts, Fair Warning website, May 13, 2014 --Nelson Lichtenstein, “Wal-Mart: A Template for 21st Century
Capitalism?”, New Labor Forum 14, no.1 (2005): 21-30. [abridged version of
introduction to Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First Century Capitalism, New Press, November 2005] Stacy
Mitchell, "Wal-Mart's
Latest 'Buy America' Sham," Huffington
Post, August 22, 2013 William Young and
Fiona Tilley, "Can
Businesses Move Beyond Efficiency? The Shift toward Effectiveness and Equity
in the Corporate Sustainability Debate," Business Strategy
and the Environment, 15,
402–415 (2006) Robert Poiasek, Debunking
the Notion of a Triple Bottom Line,
GreenBiz,
August 31, 2009 Majorie Kelly, The
Next Step for CSR: Economic Democracy, Business Ethics, 2002 Videos: The Corporation: A Legal
'Person' The Corporation: Externalities PBS News Hour on B
Corporation certification Don
Tapscott on Mass Collaboration
Week 4,
October 1, Values-driven & Local Business 8 Acupuncture Points for Transforming Capitalism," Huffington Post, June 15, 2014
David Korten, "A New
Economy Policy Agenda," BALLE Policy Panel, May 23, 2009, livingeconomies.org
Rachel Mendelson, "Canadian
B-Corps Put their Money Where Their Branding is on Social Causes," Huffington Post.ca, March 2012 Gael O'Brien, "Patagonia:
Lessons from a Pioneer in Responsible Business," Business Ethics,
Sept. 5, 2012 Anthony Pringle, The Power of Purchasing: The economic impacts of local procurement, Columbia Institute,
LOCO BC, and ISIS Research Centre at the Sauder School of Business, May 2013 Optional: John Talberth, “A New Bottom
Line for Progress,” Chapter 2, The
State of the World 2008, NY/Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 2008 David Brodwin, "Americans
Leading a Do-It-Yourself Economy as Washington Stalls," US News
website, August 2, 2012 Stacy Mitchell,
"Independent
Businesses Deliver Bigger Economic Benefit, Study Finds," ILSR
website, August 16, 2012 Kirk Johnson, "Small
Farmers Creating a New Business Model as Agriculture Goes Local,"
New York Times, July 1, 2012 Carl Frankel, "The
Lore of the Local: Q & A with Michael Shuman," Chronogram
Magazine, Feb. 27, 2009 Josh Harkinson,
"Profits
of Place: A different vision of success emerges along Main St.,"
Orion magazine, Jan/Feb. 2004 Herman Daly, “Globalism
and Its Discontents,” August 2000 Stacy Mitchell, “Keep Your
Eyes on the Size: The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart,” Grist, March
28, 2007 Videos: Keeping Austin Weird
with the Multiplier Effect
Week 5, October 8, Green Manufacturing
& Energy
Keith Parkins, “Soft Energy Paths”,
Gaia briefing paper. John Farrell,
"Expect Delays: Reviewing Ontario's 'Buy Local' Renewable Energy
Program," Executive
Summary, ILSR website, May 2013 Stu Campana, "Is
Canada Suffering from Dutch Disease?" Alternatives journal, May 6,
2014 Guy Dauncey, "Ten
Ways to Use the Sun's Energy," Corporate Knights, Jan. 1, 2010 Yashnin and Associates, Sustainability
Through Product-service Systems and Servicizing,
Policy Research Initiative, May 2010 David Morris,
"The Once
and Future Carbohydrate Economy," The American Prospect, March 19, 2006 Ed Cohen-Rosenthal,
“What is
Eco-industrial Development?”, chapter 1 of Eco-industrial Strategies:
Unleashing Synergy between Economic Development and the Environment,
Sheffield UK: Greenleaf Publishers, 2003 Optional Scott Sinclair, Saving
the Green Economy Ontario’s Green Energy Act and the WTO, Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives report, Nov. 21, 2013 Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss, "The
Rocky Mountain Institute and Weaning Ourselves off of Oil and Coal,"
E magazine, June 22, 2014 William McDonough and Michael Braungart,
"Can
Soil Replace Oil as a Source of Energy?," excerpt from The Upcycle:
Beyond sustainability—designing for Abundance (North Point Press, 2013), Scientific
American, April, 2013 Green
Energy Across Ontario, Environmental Defense website, 2013 Helen Lewis and John Gertsakis,
Introduction:
Design + Environment: A global guide to designing greener goods,
Greenleaf Publishers, 2001 The
Great Green Technological Transformation, World Economic and Social
Survey 2011, UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs. Work
in a Warming World, York U. website Videos: ·
Jeremy Rifkin on the 3rd Industrial Revolution ·
David Morris on energy self-reliant states ·
Barrack Obama talks about Local Motors ·
Amory Lovins on
Reinventing Fire
Week 6,
October 15, The Electronic Commons
Yochai Benkler, A
Moment of Opportunity and Challenge, Chapter 1 of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
Freedom, Yale U. Press, 2005 Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Introduction and
Chapter One “Wikinomics: The Art & Science of
Peer-Production,” from Wikinomics: How Mass
Collaboration Changes Everything (Portfolio/Penguin, 2006) Don Tapscott, "Firm
Transaction Costs and the Unintended Impact of Ronald Coase,"
Huffington Post, Sept. 13, 2013 CBC
News, Planned
Obsolescence Pervasive in Digital Age, Dec. 30, 2013 David
Morris, "Why
is Multi-Billion-Dollar Telecom Time Warner fretting over a small city in
North Carolina?", Alternet, June 27, 2011 Susan
Crawford, "Fiber is
the Key to U.S. Telecom Diet," Wired, April 7, 2012 Optional: John
Bellamy Foster & Robert W. McChesney, "Surveillance
Capitalism: Monopoly-finance capital, the military-industrial complex, and
the digital age," Monthly Review, vol. 66, issue 03, July-August
2014. Steve
Anderson, "Net Neutrality in Canada: Closing in on Internet
openness," p. 113-121 of The Internet Tree: The State of Telecom
Policy in Canada 3.0, Marita Moll &
Leslie Regan Shade (eds.), Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2011 CBC
News, "FAQ:
Net Neutrality and Internet Traffic Management," CBC website, Oct.
19, 2009 Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss, Apple
Computer’s Green Initiatives, E mag, April 28,
2014 Chris
Sweeny, "Is
Your Phone Smart Enough to Not Poison the People Recycling It? This One Is,"
Yes! magazine, Fall 2013 Verdantix, Cloud
Computing: The IT Solution for the 21st Century, study for Carbon
Disclosure Project, 2011 Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss, "Dirty Cloud
Computing," April 29, 2012 Laurence
Lessig, “Some Like
It Hot: Piracy & culture,” Wired magazine, Issue 12.03 (March 2004) CBC
News, "Verizon
Challenges FCC's right to Impose Net Neutrality," CBC website, Sept. 13, 2013 Clay Shirky, "Does
the Internet Make You Smarter?", Wall St. Journal, June 4, 2010 , "Weblogs and the
Mass Amateurization of Publishing," blog,
Oct. 3, 2002 Diana
Lind, policy brief, "Information
and Communications Technologies Creating Livable, Equitable, Sustainable
Cities," summary of chapter
in State of the World 2012.
Stan
Cox, "War,
Murder, Rape...All for your cell phone," AlterNet, Sept. 14, 2006 Guide
to Greener Electronics, Greenpeace International website, Nov. 2012 Also (optional) check out these excellent
& informative documentary films: RIP: A
Remix Manifesto The Internet's Own Boy Extra video (17 min.):
Clay Shirky at TED: How Cellphones,
Twitter, Facebook can make history
Week 7, October 22,
Regulation Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly, “Who
Will Rule?” Yes! magazine, Fall
2007 Neil Gunningham and Darren
Sinclair, “Regulatory
Pluralism: Designing Policy Mixes for Environmental Protection”, Law and
Policy 21, 49-76, 1997 Brian Milani, “Mindful Markets,
Value Revolution and the Green Economy: EPR, Certification and the New
Regulation” Michael Braungart, "Product Life-Cycle
Management to Replace Waste Management", in Socolow,
Andrews, Berkhout & Thomas (eds.), Industrial
Ecology and Global Change, N.Y./Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994,
p. 335-337 Brian Dunkiel, M. Jeff Hamond, and Jim Motavalli, “Sharing
the Wealth: If We Shift the Tax Burden From Work to Waste, Everyone Benefits”,
E magazine, March/April 1999 Alex Goldmark, "The
Benefit Corporation: Can business be about more than profit?" , Good
Business website, July 1, 2011
Optional: Walter Stahel, "The
Virtuous Circle? Sustainable Economics and Taxation in a Time of Austerity,"
A Chartered Insurance Institute "thinkpiece",
October 2011 Michael E. Conroy, Certification
Systems as Tools for Natural Asset Building: Potential, Experience to Date,
and Critical Challenges, Working paper No. 100, Political Economy
Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst, July
2005 (skim) “EPR:
A Prescription for Clean Production, Pollution Prevention and Zero Waste”,
Grassroots Recycling Network, August 2003 Brenda Platt, Local Inititatives Leverage EPR, ILSR Waste to Wealth
report, Nov. 2000 Barry Commoner, “Pollution
Prevention: The Source of an Ethical Foundation for Sustainable Development”,
1990 Google Books, excerpts: Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent,
Perverse
Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy, Island Press, 2001 Alex Wilson (EBN), "Yes,
the Living Building Challenge is Overreaching," Green Building
Advisor website, May 29, 2014 Videos: [see
end of Powerpoint presentation] also: Unfinished Business:
Extended Producer Responsibility for Post-consumer Packaging Participatory Guarantee
Systems: the Alternative to 3rd Party Certification Jason
McLennan on The Living Building Challenge
Week 7 1/2, October
29, Reading Week
Week 8,
November 5, Work, Social Justice & Community Enterprise
Gerald Friedman,
"The
Rise of the Gig Economy," Dollars & Sense magazine, March/April
2014 An
Examination of Pollution & Poverty in the city of Toronto, PollutionWatch fact sheet, Nov. 2008 David Hulchanski et al, Toronto's
Third City: Dramatic change in the inner suburbs 1970-2005, St.
Christopher House and U of T, May 2011 Toronto
Workforce Innovation Group (TWIG), Tending
Green Shoots: Green Skill-building Programs in the GTA, 2013 Associated
Press, "Income
inequality slowing U.S. recovery, Ratings Agency says," CBC website,
Aug. 5, 2014 America
Keeps People Poor On Purpose: A Timeline of Choices We've Made to Increase
Inequality, infographic, Yes! magazine, Fall
2014 Van
Jones and Ben Wyskida, “Green-Collar
Jobs for Urban America: Oakland looks for a greener path toward prosperity,”
Yes! magazine, Winter 2007 Preeti Mangala Shekar and Tram Nguyen,
"Who
Gains from a Green Economy?,"
Colorlines, March/April 2008 Angela
Glover Blackwell, "Embracing
Diversity to Strengthen the Economy," Huffington Post, August 21,
2012 Michael
Renner, "Making the Green Economy Work for
Everybody," chapter 1 of The State of the World 2012. Optional:
David Macdonald, Outrageous
Fortune: Documenting Canada's Wealth Gap, Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, April 2014 John Cartwright, Green Jobs are
the Future, background paper, Toronto Good Jobs for All conference, Nov.
2008 Winona LaDuke, "Local
Energy, Local Power," Yes! magazine, Winter 2007 Bernard Marszalek, "Green-collar Jobs, Industrial Policy,
and Society with a Future," New Labor Forum, Fall 2008 Green-Collar
Jobs in America's Cities: Building Pathways out of poverty and careers in the
clean energy economy, report for Apollo Alliance & Green for
All, March 2008 James Trimarco and Jill
Bamberg, "Worker
Co-ops: Green and just jobs you can own," Yes! Summer 2009 Philip Mattera et al, High
Road or Low Road? Job quality in the new green economy, report for
Good Jobs First, February 2009
Week 9, November
12, Finance: Gambling or Investment?
Stacy
Mitchell, "Banking
for the Rest of Us," Sojourners magazine, April 1, 2012 Bill Baue, “Investing in Sustainability,” Chapter 13, The State of the World 2008, NY/Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 2008 Michael
Shuman, "Put
Your Money Where Your Life Is: Americans want to invest locally. What's
stopping them?," Yes! Summer 2009 STWR,
Financing
the Global Sharing Economy, executive summary of report, 2013 Eugene
Ellmen, "Socially
Responsible Investing in Canada," Green Money Journal, August/Sept.
2008 Optional: Joel Makower, "Why
Sustainability Leaders Don't Impress Wall Street," GreenBiz, August
4, 2014 Tyler
Hamilton, "Province
Proposes New Path for Financing Energy & Water Conservation,"
Toronto Star, June 22, 2012 Tom
Du, "Four
Methods for Expanding Debt Crowdfunding,"
Corporate Knights, June 2013 SolarShare Hits the Big Time, Corporate Knights, Jan.
22, 2014 Paul
Weinberg, "Self-financing
Toronto: City could ease cash crisis if it put revenues in a bank of its own,"
Straight Goods, May 14, 2012 Chandra
Pasma and Jim Mulvale, Income
Security for All Canadians: Understanding Guaranteed Income, BIEN Canada
study, 2011 David
Korten, "When
Bankers Rule the World: How we can call out the myths, restructure the
banking system, John
Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, "The
Financial Power Elite," Monthly Review, vol. 62, issue 1, May 2010 Amy Cortese, "In
Defence of Crowdfunding," Locavesting blog, March 16, 2012 Rebecca
Leisher, "Watch
Us Move Our Millions: Cities, churches and colleges take steps to move their
money home," Yes! magazine,
Spring 2012 Peter
Boone and Simon Johnson, "The
Canadian Banking Fallacy," The Baseline Scenario, March 25, 2010 Ellen
Russell, "Should
Canadians Worry about a Banking Crisis?", Toronto Star, June 23,
2012 Wuppertal
Institute, Micro-finance
and Renewable Energy Investing in a Sustainable Future, 2006 Videos: Money,
Power & Wall Street, 2012 Frontline series The
Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis: Help for the Homeowners?
, NOW on PBS [especially recommended] Van Jones:
America is Not Broke! Matt Taibbi and
Yves Smith on Big Banks and Government, Bill Moyers Journal Michael Shuman on How to Shift Your Money from Wall St. to Main St. SolarShare: Power Your Portfolio
Week 10, November 19,
Consumption, Markets & Marketing
Optional: Lisa Mastny, "Purchasing for People and Planet,"
Chapter 6, pp. 122-142, from State of the World 2004 Gary
Gardner and Erik Assadourian, "Rethinking the
Good Life," from State of the World 2004 Aseem Prakash, "Green Marketing,
Public Policy and Managerial Strategies," Business Strategy and the
Environment, 11, pp. 285-297, 2002 Tim
Jackson, "The Challenge of Sustainable Lifestyles," chapter 4,
State of the World 2008 Anders
Hayden (MES 1997), Sharing
the World, Sparing the Planet: Work time, consumption and ecology, book
description and excerpts David
Morris, "Is
Eating Local the Best Choice?", AlterNet, Sept. 11, 2007 Forbidden (not approved by
Proper Authorities): George
Carlin on the American Dream
Rev. Billy of
the Church of Stop Shopping Health and Spiritual Perspectives (videos): Affluenza
(and remedies)
Week
11 November 26 Presentations
Week
12 December 3 Presentations
Papers: approximately 15 pages, double-spaced, on a topic of
your choice, due Dec. 16 Book
Review: on a book of your
choice, either on the course biblio or not, approx.
5 pages double-spaced, due Week 9 Presentations: approx. 15 min plus 5 for questions (total 20) on a
topic of your choice. Grades: Attendance/participation 10%; Review 10%; Presentation
15%; Term Paper 65%.
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