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References

This textbook draws upon the following high-quality resources for data-driven ethics, systems thinking, and advocacy:

Systems Thinking and Leverage Points

  1. Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - 1999 - The Donella Meadows Project - Meadows' seminal article identifying twelve places to intervene in complex systems, ranked from least to most effective. Essential reading for understanding strategic intervention design.

  2. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization - 1990 - System Dynamics Society - Peter Senge's groundbreaking book introducing systems thinking as the cornerstone of learning organizations, including mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

  3. Causal Loop Diagrams: A Short Handbook - 2024-06 - Cascade Institute - Practical guide to constructing causal loop diagrams for understanding feedback dynamics and system behavior.

  4. Causal Loop Diagram in Systems Thinking - 2024 - SixSigma.us - Comprehensive overview of causal loop diagrams, including reinforcing and balancing loops, with practical examples for organizational analysis.

  5. The Iceberg Model - 2024 - Untools - Clear explanation of the four levels of systems thinking (events, patterns, structures, mental models) with practical application guidance.

Harm Measurement and Health Metrics

  1. Global Health Estimates: Leading Causes of DALYs - 2024 - World Health Organization - Official WHO database of disability-adjusted life years by disease and injury, essential for quantifying global health burden.

  2. Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 - 2024 - Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation - The world's largest epidemiological study measuring health burden across 371 diseases and injuries in 204 countries.

  3. Burden of Disease - 2024 - Our World in Data - Accessible data visualizations and explanations of DALYs, mortality, and morbidity trends globally.

  4. Interpreting the Disability-Adjusted Life-Year (DALY) Metric - 2023 - GiveWell - Critical analysis of how DALYs are calculated and their appropriate use in comparing health interventions.

Economics of Externalities and Market Failure

  1. Externalities: Prices Do Not Capture All Costs - 2024 - International Monetary Fund - Clear introduction to externalities, market failure, and policy solutions from the IMF's educational resources.

  2. The Economics of Pollution - 2024 - Khan Academy - Free educational resource explaining how pollution represents market failure and various regulatory approaches.

  3. The External Effects of Pollution: Private and Social Costs - 2024 - CORE Econ - Open-access textbook chapter on the economics of externalities with interactive graphs and real-world examples.

Industry Case Studies: Tobacco

  1. Tobacco Fact Sheet - 2024 - World Health Organization - Authoritative statistics on tobacco's global health impact, including 8 million annual deaths and economic costs.

  2. Global Hazards of Tobacco and the Benefits of Smoking Cessation - 2020 - NCBI Bookshelf - Peer-reviewed analysis of tobacco's disease burden and evidence-based cessation strategies.

  3. The Toll of Tobacco Around the World - 2024 - Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids - Data-rich resource documenting tobacco industry tactics and global mortality statistics.

Industry Case Studies: Fossil Fuels and Air Pollution

  1. Fossil Fuel Air Pollution Responsible for 1 in 5 Deaths Worldwide - 2021-02 - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - Landmark research showing 8.7 million annual deaths attributable to fossil fuel pollution.

  2. Air Pollution Deaths Attributable to Fossil Fuels - 2023-11 - PMC/BMJ - Peer-reviewed observational and modeling study quantifying fossil fuel mortality across regions.

Industry Case Studies: Ultra-Processed Foods

  1. Ultra-Processed Food and Obesity: What Is the Evidence? - 2024 - Current Nutrition Reports - Comprehensive review of epidemiological evidence linking ultra-processed food consumption to obesity and chronic disease.

  2. Consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods and Health Outcomes - 2020 - Nutrition Journal - Systematic review of epidemiological studies examining UPF consumption and health outcomes.

Behavioral Economics and Nudge Theory

  1. Nudge Theory - 2024 - Wikipedia - Overview of Thaler and Sunstein's nudge concept and its application in public policy worldwide.

  2. What is Behavioral Economics? - 2024 - University of Chicago News - Accessible introduction to behavioral economics from the institution where the field was pioneered.

  3. Nudge Theory: A Complete Overview - 2024 - BusinessBalls - Practical guide to applying nudge principles in organizational and policy contexts.

Corporate Social Responsibility and ESG

  1. Stakeholder Capitalism and ESG as Tools for Sustainable Long-Term Value Creation - 2022-06 - Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance - Analysis of how stakeholder capitalism and ESG frameworks guide sustainable business strategy.

  2. 25 Years Ago I Coined the Phrase "Triple Bottom Line." Here's Why It's Time to Rethink It - 2018-06 - Harvard Business Review - John Elkington's reflection on the triple bottom line concept and call for more transformative approaches.

  3. B Corp Certification - 2024 - B Lab - Official resource on B Corporation certification requirements and standards for businesses balancing profit and purpose.

Commons, Collective Action, and Governance

  1. The Tragedy of the Commons - 1968 - Science - Garrett Hardin's influential article on resource overexploitation, essential for understanding environmental ethics dilemmas.

  2. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action - 1990 - Cambridge University Press - Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning research showing how communities can successfully manage shared resources without government or market solutions.

  3. Regulatory Capture - 2024 - Wikipedia - Overview of the public choice theory concept explaining how regulatory agencies can come to serve industry interests.

Root Cause Analysis

  1. Five Whys and Five Hows - 2024 - American Society for Quality - Authoritative guide to the 5 Whys technique for root cause analysis, including best practices and templates.

  2. Root Cause Analysis: The 5 Whys Technique - 2024 - Visual Paradigm - Step-by-step guide to applying the 5 Whys method with visual examples.

References last updated: 2025-12-01

Site References

  1. mkdocs - https://www.mkdocs.org/ - this is our tool for building the website. It converts Markdown into HTML in the site directory.
  2. mkdocs material theme - https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ - this is the theme for our site. The theme adds the user interface elements that give our site the look and feel. It also has the features such as social cards.
  3. GitHub Pages - https://pages.github.com/ - this is the free tool for hosting public websites created by mkdocs
  4. Markdown - https://www.mkdocs.org/user-guide/writing-your-docs/#writing-with-markdown - this is the format we use for text. It allows us to have headers, lists, tables, links and images without learning HTML.
  5. Deploy Mkdocs GitHub Action - https://github.com/marketplace/actions/deploy-mkdocs - this is the tool we use to automatically build our site after edits are checked in with Git.
  6. Git Book - https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 - a useful book on Git. Just read the first two chapters to learn how to check in new code.
  7. Conda - https://conda.io/ - this is a command line tool that keeps our Python libraries organized for each project.
  8. VS Code - https://code.visualstudio.com/ - this is the integrated development environment we use to mange the files on our website.
  9. Markdown Paste - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=telesoho.vscode-markdown-paste-image - this is the VS code extension we use to make sure we keep the markdown format generated by ChatGPT.