The Poet Economist

Declare Energy Independence with Carbon Dividends

Taking action on climate is about a lot more than our energy economy. Climate disruption is the leading threat to our built environment, an accelerant of armed conflict, and a leading cause of mass migration. Its effects intensify and prolong storms, droughts, wildfires, and floods — resulting in the US spending as much on disaster…

Networking Earth Science Platforms to Finance

NOTE: Geoversiv was a Lunar-level sponsor of the Dawn of Private Space Science symposium in both 2017 and 2018. At the inaugural Dawn of Private Space Science Symposium, at Columbia University in June 2017, three organizations came together to chart a new course for collaborative networking of space-based Earth science resources. The Madison River Group…

Uphold the Humanity of Every Person

We inhabit a period of great turmoil and suffering, while at the same time immense hope and promise flood around us, making it possible for any person anywhere to potentially make great contributions to the betterment of humankind. That better possibility is entirely dependent upon the guarantee that all people have access to the benefits…

Better Civics Justifies Hope

Remarks, as delivered, by Joseph Robertson on Sunday, June 10, to the 2018 Citizens’ Climate Lobby annual conference: There is a quiet daring that happens in the person who says “I refuse to accept” what is not right. Without that quiet moment of daring, the effort to confront the unacceptable cannot get started. The work…

Carbon Pricing to Catalyze Sustainable Shared Prosperity

Reporting from the 3rd Annual High-Level Assembly of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition On entering the 3rd High-Level Assembly of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, I was asked by someone situating diplomats which country I represent. I would be at the table to represent 90,000 citizen volunteers across 42 countries — the Citizens’ Climate Lobby…

Data Sovereignty Must Be Protected

People must be free to seek, learn, know, and share verifiable truth. Recent investigative reports suggest Cambridge Analytica illegally accessed and weaponized the Facebook data of 50 million users, touching 57 billion “friend pairs”, as part of a coordinated plot to distort the informational environment around tens of millions of American voters, to block access…

Resilience Intelligence: ACCESS to the Future

To catalyze economy-wide climate-smart finance everyone needs access to actionable resilience-building insight. Two days before the Paris Agreement was adopted by 195 nations, in December 2015, the Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network put forward the ACCESS standard for tracking implementation. Designed to be flexible, adaptive, and universal — and dynamic enough to fit any national climate…

Tyranny Lives inside Your Fear

Fear-based thinking leads to tyranny. Decision-making that holds fear of the other to be the most reliable logic for ordering human affairs implicitly rules out humanity’s most powerful resource: our ability to learn more than we previously knew we could about the universe, to counter threats, solve problems, and improve quality of life, together. It…

We Must Empower Each Other to Lead

This Presidents’ Day, we remember those who have served honorably to build and to defend government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We commemorate the service of: General Washington who with his infantry camped through a dangerous winter at Valley Forge, to stage the most improbable victory against the most powerful…