Marshall Saunders was a friend, a mentor, a pioneer and an example. He passed away at home, surrounded by loved ones, yesterday at the age of 80. I first met him in 2010, when I joined Citizens’ Climate Lobby as a volunteer. I quickly came to know three things about Marshall that I believe never … Continue reading Marshall Saunders succeeded by empowering others
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act puts a price on carbon-emitting fuels, at the source, and delivers all revenues to households as monthly dividends. With a steadily rising fee and steadily rising dividends, the plan sends a clear, predictable price signal to producers and is projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 90 percent by … Continue reading Bipartisan carbon fee and dividend bill now before U.S. Congress
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 … Continue reading Better Civics Justifies Hope
Why put a price on carbon? Anything that moves through our economy has value. Sometimes, value is quantifiable, as with a gallon of milk—which is bought and sold in stores. Sometimes, value is pervasive, and can only be seen through trace relationships, as with rainwater—which cannot be bought or sold. Carbon dioxide molecules are not … Continue reading Carbon Fee & Dividend basics
After President Trump’s disparaging remarks about Haiti and African countries, CCL Global Strategy Director Joe Robertson responds. Our volunteers in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, in all across 14 African countries and 6 continents, work hard to be principled community leaders whose efforts foster democratic participation. They work to build better societies, where citizens … Continue reading We stand for a better way
Originally published April 28, 2017, by ICLEI USA Throughout the 21st century, cities are likely to be more and more the engines of design that determine how we live and whether our way of making a living in the world is sustainable. Every society everywhere grapples with questions of how much decision-making authority should be … Continue reading Non-Partisan Citizen Empowerment is Working
We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how the shifting political ground of recent months affects the project of opening up a new and wider space for climate civics around the world. As some political forces seem to be arrayed against serious progress on mitigating climate change, we see the role of local, national, … Continue reading The Time for Everywhere-Active Climate Civics is Here
Submission from Citizens’ Climate Education on ways to enhance participation of non-Party stakeholders in the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. This proposal is built around the same core structure as our submission made 21 May 2016, at request of the Secretariat, for inclusion in the Facilitator’s Report on the … Continue reading UNFCCC Stakeholder Participation Reform Proposal
“A republic… if you can keep it…”
The work of building up to a better outcome has always already begun, before we have a chance to think about the work itself or its necessity.
The act of leading, then, is a recognition of the forces that are converging and a conscious understanding of how to work with them, when and to what purpose.
Having just arrived back from a journey to the heart of our democracy, I am again affirmed in the feeling that our democracy is deeply personal. And so, the success of our democracy depends on the intimate experience each participant has of the democratic process.
Continue reading “True Independence Requires Reciprocal Civic Empowerment”
by Joseph Robertson and David Thoreson
Published in The Guardian, June 6, 2016
The climate system is a unifying ethical field that extends from the physical to the metaphysical and connects your actions to my well-being, and vice-versa, no matter how remote your life is from mine. The Golden Rule we have always treated as an abstract moral recommendation is now visibly playing out its logic in the physical world.
This period in history must be about useful innovations that rescue Earth systems from collapse and dignify human beings everywhere. We must dare to imagine, explore, and remake the limits of our experience, together.
The Poet Economist 