COP25 Closing Statement from the Citizens’ Climate delegation The future of humankind will be shaped and defined by how well we manage our relationship to the climate system. Nations that move too slowly are ensuring they will face higher costs, expanded vulnerability, and reduced benefit from international cooperation. The Citizens’ Climate delegation came into the … Continue reading Courage to Explore — The Road to COP26
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
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 … Continue reading Declare Energy Independence with Carbon Dividends
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
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 … Continue reading Carbon Pricing to Catalyze Sustainable Shared Prosperity
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
“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”
Historically, when observers to the Bretton Woods institutions would raise issues of macrocritical value distortion, they were generally told “That’s not our business.” The common practice was to treat environmental damage, the degradation of basic rights, limited access to education, as “unquantifiables” or as “social issues”. IMF leadership would refer to the founding mission as dealing exclusively with the health or unhealth of fiscal math in a given country—its budgetary solvency. At the World Bank, the mission of ending poverty was not seen as directly linked to the building of basic civic and economic infrastructure required for sustained human development.
So, for a long time, macrocritical considerations would make their way into analysis and reports, but global economic leaders went on about their business without worrying too much about environmental impacts, gender inequality, or systemic multi-directional feedback loops like the climate system.
Continue reading “Macrocritical Value Generation: The Roots of Future Opportunity”
In 2010, when Citizens’ Climate Lobby brought 25 citizen volunteers to Capitol Hill, it felt like a big challenge to get enough people to go the distance, to meet with all 535 voting members of Congress. This year, we brought 36 times as many people, and it is looking more like we will need more elected officials to welcome and build relationships with all the citizen lobbyists coming to make democracy work.
The 2015 CCL International Conference brought a record number of citizen volunteer lobbyists together—more than 900—to have real policy discussions with elected officials. It was a breakthrough year in a lot of ways:
The people have a right to co-create policy with our representatives.
Political analysts around the world have been noting the extreme negative tone of the 2014 midterm election campaign in the U.S. Outside groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on smears and innuendo are degrading the political debate. The ugliness of the campaign has exacerbated the bitterness many Americans feel toward the political process itself.
That bitterness tends to be connected to a feeling of detachment or of access denied. People believe they do not have access to their elected officials and that the parties do not respond to their day-to-day needs. This detachment is driven partly by the apparent inability of leading national political figures to work together, which leaves a great deal of important work unfinished.
Continue reading “OPED: When citizens are involved, lawmakers respond”
The Poet Economist 