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
Democracy is not a zero-sum game. Behaving as if it is degrades democratic process and our personal political sovereignty. A zero-sum game is a contest for control of finite resources. Whatever one gains, another must lose. When two or more candidates compete for a single public office, only one can win, so many people view politics … Continue reading Zero-Sum Thinking Doesn’t Work
There is only one part of President Trump’s agenda with real opportunity for a big win, right now, and that is infrastructure. And the Paris Agreement—the strongest ever signal pointing toward transformational infrastructure investment—is the only way to mobilize the capital necessary to get to that big win. The common misunderstanding about the Paris accord … Continue reading Future of American Infrastructure Hinges on Paris Agreement
We’re entering a new age for the Earth’s climate and for the way we conceive of finance “Macrocritical resilience” may be the most mystifying two-word phrase you need to know. Though you may never have heard these two words together before, what they describe affects everything you live and strive for. Wonky as it sounds, … Continue reading Finance for Deep-Rooted Prosperity is Coming
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.
by Joseph Robertson
Published in The Guardian on April 25, 2016
Would it surprise you to learn that governments, oil companies, NGOs and major investors are coming together to map—and to motivate—the decarbonization of the global economy?
The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) is a policy-focused alliance of national and subnational governments, intergovernmental agencies, businesses and institutional investors, nonprofits and stakeholder networks. It was launched on the first day of the Paris climate negotiations, and its mission is simple: to collaborate across borders, across sectors, sharing information, know-how and capacity, to build the most economically efficient tools for decarbonization into every nation’s climate plan as soon as possible.
Continue reading “A global coalition mapping and motivating decarbonization”
by Joseph Robertson and David Thoreson Published in The Guardian, February 12, 2016 On December 12, the 21st annual meeting of the world’s climate negotiators closed with adoption of the Paris Agreement. The task agreed by consensus among 195 nations is clear, ambitious, and complex: re-engineer the infrastructure of the global economy to eliminate practices that … Continue reading Welcome to the New Age of Climate Exploration
The Poet Economist 