Dear Friends, I recently took on the role of Commission Director for the Food System Economics Commission—an independent, interdisciplinary academic commission working to deliver a state-of-the-art scientific assessment on the economics of the transition to healthy, inclusive and sustainable food systems. Food systems at all levels suffer from flawed design, supply chain vulnerabilities, and compounding…
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We are entering a new age for the Earth’s climate and for the way we conceive of finance. “Macrocritical resilience” is a wonky way of talking about reducing risk and achieving health in areas of activity that affect everything you live and strive for. It is a common sense idea: the underlying foundations of value…
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To slow the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus and save lives, much of the world is under mandatory stay-at-home orders, including more than 300 million people in the United States. The everyday economy is shut down to the point the world around us feels a little like cropland in deep winter. Working together, we can,…
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What is Biodiversity? And why should it matter to you? Biological diversity is a vital sign for nature’s complex life-support systems. If you have too few species in a given environment, the complex ecosystem that makes life work in that environment is more vulnerable to serious disruption. To put it bluntly, a less biodiverse ecosystem…
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We are living through historic—and perilous—separation of high finance from everyday experience. Accelerating climate disruption is a symptom of the unaccountability that comes with such disconnections. And yet, central banks’ efforts to mitigate climate risk and build resilience will affect you personally. When food is scarce, prices rise; this is one of the most significant…
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The global economy is slowing down. The US economy is also slowing down. A major contributing factor to both is the widening gap in new income generation, between the super-rich and everyone else. It is now widely argued we are living through a “new Gilded Age”, where high-powered, high-visibility interests prosper and everyone else struggles.…
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REPORT FROM DAVOS The World Economic Forum has identified all 5 of the leading global risks as related to climate and environment: Extreme weather Climate action failure Natural disasters Biodiversity loss Human-made environmental disasters Climate breakdown is accelerating, and global carbon emissions are not declining. The loss of climate stability is not a small or…
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A federal appeals court ruling dismissing the case Juliana v. United States—commonly known as the youth climate lawsuit—is founded on a logical incoherence: the Courts exist to redress grievances, yet the ruling says they are not empowered to do so. The Constitution of the United States, the 1992 Climate Convention (a ratified treaty and so…
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How much do we value human freedom? For thousands of years people of all variety of experience and influence have debated whether free will exists and which universe would be more full of virtue and good fortune—one that is fated or one that is free. Today, technology is flooding our experience with hard-to-trace information and…
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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…
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Writing for Bloomberg News, Naureen Malik has cited Resilience Intel’s climate-smart finance aggregation work, noting: The money being committed to address climate change has jumped 54% this year in response to efforts to check global warming, according to a study. The Resilience Intel working paper underlying these numbers outlines 5 verticals where overall commitments are…
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Climate disruption is a story of unprecedented threat, globally and locally. It is also a story of unprecedented opportunity, at all levels. No one has ever faced a challenge of this scope, complexity, and scale. And yet, the daunting speed and complexity of the challenge is precisely what human intelligence was designed to deal with.…
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