Fact-based Reporting as Heroic Defense of Freedom

What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle— the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.

The three estates were the “Lords Spiritual” (bishops of the Church of England), the “Lords Temporal” (the House of Lords) and the Commons. The members of the “Fourth Estate” sat in the reporter’s gallery of the parliament and were, by their influence as writers, researchers, editors and publishers, the most significant of the four groups in terms of their ability to move public opinion and channel the influence of popular sentiment into the decision-making of the government.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph Robertson is Executive Director of Climate Civics International (climatecivics.org). He represents CCI in the UNFCCC negotiations and other United Nations processes, and in the Earth Diplomacy Leadership Initiative. He is Chief Strategist for Resilience Intel and the Climate Value Exchange, and a member of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition Advisory Group. Joseph is a principal in the Good Food Finance Network, co-leading efforts to establish a new co-investment platform for food systems transformation and the Integrated Data Systems Initiative. He previously served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase, and as Senior Advisor, Sustainable Finance, for the EAT Foundation. He is the founder of Geoversiv (earthintel.org) and The Navigator (navigatornews.net).

Respect for Complexity Makes Democracy Possible

We’ve all had conversations where someone has fallen into the temptation to argue that simplicity is the most necessary quality for anything that can stand the test of time. But the natural world builds resilience into systems of all kinds by fostering unrelenting complexity; the key feature that makes complexity work is the intelligence with which diverse and competing interests fit together to achieve the wider aim of standing up against external threats, decay and decline.

In the landscape of public policy, this means rethinking our attitude about the problematic complexity inherent in dealing independently with a wide variety of diverse and competing stakeholder interests. It is, of course, easier for those who have to decide what adjustments to make, regarding any policy or practice, to exclude most stakeholders and only answer the needs of those whose interests fit simply and comfortably with their own. But then, that is not democracy.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

‘Competition’ Doesn’t Improve Our Nation if it Impoverishes our People

There is a narrow ideological segment of the American political spectrum that obsessively pushes “competition” as the sole standard by which to measure the quality of our economic landscape. The problem here is that the word is too often used to promote the idea that to be “competitive” we need to drastically reduce wages and roll back rights most Americans take for granted. This vision of competition is not conservatism; it’s feudalism.

The idea that ordinary people should have less opportunity, less access to prosperity, less personal freedom and fewer labor rights, is not American; it is not in line with the Constitutional order of American democracy. It is the privileging of arbitrary power over the basic rights of real people. This vision of prosperity bound to regressive institutions does not appeal to independents who demand of their public servants both principle and pragmatism.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Oil Subsidies are Not Smart Spending

Oil as a combustible fuel is a 19th-century improvement on the 18th-century paradigm of burning coal to produce steam to run industrial machinery. The efficiency and portability of carbon-based fuels, in terms of the built-in energy they can store and which is released when they are burnt, has long been the driving factor in their popularity as an energy source. But new technologies are now making it possible to produce large amounts of portable energy sustainably, with none of the atmospheric damage resulting from the burning of carbon-based fuels.

In 2008, the five most profitable companies in the world were oil companies, their annual profits ranging from $20 billion to over $45 billion. No commercial entity in the history of humanity had ever made such immense profits. In 2009, two of the top 5 were banks, largely because oil companies’ profits had fallen as prices came back down to earth. In 2010, it again looks like oil companies were the most profitable businesses on the planet. They do not need subsidies to survive.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Food Security is an Ethical & Economic Imperative

Food security is a central consideration of any intelligent international economic or security policy. Whether the focus of discussion or the trigger for a possible crisis is water scarcity, land use and soil erosion, ecosystem collapse, fuel or grain prices, political legitimacy or military conflict over resources, the systematic depletion of vital resources is a practical deficit no single interest or ideology can solve.

Food crisis, obviously, means human crisis, and so the scarcity of resources needed to provide sustenance puts at risk the stability of whole political systems, spanning nations and regions. We don’t need to be environmentalists to see clearly how such instability affects the security of our own economic opportunity, or even the affordability of our food supply.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Public Broadcasting Makes us Free

Public broadcasting in the United States is not like state-run television in other countries, where the ruling party often influences the editorial stance and the quality of reporting. In the United States, there is an absolute wall of separation between politicians for elective office and the editorial process that shapes what is produced by public broadcasting.

We are all familiar with the conservative complaint about “liberal media bias”, which stems from a survey of voting habits that found many newspaper reporters were more liberal than the average American voter. There was never any evidence shown, however, that this influenced their reporting. Reporters, as a profession, are duty bound to report fact; it is editorialists, the kind of commentators that rule cable news networks and talk radio, that tend to infuse their “informational programming” with political bias.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Spending vs. Cutting to Encourage Recovery

There are some things that fit well with the phrase common sense, and some that don’t. Not everything that seems complex or uncertain is outside the bounds of reality, but some things, ultimately, just don’t make sense. There is a strong political bias that “cutting spending” is a conservative principle, because it is prudent to spend less, but whether the policy is in fact conservative, or whether it works: that is another story.

There is a powerful rhetorical draw in the idea: just spend less, and everything about “the economy” —whatever that means— will improve. This is like saying, if you provide less opportunity for investment, there will be more opportunity for investment; or, if you reduce the wealth available, the wealth available will increase; or, you need to burn the village in order to save it.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Rise of the Revolutionary Moderate

What took place in Egypt between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, 2011, was a revolution, but it was non-violent and it joined together disparate ideological factions, rich and poor, old and young, Christian and Muslim. It gave the lie to the notion that moderation in politics cannot be a revolutionary force for transformative change.

In the United States, we have put far too much stock in the idea that identity politics boils down, in this aftermath of centuries of discrimination, to liberal versus conservative, with two diametrically opposed views on every policy. Conservative activists are “radicals” somehow intent on ruining the middle class, while progressive activists are “revolutionaries” somehow intent on waging a Marxist class war.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Renewable Energy is Not an Ideological Issue

There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting fuel sources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy and the environment.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Red-Blooded Conservatives & Blue-Ocean Progressives

There is a fallacy at the heart of the political discourse of late 20th and early 21st century America: that conservatives and liberals are diametrically opposed, unable to work together, and committed at their very core to one another’s destruction. Certainly, when ideology comes into the debate, there are hotly contested arguments to be had. But honest conservatives and honest liberals have a lot more in common than we normally admit.

At the heart of what motivates people to call themselves conservative, there is an impulse to gravitate toward clarity, toward what is known to be good in people and in society, toward a set of principles by which society can find its way through the turbulent waters of an unknowable future. At the heart of what motivates people to call themselves liberal or progressive is a not-too-dissimilar impulse to gravitate toward reason, toward what is known to be good in people and in society, toward a set of principles by which we can work together to calm the seas of a turbulent and unknowable future.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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