Why Kiev Matters

The struggle over Ukraine’s political system is important to the world for a lot of reasons. In short:

It matters whether any human population has fair and transparent, democratically accountable government;
Ukraine is a strategic crossroads, both for political and economic reasons;
The tension over violence against protesters in Kiev could explode into a regional war that no one can afford;
A peaceful resolution is an indicator of whether Russia and Europe can work together;
Ukraine’s strategic value is partly to do with geopolitical spheres of influence, partly about carbon-based energy.

So, what is happening at this hour in Kiev matters to the wider world for moral reasons, for strategic political and economic reasons and because the outcome may determine whether petrostate hegemony will hold sway over the future of more than half a billion people. That authoritarian petrostate model—an outgrowth of both the Soviet dictatorship and the post-Soviet plutocracy in Russia—severely limits the power of individuals and communities to influence government, and to build a more humane, more collaborative, more sustainable future, from the ground up.

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).

Spiritual Reform to Heal the Planet

2013 has been, in many ways, the year of Pope Francis. The Vatican head of state and spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics around the world, Francis has time and again made clear that his papacy will be marked by openness, transformation, healing and by a renewed and explicit commitment to the foundational ethical principles of the Christian tradition: openness, compassion and selfless service.

At the outset, we asked in these pages whether Pope Francis would be a reformer, a democratizing leader, a revolutionary, or an enforcer of the old guard. There were indications that he would do things differently, and seek to emulate the philosophy and the ministry of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose name he chose—the first pope ever to do so.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

JFK: Voice of Collective (Non-partisan) Aspiration

Nov. 22, 1963. Three shots. Historical shock. The near destabilization of the American system. A hurried reordering of executive leadership and governing priorities. Every question asked, and unanswered. Importantly. Exactly fifty years ago today, Pres. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., was shot and killed, in Dallas, Texas. Though official filings cite Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin, no judicial process has ever found him guilty. Instead, we have the controversial and selective report from the Warren Commission, and the shooting remains a more or less unsolved mystery.

Ultimately, what matters most is what we learn and what we put into effect.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

The Gettysburg Address

150 years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous speech, at the consecration of a memorial to the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg. The text is transcribed here, to remember the spirit and the legacy of that day.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Here’s an Idea

Let democracy be democracy.

President Barack Obama was conciliatory with the “responsible Republicans” who found a way to make a deal with Democrats and pass the continuing budget resolution that last night ended the government shutdown and raised the national sovereign debt ceiling. But he was hard on the radicals who not only took the people’s government and national political process hostage, demanding ransom for reopening the government, but who also voted last night to push the nation into default.

A fair-minded independent can sympathize. No president should have to face the threat that a radical minority in Congress will set figurative fire to the edifice of democratic government, unless they can extract the concessions they seek. We sometimes have presidents from the Republican Party, sometimes from the Democratic Party; each of them is the president who leads the government that works for all of us, for all citizens.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

It is Unfathomable that the Congress Not Act Today

Today, October 16, is the last day the United States Congress has to raise the so-called debt ceiling. International financial institutions, both public-sector and for-profit, have warned that failure to raise the debt ceiling would result in a credit downgrade for the most influential “borrower” in the world. Virtually every economy on Earth is tied to US Treasury bonds; failure to meet any debt obligation can have significant destabilizing impact on the global economy.

So far, radicals in the US Congress have held to two very dangerous misimpressions: 1) that whatever they cause to happen, they can undo by making a deal; 2) that there is really nothing to worry about, in terms of widespread economic impact from shutting down the US government or provoking a sovereign debt default. Let’s look at those myths, for a minute:

Posted by Joseph Robertson

The Problematic Case of PFC Bradley Manning

We have to ask ourselves, constantly and with serious attention to specifics, whether as we build our democratic universe of human relationships, we might be getting things wrong. Private First Class Bradley Manning took action that demanded that we do that. Some say his leaking of classified documents was treason (the courts do not say that); some say it was heroism (the courts do not say that either).

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Fourth of July: Egypt at a Crossroads

On January 25, 2011, the people of Egypt began a nonviolent uprising against 3-decade dictator Hosni Mubarak. On February 11, 2011, Egypt became the second nation of the Middle East / North Africa (MENA) region, after Tunisia, to oust a long-standing dictator in this way. Mubarak’s forces killed near 1,000 civilians, but never succeeded in slowing the growth of the nationwide movement.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Free Our Energy Markets

Climate change is a market failure—the most costly in world history. The failure of so-called “free markets” to accurately express the cost of carbon-emitting fuels in consumer prices has led to the accelerating destabilization of global climate patterns. That failure stems, in large part, from the fact that our energy markets are not free and open at all, but rigged to favor specific enterprises that deal in specific high-emitting fuels.

We can free our energy markets in a way that allows both conservative pro-business free market thinkers and also progressive pro-environment zero-carbon crusaders to come together and to vote for a brighter, more prosperous future. First we need to unrig the energy marketplace, and then we need to make sure we do so in a way that does not punish households and communities or impede their ability to transition into the new open market.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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