Ecosystem and Economics

For how long do we think we can continue the mental shell game of building economic success today based on externalizing the costs of critical natural inputs (water, air, carbon sequestration and so forth)?

Connected Ecosystems: Climate and Agriculture

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

I have mixed feelings about #ClimateWeek, unfolding in NYC this week to coincide with proceedings at the United Nations General Assembly. It’s a little like the “patient safety” department in a hospital. A department? Isn’t patient safety the first responsibility of everyone?! A week? Isn’t preserving a stable climate everyone’s responsibility every day?

Middlemen or Distributors?

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We all now have personal experience with the collapse of supply chains: toilet paper, produce, meat, flour. They are more fragile than we knew, for many reasons.

A Peak Behind the Curtain

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

When is it worth protecting a wetland or enacting a new safety regulation? Writ large, what is the role of government in promoting and protecting public welfare? Regardless of our political orientation in these divisive times, few would oppose basic government standards for electrical wiring in our homes or in the service of food safety, right? But how much is enough or too much?

The Sustainability Trajectory

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

In 2012, a little bakery just north of New York City became the first business licensed in New York State as a Benefit Corporation. (External Blog, The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation)

Sustainable Living or Survival of the Fittest?

Friday, May 9, 2014

This year’s CERES conference in Boston was provocative and challenging -- as it should be in celebration of 25 years of creative, innovative, and collaborative advocacy to bring greater openness and accountability to corporate behavior. And it is behavior, of course, that needs to change; openness and accountability are only the tools of the trade in modifying corporate practices.

2014 A Happy New Year

Friday, December 27, 2013

I am comforted by the awareness that changes we dismiss as inconceivable are often viewed by historians as having been inevitable. A Happy New Year might thus include news of the following momentous changes.

Regulating the Playing Field

Monday, December 17, 2012

As Hurricane Sandy shifted the national conversation in the closing days of the U.S. 2012 presidential campaign, so too has the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School interrupted the partisan machinations over government spending and taxation. As we look forward to 2013 and beyond we thus have a rare moment to reflect and observe that these issues share a common root: the respective roles of government and business to shape our future as people and as a national community.

Markets, Governments and People

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Markets may well be the most finely tuned mechanism we have for allocating resources efficiently around short-term costs and prices. But absent a robust framework of social and cultural values and priorities to channel market operations these efficient markets will lead to vast inequity and depletion of critical resources.