2023

The State of Nature’s Fortune With climate week right around the corner and with more interest from the business community than ever before, people have been asking for my take on efforts to encourage investment in nature. You may recall that way back in 2013, Jonathan Adams and I co-wrote a book on this very […]

And Find Out How You Can Drive Climate Policy In response to one of our recent issues in which we urged our readers to do more to build bipartisan support for climate policy, many of you asked for specific suggestions on how you can best engage in politics. I immediately thought l should introduce you

Some lessons from Jonathan Eig’s important new book We mostly write essays in this newsletter about our best ideas on how to accelerate environmental progress. But we also sometimes discuss the books we are reading. Our goal is to draw lessons and inspiration for environmentalists from books we admire. Every now and then a book

Environmentalists’ top priority should be finding agreement with diverse players Forgive me for putting a damper on your (too) hot summer, but I’m back with an obvious and urgent reminder. We are facing a climate emergency. Time is not on our side. Yes, there have been some victories. In the US, the most important was

Other Companies Should Follow Suit This week’s newsletter is co-written with my friend Peter Ebsen.  To read our earlier primers on how nature-based carbon removal projects can accelerate climate progress in a progressive way, see here and here, and for our primer on climate disclosures, see here. Many readers are asking what we think about Nestle’s recent statements that

And why she believes fungi hold the key We have a new feature here at The Instigator!  Many of you have asked me who I think is doing interesting work that we can learn from. There’s so many to list, but I didn’t want to just name names. I wanted to give you an inside

It’s smart business, and it’s the right thing to do. I recently set up a meeting between the CEO of a new environmental NGO and several climate tech venture capitalists. The VCs told me they wanted to learn more about the NGO in order to explore opportunities for collaboration.  I couldn’t join the meeting, but

Why business leaders should speak up on ESG. If there’s one consistent topic we focus on here at The Instigator, it’s the very big bet that society is making on the corporate sector’s voluntary efforts to address the climate crisis.  So imagine my surprise when I came across a Wall Street Journal article this past week reporting that companies

Great Enviro-Themed Reads It’s been a while since we published a post on books, so I thought I’d share my “hottest” recommendations, just in time for summer. Birnam Wood: A Novel by Eleanor Catton   Expectation: I started this book because I thought it was another climate fiction (“cli-fi”) novel — a genre I not only

Not to mention deflect criticism, build goodwill, and accelerate progress. I had a meeting last week that I think makes for an interesting (and important) parable.  I met with the CEO of an excellent environmental NGO — one that I very much respect and am pleased to advise. The organization is planning to initiate some