Angelo A. Calvello, PhD
Founder, Journal of Environmental Investing
When we started the JEI ten years ago, this issue’s contributors had likely not come to their investigation of environmental investing.
After a one-year hiatus, we’re back, and as this issue shows, we’re back with groundbreaking research on environmental investing. The content of this 2019 issue reflects how far we have come since our inaugural issue ten years ago . . . and how far we have yet to go. While the science of climate change remains unambiguous in its conclusions and the pathways to mitigation and adaptation become clearer daily, the United States’ current grifter president and his co-conspirators respond irrationally. They continue to put forth a series of disjunctive, vindictive edicts that consistently undermine civil society’s collective commitment to broadly address the challenges of climate change, encouraging actions and behaviors never conceived of in even the worst business-as-usual scenario. Placing self-interest about common interest and valuing alternative facts over peer-reviewed hard science, they hasten the cataclysm that awaits such ignorance.
Fortunately, a growing number of young scholars and practitioners have emerged and are actively ignoring the U.S. leadership’s profligate attitude. In an act of resistance, they are undertaking and sharing serious original scholarship that directly identifies, measures, and mitigates the risks associated with climate change and in so doing are providing investors with knowledge and tools that help them make better investment decisions. The authors of this issue’s essays are certainly among the leaders of their generation.
We’re fortunate to have these various voices mediated by our guest editor, Dr. A. Stan Meiberg, Director, Graduate Programs in Sustainability, Wake Forest University. I was introduced to Stan by Jim Dunn, CEO/CIO of Verger Capital Management. Jim and I share a common interest in environmental investing, an interest Jim expresses daily in his own investment portfolios. When Stan joined the Wake Forest University faculty in 2017 after concluding a distinguished 39-year career at the Environmental Protection Agency as Acting Deputy Administrator from 2014 to 2017, Jim arranged for us to meet. It quickly became clear that Stan saw a genuine need to include new, serious voices in the climate discourse and that the JEI could serve as the medium for this inclusion. Stan eagerly volunteered to lead this “young scholar” issue.
His leadership was immediately evident when he stated that these new voices would benefit from an independent review of their work, and he arranged to have a recognized investment professional or scholar provide a concise critique of each research paper. We have published these reviews alongside the original essays.
This combination of experience and perspective and the vitality and academic rigor certainly makes this one of our finest issues, an issue that would not have been possible without the continued contribution of our Managing Editor, Mary Cavanagh, who truly makes each issue a reality.
Peace,
Angelo Calvello, PhD
Founder
