Power-sharing and the Barrett nomination: Delay a vote to protect democracy

By Dan Esty; The Hill; October 25, 2020

Our Constitution has proven to be an amazing document. It provides a framework for governing a diverse people spread across a wide-ranging land. Its enduring success derives from a structure of power sharing that we call "checks and balances" reinforced by long-established norms and unwritten rules that shape the exercise of political control.

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Making ESG Reporting Work for Companies

By Dan Esty and Tyler Yeargain; Corporate Eco Forum; December 6, 2020

More and more investors want better alignment between their values and their portfolios – thus driving expanded interest in corporate sustainability performance as gauged by Environmental/Social/Governance (ESG) metrics. But the existing ESG data frameworks – largely provided by private rating firms such as MSCI, Sustainalytics, Bloomberg, ISS/Oekom, Refinitiv, and others – suffer from a number of structural problems (outlined in more detail below), fail to provide a reliable basis for cross-company comparisons, and therefore don't inspire investor confidence.

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Earth Day

Yale's Jeff Sonnenfeld and Dan Esty write for Fortune about how America's leadership has largely shifted its thinking about the environment, on this 50th anniversary of what became known as Earth Day. They describe a virtual summit—it would have had a greater carbon footprint if not for COVID-19—in which a series of CEOs "explained how a sharpened environmental focus helped their businesses to cut costs, reduce risks, expand sales, and add value to their bottom line." Fortune
 
Dan Esty has also contributed an Earth Day op-ed for The Hill.