Oct 15, 2009

Water Tabulations

Water use and preservation may be going increasingly high tech.

Sep 15, 2009

Progress on Climate Change. Really.

As the UN’s climate change conference draws nearer and debate on a possible cap-and-trade scheme in the US begins again, we’ll be seeing a tidal wave of reports on climate change. Almost all of them will be bad news, whether it’s further evidence of rapid change or pessimism about the prospects for concluding a meaningful agreement. But there is plenty of good news to be found.

Jun 25, 2009

Counter-productive

The new Carbon Counter in New York City is counterproductive. It gets the science exactly wrong.

Jun 22, 2009

The Food Crisis, Hovering at the Margins,

A year ago the global food crisis was front and center in international circles. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find the phrase appear at all. But the problems so evident last year have not been solved, they’ve mostly just been displaced from their position at the top of the crisis list. With the rapid spread of Ug99 wheat stem rust, we could be facing a food crisis soon that utterly dwarfs the last two years.

May 05, 2009

Thoughts from Day One of Council on Foundations

Some thoughts from the first day of the Council on Foundations Conference

Mar 25, 2009

Boldness and Social Return

Mar 04, 2009

An Era of Either/Or Choices

One of the results of the global recession will be a new era in philanthropy. The last decade has been marked by philanthropic abundance. The number of foundations and foundation endowments grew rapidly. Flush with cash, many donors were able to avoid difficult choices—they had the means to fund lots of organizations and lots of different approaches to the issues they cared about.
Clearly, the era of abundance is over. With diminished resources donors will have to choose what causes matter most to them and what approaches and organizations they truly believe in. Put another way, donors are now faced with either/or choices rather than both/and options.

Feb 06, 2009

Using Social Influence to Drive Behavior

Social scientists have discovered that human beings don’t like standing out from the crowd when it comes to engaging in behavior of which the majority would disapprove. This tendency is strong, and it can be manipulated for good.

Jan 19, 2009

Questioning the Value of Holistic Approaches

A recent New Yorker article raises the question of whether solutions aimed at solving two social problems—in this case, environmental destruction and urban unemployment—produce better results than would be achieved by tackling both separately.

Dec 11, 2008

When Is A Cow Not A Cow?