Xerosphere

I'm at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder as a mentor this week, and later today I'll be giving my take on the presentation that has kicked off the stay of each of the several dozen mentors that they have hosted this summer. Since it's the end of the program, I'm going to go a little meta and talk about the big, meaty bet we're all making on our generation to change the world.

A Unique Combination of Influences. Our cohort grew up with a strange combination of influences. We got a big dose of the holdover idealism of the 1960s generation. At the same time, we got the skepticism that characterized the boomer echo and Gen Xers. The important thing about this combination is that it has predisposed us to be critical and not shy about critiquing organizations driven by good intentions rathe than real impact, while keeping us generally idealistic and optimistic about the value of social change efforts.

A Strange Historical Moment. The 1990s was a truly weird moment in history. The Cold War ended, and as much as it was supposed to be the glorious 'end of history,' it actually was the most violent, turbulent decade since WWII. As we started to get into college in the 2000s, and -- in many cases prompted by the horror of September 11th -- looked back to see the real state of the world, many of of us found that what we remembered and what we experienced was vastly different than what most of the world was experiencing.

At the same time, the internet was creating the architecture for an expansion in human capacity and human connection unlike anything in history. Travel was becoming easier, and the end of the Cold War had seen an explosion in global civil society and nonprofit organizations.

Learning in Person. Taking advantages of these opportunities, our generation has had consistently growing rates of volunteerism. Study abroad is growing on just about every campus, and the places that people are going and the types of programs they're studying in are expanding just as rapidly. There is no learning as essential as learning directly from people experiencing the problems, and we've been fortune to have a lot of that very early.

A Growing Support Structure. Importantly, along with the growth in young people getting their hands dirty with social change has been a boom in the institutions that are designed to support that work by critiquing it, contextualizing it, and offering it new expression. Undergraduate centers, incubator and accelerator programs, training conferences - there is an entire ecosystem of organizations working to make sure that young people's efforts have the impact they wish.

Aligned Frameworks. As there has been an expansion in youth engagement, there has also been an expansion in social change efforts of all types. The heightened prominence of "social entrepreneurship" has enabled young people to tap into a language and a field that takes their work out of the context of young do gooders and actually involves them in the global conversation about how best to change the world.

Global Peers. If most of what is discussed here refers to a specific subset of the generation -- namely a certain class of American young people -- the global peer infrastructure is changing rapidly, and from internet communicaton to global conferences, young people who may have a different history but share a common future are finding one another and letting themselves be influenced by one another.

A Question of "Success." No generation has ever had as much of what it needs to change the world so early. In the long-run, however, whether we live up to that promise will be largely based on how we define success in our personal lives, and how that translates to our professional endeavors. If we decide in five years that money and comfort is the primary objective, we'll compromise left and right and quickly learn to the next group to pick up where we left off. If, instead, we define success to include not only money but impact and engagement, it will change the entire structure of our economy.

Photo credit: Mikael Miettinen

By Eric Olson, Senior Vice President

The publication of BSR’s latest report on sustainable consumption, which describes the topic as the “New Frontier in Sustainability,” gives me cause to reflect on more than a decade of work in the field. I entered the “field” of sustainability under the influence of corporate pioneers such as Ray Anderson of Interface and thought leaders such as Paul Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins, and Bill McDonough, who together shined a bright light on the role that business can and must play in the transformation of our global economy from one based on the linear “take-make-waste” industrial model of the 20th century to one that recognizes the need to fully account for environmental and social impacts on a cyclical, “cradle-to-cradle” basis.

The current wave of interest in sustainability (and sustainable consumption) can therefore be seen, in part, as the “mainstreaming” of ideas that have been around for a long time. At the same time, it is important to note that we have learned a lot over the last 15 years—both about the nature of the challenges and opportunities we face (the “what”) and the tools and approaches we need to address them (the “how”).

So when we refer to sustainable consumption as the “new frontier” in sustainability, what we have in mind is the translation of thought leadership into action—sustained action, on a massive scale. The report argues for the practical application of a systems-based approach, in which tangible near-term actions such as radically increased resource efficiency buys us the additional time needed make the more radical investments—in things like alternative energy sources and materials and behavioral and policy changes—that will be required to achieve a truly sustainable economy in the long run.

 

Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation. Read all of Priya's blog posts here.

In my last blog post I wrote about the Afghan peace jirga held in June.  One idea that was put forth in President Karzai’s peace proposal was to pay insurgents not to fight. Like any interesting idea, not only is the devil in the details, but it’s also in the implementation.  Apparently the Iraqi government has experimented with a “cash for loyalty program” and at least according to some accounts it “turned the tide” in the country.

What would have to happen for this to work?

•    Incentives must be aligned.  The government would have to figure out a way to make subscribing to this program attractive to citizens who are otherwise fighting for primarily economic reasons.  The government would have to structure the program, including pricing, delivery, and timings of payments in such a way that meets and surpasses the opportunity cost of joining the Taliban. 

•    Given that it’s a government program, how would they avoid corruption, leakage of payments, or inadvertently funding the Taliban? In any cash transfer program, it is commonly known that leakage happens.  In India, for example, a country that struggles with corruption, Rajiv Gandhi once famously estimated that only 15% of development aid reaches the poor.  How would the government secure such payments, particularly when funds could strengthen the fighting forces?

•    Would it cause a price-war between the Taliban and the government? While it sounds a bit strange, by paying someone not to fight it both acknowledges that as an important choice, but it also commodifies the action.  If the Taliban knows the government is paying a certain amount not to fight, perhaps the Taliban could just pay the same people more.  

•    How would they safely transmit money?   Perhaps through mobile payments. 

•    If they have funds to pay people not to fight, what else could they pay them to do?  Work brings dignity as well as something to do during long days.  Perhaps the government can also pay Afghans to work or help with security projects. 

•    How would one guarantee they didn’t fight anyway? 

Do any readers know of any other examples of governments paying citizens not to fight in a civil war? 

While the last few decades have seen an approach to copyright law that is more about protecting the dying business models of big industries than protecting small artists and creators, an update from the US Copyright Office released yesterday actually constitutes good news for those who think that copyright has gone off the rails.

Copyright is an interesting thing. It arose as a way to ensure that creators could derive value from their work that would allow them to continue to focus on their creation as their primary pursuit. The goal was not just to support the rights of a particular class of individuals, but a recognition of the fact that those individuals had a significant role in creating a vibrant artistic, scientific culture and civil society. The earliest copyright law in England had to do with the growing number of books being printed for broad consumption.

The internet has put immense stress on copyright. Simply put, the digitization of all media has lowered the cost of creating a copy of any movie, book, or song to zero. What's more, it has disrupted the role of the intermediaries who used to be charged with discovering, creating, and disseminating that media. Without the natural friction of either the cost of production or the cost of discovery of talent, the internet has created a Wild West in which anything can be shared and exchanged freely with just a few clicks.

Some see this as an amazing opportunity for opportunity to flourish and for the old monopolies of the publishing companies and record labels to be broken. Companies who have been intermediating value from the work of creators obviously see it as an existential threat.

One of the center pieces in the ideological battle has been the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), US legislation that passed in 1998 and created strict provisions for digital rights management (DRM). The act has given legal standing for companies to pursue legal action against "pirates" who use their content in ways not intended and who distribute it without permission. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have decried it as stifling free expression and inhibiting fair use -- a term which refers to the legitimate ways a customer can use media once they have purchased it.

Every few years, the US Copyright Office issues clarifications about what previous laws mean. The most recent DMCA clarification was a big win for user-advocates. Among the clarifications:

• People can use clips from DVDs they've purchased for the sake of education or criticism;
• People can use lawfully obtained software on their phones, even if the phone manufacturer doesn't support that software;
• People can repurpose their phones to run on the network of their choosing, even if the manufacturer doesn't support it.

The last two are directly relevant for Apple. Apple's iPhone has been tied exclusively to AT&T, but with this ruling, it is now legal for someone to unlock the phone and use a different network compatible with Apple's hardware (which effectively means T-Mobile). Apple's App Store has been the gatekeeper of the programs that can run on the iPhone, but tech savvy users have used a work around called "Jailbreaking" in order to install programs that haven't been approved. This ruling makes this activity completely legally sanctioned. This matters in part because Apple has used its store approval policies to keep out certain software it saw as competitive - like Google Voice.

It seems unlikely that this will have a dramatic impact on the day-to-day lives of most media consumers. But it will impact the way developers and entrepreneurs think about their opportunities, and could also influence other legal rulings about the changing nature of intellectual property law. Ultimately, those effects could be significant.

Photo credit: Horia Varlan

By Asher, posted Jul 27, 2010:

Back in December in blisteringly cold Copenhagen, tens of thousands of activists, government workers, lobbyists, and world leaders came together for what many hoped would be a diplomatic breakthrough. Though the weather was cold, conditions seemed ripe: Environmental groups across the globe had worked hard to generate a strong display of public will, culminating in 350.org’s Day of Action earlier in October, which CNN called "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.” Bolstered by the announcement that President Obama would attend the talks personally, hopes were high for meaningful engagement on the part of the United States after more than a decade of inaction.

It seemed to many environmental organizations and their supporters that their international strategy might finally pay off. They were mistaken and left Copenhagen only with questions: What had gone wrong? Why did world leaders punt on the biggest crises facing our planet? And the most important of all: What now?

At Copenhagen, representatives from the Obama Administration told activists straight to their face: You’ll have to make us do this. And your movement is just not big enough.

Fast forward seven months, to blindingly hot Washington D.C., and we have the same result—though this time it was Congress’ turn to punt, despite a great deal of behind-the-scenes negotiations. Senator Kerry (D-MA) said, "We believe we have compromised significantly, but we're prepared to compromise further."

Despite that display of, um, generosity, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) explained, this time they were just not big enough.  Unable to get the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster, no climate legislation will move forward in the Senate this year. Since they’re likely to have even fewer votes after the midterms, this does not bode well for hopes of a national policy any time soon.

This is a double blow because the one outcome of COP 15—the Copenhagen Accord—is predicated on countries voluntarily setting and meeting domestic targets. So the lack of national climate legislation also means that our only hope for meeting our 2020 reduction targets is the EPA’s authority, which is likely going to be challenged in court for as long as the delayers can manage. That, or further steep declines in economic activity, like what has happened recently in the UK.

Gladly, I’m no Beltway insider, and my assumptions should be read as just that. But the way I see it, this result (or lack thereof), is not much of a surprise. Four of what are likely many reasons:

1. The Kerry-Lieberman bill was so badly flawed that not even the Big Green environmental groups could hold their noses enough to back it. Though they had staked their strategies, dollars, and reputations on getting something, anything passed before the likely loss of Democratic Party majorities in Congress, they saw that this bill could in fact be worse than no bill.

2. Our leaders’ allegiance to the mythical god of growth trumps their concern over the proven chemistry and physics of global climate change. The irony is rich, of course, considering that even after a veritable iceberg of evidence corroborating anthropogenic global warming, fabricated “scandals” like climate gate still somehow send the media into paroxysms of doubt and politicians diving for the nearest rock (likely to be underwater in about 30 years). In the meantime, there’s a wholly unsubstantiated belief shared by politicians, pundits, and plebeians of all stripes that without endless economic growth our entire universe would spontaneously implode.

And so, anything that could be viewed as putting our economic “recovery” at risk is simply a bridge too far, particularly in the run-up to mid-term elections.

3. Senate Republicans determination to block any bill that hit the floor. You’ve got to give Senate Republicans credit for their single-mindedness, and ability to wholly divorce their legislative positions from the love I’m sure they feel for their children and grandchildren. That takes a special level of determination and obstinacy.

4. The Obama Administration is simply not serious (enough) about our energy and climate crises. That was made abundantly clear in his oval office speech on June 15th when in the midst of the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history, his tepid response was this:

So I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party—as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels. Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development—and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development. All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead.

 

No specific call to action, no plan offered up. Just an invitation to explore ideas. It was clear in that moment that President Obama was not prepared to stick his neck out for substantive energy and climate policy. Not even when Americans were shaking with anger over the ongoing Deepwater Horizon Gulf spill.

And so here we are again, asking, “What Now?”

More and more in my conversations with environmental groups, activists, and funders, it seems their focus is shifting from the international to the national to, now, the state and local level. For several reasons, I think this is a smart strategy.

In my next post, I’ll touch on the politics and possibilities of local action. Then, I’ll toss out an idea for getting Sarah Palin to serve as the ultimate spokesperson for national climate legislation. Trust me, she won’t like it.

By Richard Heinberg, posted Jul 26, 2010:

 

YOU Can Be a BILLIONAIRE Without Even Trying! Five Ways to Profit BIG from Global Collapse   (Author’s note: This is the Introduction to an inspirational / financial-advice / environmental / diet / dating / self-help / survivalist / humor book that I started to write—and quickly decided should never be finished. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it even this far. You be the judge.)   What can you do to optimize your chances in the case of hyperinflation, a deflationary economic Depression, an oil crisis, a famine, or a series of horrendous environmental disasters? If you don’t already know, you’d better wise up fast—because some or all of these exciting opportunities are on their way to a neighborhood near you! In fact, one or two may already be tapping you on the shoulder and asking to make your acquaintance.   Pointy-headed intellectuals have been warning us about this stuff for years. Decades. Who cares? Who’s had the time for depressing, worrisome, gloomy, hard-to-understand statistics and graphs? There’s been work to do, money to be made, kids to put through college, new episodes of American Idol to watch.   Until now. We have finally arrived at the fabulous convergence of two Earth-shattering developments: First, real environmental and economic catastrophes are starting to happen and are tugging on our Comfy Cushion of Consumer Complacency, requiring us to actually Do Something. Second, someone (guess who?) has figured out how to frame these mega-scary events in such inviting, entertaining, and potentially profitable terms that the irresistible win/win euphoria of it all can make you almost completely forget just how abysmally awful our situation actually is.   Welcome to my book, YOU can Be a BILLIONAIRE Without Even Trying! In it, you will learn why the U.S. economy is now the butt of jokes in Chad; why the stuff that makes your car go is about to become as rare and valuable as . . . as . . . as something actually rare and valuable; why the global food system is making more and more people watch their waistlines (as they shrivel); and why Mother Nature seems to be puzzlingly mean-tempered lately—almost as if we had done something to annoy her.   And, best of all, you will learn how to anticipate and cash in on the lucky breaks opened up by these seeming calamities. You will thrill to the sheer ease with which you and your family can surf the waves of change lapping at the thighs of a dazed and sadly un-opportunistic world. You will adopt as your new motto: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!   With this book you just can’t lose: If you decide not to take my advice and not to do anything to save yourself from the smorgasbord of apocalyptica to which we are all about to be treated—well then, you might as well chortle in the face of certain destruction. You can still revel in the fresh, snarky prose with which your grisly fate will herein be detailed. You still win!   But you stand to win even BIGGER if you get with the program! Each of the following chapters will inform you of fun ways to profit from global collapse—so get ready to get ahead!   Chapter 1, “How to Become a Billionaire Without Even Trying!”, will prepare you to thrive in a period of hyperinflation. Remember Germany in the early 1920s? Well, I don’t either. But I’ve actually seen an old picture on the Internet of a German lady heating her home by tossing bricks of currency into her furnace. How could money become so worthless? Easy: If the government decided to print gazillions of Papiermarks, or Dollars, or Euros, Baht, Drachmas, Guilders, Nakfa, Pesos, Pounds, Rand, Rubles, Rupees, Shekels, or Yen in order to pay for obligations it otherwise could not meet. With more money chasing an equivalent quantity of goods and services, individual units of currency would lose value. Soon a loaf of bread that used to cost only two Tugrik could cost hundreds, then thousands, then millions, eventually billions of Tugrik!   Of course, this could never happen TODAY, in our enlightened modern world run by politicians and economists with their profound scientific understanding of how to keep monetary systems oiled, tanned, and buff. Nevertheless, there is always the theoretical possibility that, in a poor and corrupt backwater nation somewhere, a power-mad Prime Minister or President could decide to borrow colossal amounts of cash to pay for social programs and infrastructure projects (knowing these debts could never be repaid), which would eventually cause the national currency to lose nearly all of its value. If you were to find yourself in such a country then, you could become a billionaire without doing anything!

Think of the opportunities! Like the government, you could inflate your debts away! Your total mortgage of 1,000,000 Ringgit could easily be paid off with a single month’s salary . . . assuming, of course, that you still had a salary and that salaries were keeping up with prices. You see, there are some strings attached: when the waiter gives you a dirty look after you leave him what you thought was a generous 50,000,000 Dinar tip, you might start to think that being a billionaire isn’t all that you expected. Your savings would have been inflated away by this time and society might be shredding at the edges.   But . . . you’d be a billionaire!!!   As we’ll see in more detail later in the chapter, there are plenty of things you can do now to get ready for life under hyperinflation: Stop investing in Wall Street and start investing in your community! Stock up on things of real and enduring value that you can always trade or barter! And develop skills that will enable you to be useful to people in your community when the monetary system breaks down!   Naturally, you will only be able to benefit from hyperinflation if you haven’t already lost everything to deflation—which brings us to   Chapter 2, “How to Buy the House of Your Dreams for $1000!”   Deflation is in some ways the opposite of inflation: If lots of loans are being defaulted upon, if new loans aren’t being written, and if loads of people are losing their jobs, then money starts to disappear from the system. Money is worth more than it was before, but there is less of it to go around. This is what happened in the U.S.A. during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when 40 cents could buy a decent meal, a two-bedroom bungalow came with a monthly mortgage payment of $35, and a new Chevrolet could be had for $20 down and a series of $15 monthly installments. You could live well on $100 a month—but who had that kind of money?   Of course, this could never happen TODAY, in our enlightened modern world run by politicians and economists with their profound scientific understanding of how to keep monetary systems oiled, tanned, and buff. Nevertheless, there is always the theoretical possibility that, in a poor and corrupt backwater nation somewhere, a cabal of greedy bankers could create a set of bizarre investment instruments that appear to generate enormous amounts of wealth but in reality are nothing but an elaborate con game, so that at some point all these investments would lose their perceived value and several fantastigillion Taka’s worth of apparent wealth would just evaporate, causing the stock market to implode in a puff of smoke and leaving millions upon millions of people without jobs or income of any sort. If you were to find yourself in such a country at such a time, and you still had a few Taka in your pocket, you could buy yourself a Rolex, a car, a house, maybe even your own judge or police chief!   Naturally, that would only hold true if you did indeed still have those few Taka and hadn’t lost all your savings to hyperinflation (see Chapter 1). And, to be sure, there are some downsides to deflation: You might be out on the street, and society could splinter. But hey, does that Rolex look great or what?   As we’ll see in more detail later in Chapter 2, there are a few things you can do now to get ready to make the most of life under deflation. And some of them look a lot like ways to protect yourself from hyperinflation: Buy your support system ahead of time (hand tools, solar panels, and other items that will help move you toward self-sufficiency)! Develop and improve your tradable skills! However, in this case an additional strategy might be helpful: If your community starts a local currency now, then as your national currency collapses you’ll still have some basis for trade. Invent your own money—do it today!   In Chapter 3, “Pick Up Any Guy or Girl with Three Magic Words!”, you will learn that, in an inevitable future in which gasoline is unaffordable and oil shortages are commonplace, the words “I’ve got fuel” will make you instantly attractive.   You see, our entire transport system is petroleum-dependent: cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships—they all run on diesel, gasoline, or bunker oil (with the exception of about twenty Tesla Roadsters and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hydrogen Hummer). But over the past century or so the petroleum industry has guzzled up all the cheap, easy-to-find Texas Tea and is now undertaking a Journey to the Center of the Earth to get those last few tasty slurps of light, sweet crude. Meanwhile, today’s remaining oil-exporting countries are using more and more of their precious petrol domestically, which means that oil-importing countries (like the U.S.) will soon be up a creek without a drill rig. How soon? We’re not talking centuries here, we’re talking a decade or so at best, maybe only a few years.   It would be sensible for towns and cities in the U.S. to ready themselves for that fast-approaching future by building robust, energy-efficient electric public transit systems that could potentially run on solar or wind power—but instead most are using Federal stimulus money to build or widen highways. Why? It’s because urban planners are required by law to assume that the future will look just like the 1960s, only more so. Smart! Well, that’s bad for cities, but good for you if you’re looking ahead!   People need to travel. If they have no alternative to cars but can no longer afford to own and operate their own vehicles, then ingenious new sorts of carpooling services might pick up the slack. Start now to plan how you’ll run your informal jitney business—gathering up carloads of passengers along semi-regular routes, dropping folks off one at a time close to where they need to go, while collecting nominal fares (a couple of eggs, a few potatoes) to make it all worthwhile. Form friendships now with the people most likely to have access to fuel (including home-made biodiesel) when the shortages hit. Figure out what kind of vehicle you intend to buy (don’t purchase it yet!—wait until nine-passenger vans and SUVs are virtually worthless due to deflation and fuel shortages). When the time comes, if you’ve followed these simple instructions, you’ll be picking up guys and gals on a regular basis!   Yes, there are some trade-offs and risks attached to the impending oil crisis. Forget that yearly vacation at Disney World—or anywhere else that requires air travel (sorry, there will be no electric 747s in our future). And you might have to deal with a bit of social upheaval from time to time. But why dwell on the downside? Just think of the bonuses! You will get to know your neighbors better and we’ll all get lots more exercise riding bicycles—as long as bike tires are available (too bad they’re made from oil).   Chapter 4, “How to Lose 40 Pounds Without Even Trying!”, offers advice on a sure-fire way to beat the obesity epidemic. It’s called global famine!   Now, I know this one sounds terrifying at first. But remember: the more enormous the crisis, the huger the opportunity!   A whopping big famine is a safe bet sometime in the first half of this century. That’s because we have a still-expanding human population (nearly seven billion of us now and counting) with growing appetites; but we’re eroding or salting our topsoil (losing 25 billion tons a year), we’re facing water scarcity (so much for increasing food production through irrigation), the amount of arable land available globally is starting to decline, we’re depleting world rock phosphate supplies (phosphorus is essential to modern industrial agriculture and there’s no substitute for it), bugs and weeds are becoming resistant to nearly all our pesticides and herbicides, and—to top it off—our entire food system is totally dependent on the use of depleting petroleum to fuel tractors and to transport farm inputs and outputs. Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention that we’re over-fishing the oceans, so that by mid-century most wild commercial fish species will be depleted, endangered, or extinct. It’s a food system that’s virtually designed to fail!   You think it’s going to be tough to find the bright side to this one? Think again! We’ll be swimming in silver linings!—those of us who are prepared, that is.   If you can figure out how to grow food sustainably, starting now, you are guaranteed to become a Very Popular Person. In fact, your biggest problem could be TOO MUCH popularity! Your whole neighborhood might want to start hanging out with you every day to share meals. Some neighbors might even want to visit you (or your garden) in the middle of the night. Cozy—maybe too cozy! But if you plan ahead for all of this popularity, you could find ways to put all your new friends to work weeding, planting, and harvesting. You could turn this into a system—a feudal system, to put a name to it—with you as the, um, facilitator!   And you thought global famine was going to be a big downer. Silly. There’s always an upside for those with a smile and a can-do attitude!   And that brings us to the concluding, inspirational   Chapter 5, “Ten Ways YOU Can Change the World!”   Not all profits are financial in nature; sometimes the best things in life come simply through knowing that we’ve made a difference. We all want to leave our mark; we want future generations to remember us. Often, this longing gets frustrated along the way: when we’re young, we have dreams of doing something great and being famous, but the requirements of making a living tend to mire us in mediocrity. After we’re dead, we might be remembered for a while by a few close relatives, but then it’s off to oblivion. Gone and forgotten. Meanwhile the world shambles on as before, not much different as a result of our having been here.   That all may have been true a few decades ago, but not anymore! Haven’t you heard? It’s the New Age of globally interconnective instantaneously hyperactive feedback loops! In other words, we’ve arrived at a point in our development as a species where we can change the world in truly dramatic ways, just by each of us doing our own little bit. No, it’s better than that: it has gotten to be so easy to change the world that today it’s actually much, much harder NOT to! What an amazing species we are! What a time to be alive! Yes we can!   Massive oil spills, climate change, species extinctions, resource depletion, deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, rapid population growth, widespread reproductive disruption among vertebrates due to environmental toxins, ocean acidification . . . the list could go on and on. These are BIG changes—so big that their traces would be obvious to alien geologists visiting our world millions of years from now. With global warming alone we are turning the Earth into a very different planet from the one on which civilization developed (author Bill McKibben says we should give the planet a new name, “Eaarth,” as a way of celebrating our collective achievement). And all we have to do to contribute to these great smacking big planetary changes is to continue doing exactly what we are doing right now! Fly and drive! Use plastic bags! Eat fast food! Turn up the air conditioner! Have lots of children! Buy stuff and throw it away! It’s so fun and easy to change the world!   Sure, those space-alien geologists may not credit you personally for making such a big difference to our world. But rest assured: You’ll have been part of a socio-economic phenomenon that future human generations, if there are any, will remember intensely. In fact, they will probably think about us every single day of their lives!   * * *   Okay, enough with the cynical sarcasm. It should be fairly clear by now why this book should never be finished. (My publisher: “Keep it to one category, please. Two, maybe. Three, absolute tops. This—this is ridiculous!”)   Of course, the main reason the book shouldn’t be written is that, rather than reveling in planetary collapse or trying to profit from it, we should be doing everything in our power to prevent or minimize it. That means not flying and driving, not using plastic bags, not eating fast food, not turning up the air conditioner, not having lots of children, not buying stuff and throwing it away.   Nevertheless, the tough truth is that hard times are on the way regardless of what we do at this point. Over the past century or so we humans have set processes in motion that cannot entirely be halted even if we change our ways dramatically and instantly. During the next few decades, humanity will (one way or another) make the transition from a mode in which it relies primarily on the extraction of non-renewable resources and giddily grows its population and per-capita consumption rates, to a mode in which non-renewable resources are mostly depleted and population size and per-capita consumption rates are constrained by the availability of the world’s remaining renewable resources. Along the way, we will reap the unintended ecological consequences of our Big Binge even as it passes into collective memory: climate change, habitat destruction, soil erosion, and aquifer depletion will be gifts that just keep on giving.   Our economic situation doesn’t look any cheerier. You see, during those last couple of centuries, while we were developing our ability to extract Earth’s fossil fuels and minerals on a grand scale and transform them as quickly as possible into carbon dioxide and landfill, we got the idea that this could go on forever. We developed economic dogmas that said growth is good and normal. And we created currency and finance systems that only work properly when the economy is expanding. Now that it’s getting harder to extract Earth’s remaining non-renewable resources, economic growth is no longer a given. Indeed, year-over-year world aggregate GDP growth may already be a thing of the past—over, done with, extinguished, extinct, kaput. Whether or not we’ve already reached that inevitable point, when we do our economic system is going to careen either into deflation or hyperinflation—there will be no middle ground to cling to.   All of this is fairly plain when you stand back and look at the trajectory of human history with the laws of thermodynamics in mind. Yet most people are so invested in business-as-usual that they simply can’t allow themselves to contemplate the possibility that time has run out on our current round of Wheel of Fortune. Some environmentalists are painfully aware that nasty impacts are in the pipeline, but don’t want to frighten away their potential audience. So they focus on easy, painless, little things that average people could do to reduce those impacts (even though hard, painful, big actions by governments and corporations are actually necessary), and they daydream about how abundant life will be in a promised eco-groovy future (while in fact the best way to describe what’s in store is austerity compounded with more austerity).   In short, we live in a state of denial. The mainstream media occasionally scare us into paralysis with CGI-laden disaster documentaries, but then proceed to label people who talk rationally about the coming challenges and how to prepare and adapt as “survivalists” and “prophets of doom”—that is, as individuals so far outside the mainstream as to be worthy objects of derision.   So it’s a challenge to get across to policy makers or the general public any sense of what’s ahead and how to respond.   Those of us in the business of trying to do so have to accomplish many things at once: Get real about the scale of the problems and the risks, and avoid freaking out. Be hopeful and deadly serious. Help people improve their own survival prospects and work for institutional change so as to minimize impacts.   It’s a difficult balancing act. In fact, it’s more than anyone can do. What are the natural human responses to situations that require us to stretch us far beyond our capacities? Often we either laugh or cry.   So here’s to laughter (we’ll do the crying thing another time, I’m sure). My final advice, offered in all seriousness: Adopt a cheerful and helpful attitude. And cultivate a sense of humor during this trying period—doing so will not only preserve your mental health, it could help you and your family survive.   Remember: When life hands you a lemon, don’t just make lemonade . . . make limoncello, and make enough for friends!     ABOUT THE AUTHOR   Richard “Sunnyside” Heinberg is the author of nine books including Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis, and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. He is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators.  

By Aron Cramer, President and CEO

As the 2010 reporting season winds down, and the debate over integrated reporting heats up, it is a useful time to take stock of where reporting is today, and where it may be headed.

Integrated reporting is the topic du jour for report wonks. It's an idea whose main selling point is persuasive: requiring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters to be included in the single report of record a company issues would be a great step toward the mainstreaming of sustainability into business decision-making.

Maybe.

It's equally possible that such a step could have the unintended consequence of reducing, or dumbing down, the ESG content on which companies report. There are two primary reasons for this.

First, the regulators--and company lawyers--will begin to take a much greater interest in the assertions made about sustainability performance. I've heard this from multiple senior executives. It is not hard to imagine this having a chilling effect on some of the aspirational language contained in reports. And as most company report managers will tell you, it is precisely such aspirational language that makes a report a tool for advancing company strategies and commitments.

Second, there is only so much space in an integrated report. As a practical matter, it's likely that integrated reporting could result in a decline in the amount of information being presented in a formal report. The obvious fix to this problem is to provide information through other channels, such as social media, or issue-specific reports. But if the answer to this problem is to create new vehicles for ESG information, doesn't it defeat the purpose of an integrated report in the first place?

What's more, the vision of integrated reporting is also muddied by the ever-changing media landscape. Integrated reporting is rising as a concept just as the information world is disintegrating. With people seeking out their own take on information and news, and with multiple sources ready and able to deliver just that, it may be that the concept of an integrated report is swimming against the tides. This has nothing to do with values or purpose, and everything to do with the realities of 21st century communications. It is possible that an integrated report is to sustainability what the daily newspaper is to journalism: a model that won't survive the digital revolution.

But these may well be issues that can be worked out, and there is considerable energy ready to do just that. The Global Reporting Initiative expressed its support for integrated reporting by 2020, and the International Integrated Reporting Steering Committee is likely to announce new steps forward in the coming weeks. South Africa has taken the lead in realizing that vision, with the 450 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange now required to issue integrated reports, and a committee has been established to create the guidelines. Bob Eccles at Harvard Business School is conducting a working conference to explore the topic further in October (I serve on the steering committee for the event). And rumors are that the G-20 will put this topic on its agenda for 2011 when France holds the Chairmanship.

Integrated reporting is an idea whose time has clearly come. Now the task is to make sure that it's a practice we're ready for.

This post was also published on FastCompany.com's Ethonomics.

By Aron Cramer, President and CEO

As the 2010 reporting season winds down, and the debate over integrated reporting heats up, it is a useful time to take stock of where reporting is today, and where it may be headed.

Integrated reporting is the topic du jour for report wonks. It's an idea whose main selling point is persuasive: requiring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters to be included in the single report of record a company issues would be a great step toward the mainstreaming of sustainability into business decision-making.

Maybe.

It's equally possible that such a step could have the unintended consequence of reducing, or dumbing down, the ESG content on which companies report. There are two primary reasons for this.

First, the regulators--and company lawyers--will begin to take a much greater interest in the assertions made about sustainability performance. I've heard this from multiple senior executives. It is not hard to imagine this having a chilling effect on some of the aspirational language contained in reports. And as most company report managers will tell you, it is precisely such aspirational language that makes a report a tool for advancing company strategies and commitments.

Second, there is only so much space in an integrated report. As a practical matter, it's likely that integrated reporting could result in a decline in the amount of information being presented in a formal report. The obvious fix to this problem is to provide information through other channels, such as social media, or issue-specific reports. But if the answer to this problem is to create new vehicles for ESG information, doesn't it defeat the purpose of an integrated report in the first place?

What's more, the vision of integrated reporting is also muddied by the ever-changing media landscape. Integrated reporting is rising as a concept just as the information world is disintegrating. With people seeking out their own take on information and news, and with multiple sources ready and able to deliver just that, it may be that the concept of an integrated report is swimming against the tides. This has nothing to do with values or purpose, and everything to do with the realities of 21st century communications. It is possible that an integrated report is to sustainability what the daily newspaper is to journalism: a model that won't survive the digital revolution.

But these may well be issues that can be worked out, and there is considerable energy ready to do just that. The Global Reporting Initiative expressed its support for integrated reporting by 2020, and the International Integrated Reporting Steering Committee is likely to announce new steps forward in the coming weeks. South Africa has taken the lead in realizing that vision, with the 450 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange now required to issue integrated reports, and a committee has been established to create the guidelines. Bob Eccles at Harvard Business School is conducting a working conference to explore the topic further in October (I serve on the steering committee for the event). And rumors are that the G-20 will put this topic on its agenda for 2011 when France holds the Chairmanship.

Integrated reporting is an idea whose time has clearly come. Now the task is to make sure that it's a practice we're ready for.

This post was also published on FastCompany.com's Ethonomics.

In this late edition of the Weekend Entrepreneur Links, most of the posts focus on the Social Innovation Fund, an initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service that just announced its first set of grant intermediaries -- the foundation partners who will distribute the money to specific nonprofits. In my estimation, the Fund veered hard toward funding "what works" as opposed to funding risky, novel innovation. Ultimately, the question is how much value they add.

Builders, Buyers & the Social Innovation Fund: Sean at Tactical Philanthropy has been the most stalwart voice supporting the Social Innovation Fund process. This post, which actually started as an email to me, does a good job of articulating his reasons for this excitement. What it comes down to is a frustration with the nonprofit funding world's tendency to fund projects and programs rather than organizational capacity, and what Sean sees as a really bold statement from the US government that the way forward to a healthy social sector is investment in great organization, not preselected funding priorities. I can buy that, but I'm less sure that's the best value add for the government.

Wise Picks? Commentators Weigh In on the Social Innovation Fund Grants: As usual, the Chronicle of Philanthropy's roundup of commentary from the SIF decision covers wide ground and gets the essentials of the various arguments. One of the more interesting links is to a Google map of the recipients (and grantees who have been announced so far).

Open Society Foundations Partner with Federal Government to Drive Innovation and Opportunity Combating Poverty in Communities Nationwide: The title of this piece is basically what you need to know about the story. I include it here because even if I am somewhat disappointed in the approach the Social Innovation Fund took, I absolutely want it to succeed in the direction it has taken. One of the major promises of the Fund was to recruit matching partners, so the fact that that is happening is a very positive sign.

Trader’s Cocoa Binge Wraps Up Chocolate Market: This one has nothing to do with the SIF, but is worth reading. It's the story of a trader who is snatching up a huge portion of the world's cocoa market in order to be able to influence prices. According to the piece, he has about 7% of the global crop. This piece reminds us of the huge questions about unfettered financial power.

Photo credit: r-z

Seed funding and support organization Echoing Green sees a huge number of early-stage social entrepreneurs apply to its fellowship program each year. They've just released some aggregate data that comes straight from a survey filled out by their semifinalists, and the information is fascinating. Among the trends are the youthfulness of founders, changing types of previous experience, and increasingly innovative organizational structures.

Trend 1: Social Entrepreneurs are starting early. 55% of EG finalists over the last four years have been under 35. In 2009, they made up 70% of the semifinalist pool. In 2010, 65 of the finalists indicated that they had first studied the issue they are working on in college. This certainly resonates with what I'm seeing - which is an explosion of programs catering to the passion of young people (particularly under- and recent graduates) and attempting to provide skills and discipline.

Trend 2: Previous nonprofit experience still the norm, but not a necessity. In 2010 15% fewer of EG semifinalists had previously worked in nonprofits or governments. 49% had worked for for-profits or been self employed, which was up 13% from the previous year. A little over a third of them had previously founded an organization, of which about two-thirds were still in existence. All of this is a hugely positive sign to me, as it suggests that there is more movement from the business space into social entrepreneurship, which I think is a natural next step.

Trend 3: A strong growth towards hybrid organizations. This is another one that seems pretty positive to me. 2010 saw 37% of EG semifinalists structure their organizations as hybrid nonprofit/for-profit models, which is up 20% from the previous year. The number of people starting pure nonprofits was down 20% and the number of pure for-profits remained consistent, at only 8% of the total.

Some additional demographic data that was interesting: Almost 50% of the semifinalists in 2010 were Millennials, the most of any generational group. Just over 25% were African-American, which is awesome to see.

This information is really useful for anyone interested in where this field is going, and I'm glad Echoing Green took the time to summarize it and make it available. More than anything, I think it validates the growing appeal of solving social problems to for-profit entrepreneurs, an essential next step for our field to continue to grow.

Learn more about the survey on Echoing Green's website.

Photo credit: Echoing Green - Social Change Starts Here

By Peder Michael Pruzan-Jorgensen, Managing Director, Europe, Middle East and Africa

“Know what you carry” was the threatening message that met me many years ago as I crossed the border between two South East Asian countries. The accompanying noose on the sign left no doubts to the consequences of not knowing what I was (inadvertently or not) transporting.

Knowing what you carry is becoming a major corporate responsibility issue for a wide range of industries. From internet services companies to container ships, companies face the mounting challenge of better controlling what happens inside their service offerings. Expectations differ from industry to industry, so it begs the question, “How far does business’ responsibility extend?”

Telecommunication and internet service providers have long battled a range of views of what responsibility they should have for content transported through their wires and portals—not a simple question when 24 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

The shipping industry—which transports a third of global trade on 240 million trips each year—also faces great challenges in controlling its immense cargo. Many of us still remember the horrific images of the Chinese workers who had suffocated in a container trying to get to the U.K. And, unfortunately, human trafficking is just the tip of the iceberg with other illicit transport including electronic waste, timber, and counterfeit products.

With the continual rise in transactions in both these industries, inevitably comes a rise in new regulations and expectations that companies deploy a range of measures to reduce the possibility that they are complicit in issues such as human rights violations.

Yet the response to these new expectations can be as varied as the expectations themselves. In the internet sector, some claim that companies should carry liability for supporting public policy goals and remove certain types of content. At the same time, free speech advocates worry about the “slippery slope” and make a compelling case that placing any liability on companies will only serve to chill freedom of expression, especially in closed societies.

On the flip side, the container shipping industry has focused mainly on ensuring legal compliance and has maintained the position that the ultimate responsibility for the content in the ”box” rests with the shippers and the customers. Yet, there too, change is afoot. A few of the major shipping lines are asking themselves if, in fact, they should have an opinion about the content of the cargo they move around the world. The world’s largest container shipping line, Maersk Line, recently made headlines across the world when it announced that it would stop transporting illegal unreported unregulated fish (IUU fish) and that it was reviewing its policy regarding acceptance of future seafood shipments.

While these two industries are taking different tacks, the questions are ultimately relevant to all industries: What criteria should you use to determine if an otherwise legal transaction is ethically unacceptable? How do you determine corporate complicity? Given the impracticality—and impossibility—of individually checking the millions of transport containers and video uploads, just how far does the responsibility of the company and industry extend? And when is it right to impose self-control—and when is it not?

What do you think?

By Marshall Chase, Manager, Advisory Services, BSR

The U.S. financial reform legislation signed into law yesterday includes a provision requiring publicly traded companies to report on their use of “conflict minerals”—including gold, tin, tantalum, and tungsten—whose trade helps fund armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

While stakeholder campaigns have focused on the use of these minerals in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, conflict minerals also make their way into a variety of other supply chains, which means the legislation is likely to affect industries including jewelry, automotive, canned goods, aerospace, energy, and others.

For companies new to this subject, BSR’s recent report identifies significant areas for action, such as:

1. Supply chain responsibility, including monitoring and verification through opportunities such as the ICT industry’s supply chain transparency initiatives, which are open to non-electronics companies
2. Government engagement to support international peace-building efforts and stronger, more accountable local governance
3. Capacity-building efforts to encourage equitable local development initiatives and improve conditions at mines

Look for more from BSR on this subject, as we continue working with companies to define the role of the private sector in addressing the issue of conflict minerals.

By Tod Brilliant, posted Jul 22, 2010:

And so we have it. At noon today (PST), we saw the predictable collapse of Democrat resolve to address the most serious crisis of our times.

So what. Big surprise.

The most likely bills were horrifically flawed (don't get me started on the Kerry Lieberman joke, the one where the punchline was my childrens' future). The public demand for truly significant, timely progress on energy and climate simply isn't there. This was never going to happen in the first place.

We can point  fingers at Washington, DC, but we should be pointing them at ourselves. We allow our votes to be taken for granted. We equate online activism with real-world pressure. We talk smartly of responsible consumption and equitable resource distribution--while waiting in line to purchase new iPhones. We hold hands when we should be holding feet to fire. We self-identify as consumers, not citizens. We elect, time and time again, fellow citizens with no track record of caring about our issues. We believe that Tweeting counts as activism. We make excuses like, "Lesser of two evils" and "Incremental change is better than slipping backward." (To be crystal here, I am including ME in 'we'. I work on these issues every single day, and still I fail in my personal life to be a notable example of resilient living.) 

It's not that we don't care. Or don't believe that the earth is warming and action must be taken. We, as a nation, emphatically do.

It's that we haven't yet commited to making meaningful progress, as individuals or as a society. We must remember that every daily action has a reaction (somewhere, some time), and behave like informed citizens who give a damn. We know what to do. We even know how to do it. We know what the future can and should look like. We know how to get there. Everything is in place for a rapid and orderly transition to relocalized, resilient communities.

The 10-10-10 Global Work Party has the potential to be Day One of that transition. Beyond shovels in soil, we can use it to start the political transformations needed right now all over the world. New blood, new values, new determination to do right by this planet. Who knows, maybe even new parties who will leave the old guard behind in the dust of work boots and wheelbarrows.

---

P.S. Here's a great overview by Joseph Romm at Grist.

 

 

 

Thanks to onlinedegrees.net for listing Ashoka Peace as one of the "50 Best Blogs for Following Human Rights News".

See the full list here. It will show you "not only how you can help protect under-served or persecuted communities, but also how you can apply your new understanding of the world to society and business back home".

And thanks also to our readers, volunteer writers, and tweeters!

By Faris Natour, Director, Research & Innovation

Ever since the extent of the environmental, economic, and social damage of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico became clear, blame has been assigned to BP, its business partners, the U.S. government, and, perhaps most appropriately, all of us. Then, earlier this week, Chrystia Freeland, global editor at large for Thomson Reuters, offered a new theory in the Washington Post: The “cult of corporate social responsibility” is to blame for the spill, and for that matter, for the financial crisis and many more unnamed “business disasters of the past 24 months.”

As a 10-year veteran of this “mini-industry” of CSR, as Freeland calls it, I took offense. The oil spill and the financial crisis happened despite CSR not because of it, so we need more—and more effective—CSR, not less.

As is often the case with editorials questioning the value of CSR, Freeland bases her arguments on a definition of CSR that is anywhere from outdated to just plain wrong: She equates CSR with green marketing and philanthropy and argues that it detracts from what really matters to business and society—the core business.

Instead, Freeland argues, companies should focus on their core responsibility of making a profit in ways that benefit rather than harm society. I fully agree—and so do many in my field, as that is the very definition of CSR.

Indeed, an increasing number of companies understand that sustainability is key to their long-term success and are integrating CSR into core business strategy. This is evident in my daily work: All of the projects I am working on right now involve not just the CSR champions at the company, but representatives from legal, human resources, product strategy, health and safety, marketing, and other functions.

One oft-cited example of this approach is General Electric. In the company’s latest Citizenship Report, CEO Jeffrey Immelt states that “the key question is, where can GE apply its innovation, knowledge, and expertise to create new products and services while helping to solve these tough problems?” CSR is defined as innovating new products and services; it does not get more “core” than that.

Freeland closes with a very important point: It is the role of government to ensure that companies operate in a manner that benefits rather than harms society. I could not agree more, but it’s wrong to assume that CSR and effective government oversight are mutually exclusive, or even diametrically opposed. Business and society share an interest in avoiding environmental and other disasters through a combination of rigorous management systems at the company and effective regulation by government.

Unfortunately, the media do not publish stories about disasters averted, but if they did—and if they looked at the reasons why—they would find that the credit was often due to CSR. Rather than causing disasters by distracting companies from their primary functions, CSR can actually help prevent them by helping companies perform their primary functions well and more sustainably. Therein lies the primary business benefit of CSR. After all, for business, the cost of avoiding a disaster is always much smaller than the cost associated with the disaster itself. We would be hard-pressed to find a better example of this than the BP spill.

Well, the results are out. The much-discussed Social Innovation Fund, run by the Corporation for National and Community Service, has just announced its first set of grant-winning partners, the funding intermediaries who will distribute the funds to the ultimate recipients. The results show the SIF is primarily focused on "funding what works" versus making more risky bets.

The central mission dissonance of the Social Innovation Fund has always been the question of what its real objective was. Was it meant to be a fund that really pushes an experimental agenda and deploys capital in favor of new approaches to social change that have both high risk and high reward? Or was it alternately a chance for the government to get a hand in on organizations whose models started as innovative and who were reaching an inflection point where new resources and government support could help them achieve the scale their proven model demanded. Even the title of the press release announcing the new grants demonstrates the tension: "Inaugural Social Innovation Fund Grants Awarded to Experienced Innovators" (emphasis mine).

My preference would have been to see the first approach above enact. I tend to think that the relative smallness of the amount of resources being deployed lend themselves well to this being the "sandbox space" where the government could support really experimental efforts that could go nowhere, but could also have the disruptive potential that just couldn't be enacted through a government structure that is designed fundamentally to be incremental.

That said, I can appreciate an approach which is about scaling nonprofit innovation as well. There is a real challenge in getting resources to fully expand organizations to their potential. Even more than that, there has never been a really coherent pathway between nonprofits providing social services and government agency adoption of the most successful things they've learned.

The early evidence suggested that ultimately, the Social Innovation Fund was actually going to behave a lot more like the Social Funding What Works Fund. When the funding guidelines were released, they included an emphasis on randomized control trials as evidence of success. And even though they eased off after expert and community commentary, the focus on a record of success continued to be a supreme concern.

This list of grant recipients seems to validate this emphasis. A third or so of them are foundations with heavy existing involvement of the government. Among the others, a number of them are decades old. This doesn't necessarily mean they're not innovative, but it does certainly bias towards accumulated learning versus constant experimentation.

For me then, the question of how we evaluate this has to be based on the grants that these intermediary partners ultimately make, and even more, how much unique value the fact that these resources are coming from the government provides. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to have the government deploy resources just because it thinks it should be in the funding game. There has to be some unique compelling value that they provide.

I'm fine to get over my own wish for a more risky, experimental fund if the SIF can ultimately deliver on the decisions its made to focus on "proven innovation," but I think "delivering" will mean demonstrating some real differentiation in the value of their resources.

Check after the jump for the full press release.

Photo Credit: Vince Alongi

****

Inaugural Social Innovation Fund Grants Awarded to Experienced Innovators

Portfolio is a collection of bold programs targeting $123 million in resources to community solutions in the areas of economic opportunity, health and youth development

WASHINGTON, July 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to the increasing health needs, economic challenges and gaps in youth achievement facing low-income rural and urban communities, the Corporation for National and Community Service announced its inaugural Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grants today. The grants will target millions in public and private funds to grow effective solutions to persistent social challenges across more than 20 states.

The SIF portfolio consists of 11 organizations selected through a rigorous review process involving 60 external experts. The grantees, who represent a diverse set of nonprofit organizations and private and community foundations, share a track record of success at identifying and growing high-performing nonprofit organizations and their proposals offer a set of compelling ideas for how to use innovation and evidence to tackle social challenges in a new way.

"This portfolio is a collection of extraordinary organizations with an unparalleled body of knowledge and expertise on growing what works," said Patrick Corvington, the Corporation's CEO. "They are all driven by the search for bold solutions and recognize that we must use evidence to target limited resources where they will have the greatest impact."

The grantees will address urgent needs across three key issue areas – economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support – by providing funding and other support necessary to drive results and impact. The portfolio includes $74 million in secured private match funds, which is beyond the statutory requirement of $50 million. When combined with federal resources, this will result in $123 million being targeted toward promising nonprofit organizations that train the unemployed, increase access to heath services for the underserved and prepare youth for academic and economic success.

An initiative that represents a new way of doing business for the federal government, the $50 million SIF fund leverages a 3:1 private-public match, sets a higher standard for evidence, empowers communities to identify and drive solutions, and creates an incentive for grant making organizations to more effectively target funding to solutions that generate real impact. The SIF is a critical component of the Administration's broader agenda – led by the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation – to redefine how evidence, innovation, service and public-private cooperation can be used to tackle urgent social challenges.

"Over the long-term, the SIF will contribute to the development of the grant making infrastructure that supports the work of high-impact nonprofit organizations and inform other federal, state and local efforts to address social challenges," said Paul Carttar, Director of the SIF at the Corporation. "It offers an avenue for community-driven solutions to grow and demonstrate their value."

To select grantees, the Corporation implemented a rigorous, multi-phase application review process over a three-month period. Over 60 experts with extensive experience as social innovators, directors of nonprofit organizations, and evaluators of social programs, provided external input across three stages of the review, assessing applications against the criteria published in the SIF Notice of Federal Funds Availability (NOFA) in February of this year. The applications were evaluated based on their program design, organizational capacity and budget. In the final stage of the review, senior members of the Corporation's staff were joined by external reviewers to assess the qualities of the top applications against the portfolio criteria in the NOFA. The finalists were asked to participate in clarification discussions to help the Corporation further assess the merits of their applications.

SIF grantees will conduct open competitions across multiple geographies to select nonprofit organizations (subgrantees) within six months of receiving awards. Three of the 11 grantees applied with competitively pre-selected subgrantees. Each of the eight pre-selected subgrantees have evidence of effectiveness along a continuum of preliminary, to moderate, to strong; intermediaries are required to fund approaches with at least preliminary evidence and fund evaluation efforts to grow the number of approaches with moderate to strong evidence.

Below is the list of the SIF grantees and a short description of the work the grants will fund. Click here to read more information about the portfolio and the grantees' track records of success.

Economic Opportunity

Jobs for the Future, Inc. ($7.7 million; 2 year grant) and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) will expand their targeted training and technical assistance to at least 23,000 low-income individuals over three years while also addressing the critical skill needs of more than 1,000 employers. The funds will dramatically increase economic opportunities for disadvantaged workers and job seekers through investments in regional workforce collaboratives that partner with employers to identify jobs and career pathways in high-growth industries.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation ($4.2 million; 1 year grant) will grow Financial Opportunity Centers – a workforce development and asset-building model that boosts earnings, reduces expenses and coaches low-income families on how to make better financial decisions – to five new cities and 7,500 total participants. The Centers are a core component of the organization's strategy to build sustainable communities.

Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City ($5.7 million; 1 year grant) and the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) will replicate five effective anti-poverty programs originally piloted by CEO in eight urban areas. By advancing the education, employment and financial savings of low-income adults and families, the programs will combat poverty across a diverse cross-section of America.

REDF ($3 million; 2 year grant) will create job opportunities for thousands of Californians with multiple barriers to employment – including dislocated youth, individuals who have been homeless or incarcerated, and those with severe mental illness – in sustainable nonprofit social enterprises in low-income communities throughout the state. The project includes testing to determine the potential of these enterprises as scalable employment vehicles.

Healthy Futures

Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky ($2 million; 2 year grant) will improve access to needed health services, reduce health risks and disparities, and promote health equity in 6-10 low-income communities in Kentucky. Subgrantees will focus on testing innovative strategies to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, curb smoking and other unhealthy habits, and, increase access to health services in underserved communities. Competitively pre-selected subgrantee: Barren River District Health Department ($250,000).

Missouri Foundation for Health ($2 million; 2 year grant) will invest in 10-20 targeted low-income communities across the state to reduce risk factors and the prevalence of two preventable causes of chronic disease and death: tobacco use and obesity. The project draws on an integrated community change model blending two transformative models of prevention on obesity and tobacco control.

National AIDS Fund ($3.6 million; 1 year grant) will support innovative strategies that increase access to care and improve health outcomes for at least 3,500 low-income individuals living with HIV/AIDS. The project will employ rigorous evaluation, informing the implementation of the White House National HIV/AIDS Strategy and offering lessons that reduce barriers to care for a broad range of people living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases.

Youth Development and School Support

New Profit Inc. ($5 million; 1 year grant) will collaborate with five to six innovative youth-focused nonprofit organizations with existing evidence to yield significant improvements in helping young people navigate the increasingly complex path from high school to college and productive employment. The project will expand the reach of these nonprofits to improve the lives of nearly 8,000 young people in low-income communities throughout the country. Competitively pre-selected subgrantees: College Summit ($2 million); iMentor ($750,000); Year Up ($2 million).

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation ($10 million; 1 year grant) will combine large grants, strategic business planning, rigorous evaluation and capital aggregation to increase the scale and impact of up to 10 youth development organizations in communities of need across the U.S. The subgrantees will focus on improving economically disadvantaged young people's educational skills and workforce readiness as well as helping them to avoid high-risk behavior.

Venture Philanthropy Partners ($4 million; 2 year grant) will create a powerful network of effective nonprofit organizations in the Washington D.C. National Capital Region supporting an integrated approach to addressing the education and employment needs of low-income and vulnerable youth ages 14-24. Competitively pre-selected subgrantees: College Summit National Capital Region ($372,000); KIPP DC ($656,000); Latin American Youth Center ($500,000); Year Up National Capital Region ($207,000).

Multi-Issue

United Way of Greater Cincinnati ($2 million; 2 year grant) the Strive Partnership and other funders, will address the needs of low-income children and youth from "cradle to career" in the Greater Cincinnati-area though investments in early education, mentoring and literacy programs, college access, career pathways and other innovations.

About the Corporation for National and Community Service:

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through its Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America programs, and leads President Obama's national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit NationalService.gov.

SOURCE Corporation for National and Community Service

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By Tom Whipple, posted Jul 22, 2010:

With 1.3 billion people, China is unlikely to reach current U.S. energy consumption per capita for some time, if ever, but to double energy consumption in the last ten years is still an impressive achievement. But keep in mind that the average American is still consuming five times as much energy each year as the average Chinese. China had not been expected to overtake the US for another five years, but the global recession reduced U.S. consumption and China's strong economic rebound in the last sent Beijing's consumption soaring.

Interestingly, Chinese officials immediately denied that the IEA's announcement was correct. This is not because the Chinese do not want to be the world's number one energy consumer, but because they do not want to be known as the number one polluter and contributor to global warming emissions. As global temperatures set new records, Beijing would rather be thought of as the leader in efficient use of energy and developer of renewable technologies, rather than as a giant pollutant-belching smokestack, which may be closer to the truth for much of China's energy comes from coal.

The key issue for the next few years is whether China can keep up its frenetic growth. Earlier this year, after a heavy dose of financial stimulus and much loose lending, China's GDP was growing at an annual rate close to 12 percent. Keep in mind that China's definition of GDP growth does not exactly square with what is used in other countries. So while China's economic growth may be spectacular by OECD standards, it may not be quite that spectacular. When inflationary pressures appeared last spring, Beijing tightened up on lending which seems to have cut inflation, taken a point or two off of GDP growth, and cut back on industrial production.

Whether Beijing's formula of mixed capitalism and state control of key enterprises will prove to be durable over the long run has yet to be seen. What we do know, however, is that a few more years of surging energy consumption will soon be playing havoc with energy prices around the world. Even with GDP growth down to 8 or 10 percent each year, China seems to be on course to import at least an additional 500,000 barrels a day (b/d) on top of the 5.4 million b/d imported in June. Beijing's oil imports have doubled in the last five years. Given that other Asian states are increasing imports and the Gulf oil exporters are consuming increasing amounts of oil, something has got to give. That of course will be prices.

There are a few dark clouds on Beijing's horizon, however. Labor unrest is growing and the realities of China's decades of neglect for the environment are closing in. Natural and man-made disasters -- droughts, floods, hurricanes, melting glaciers, polluted air and water, falling aquifers - are accumulating at an alarming pace. Someday these problems, especially when they cause persistent food shortages, are going to reach the point where they impact the nation's ability to sustain any kind of economic growth. However, the consequences of these problems do not seem imminent.

Like everyone else, Beijing is about to fall victim to rapidly increasing oil prices, and eventually, shortages brought about by peaking world oil production. The government clearly recognizes this and has embarked on multiple programs to increase the efficiency of its energy use, increase production of renewable energy, and to buy up at top dollar as much foreign coal, oil and natural gas production as anybody is willing to sell them. This will in turn prove to be a major problem for the oil importing OECD countries that will see their sources of foreign oil disappear more quickly than anticipated.

For now the Chinese economic juggernaut appears ready to keep moving along right into the age of oil depletion. While the country has social and environmental issues none appear to be a hindrance to continued rapid economic development for the immediate future. With massive reserves of foreign exchange, Beijing should be in best position of any major oil importers to weather at least the initial stages of much higher oil prices.

The next few years are likely to be critical for should China keep increasing its imports of oil and even coal at anywhere close to their current rates of increase, major price spikes in the world's oil markets seem inevitable. The U.S. and OECD may not do too well economically in the next few years, but their oil and coal consumption are unlikely to take more than minor dips. These dips in consumption are unlikely to be enough to offset increasing oil consumption in Asia and the oil exporting nations.

China's new status as the world's number one energy consumer may or may not last long, but it serves as a reminder that there are serious troubles ahead.

Originally published July 21 at Falls Church News-Press

Photo credit: Emily Wiltshire

The first round of the Unreasonable Institute is quickly ebbing into pitch phase, when the 20+ entrepreneurs who have spent all summer in Boulder, CO put it all on the line to find the resources they need to take their companies to the next level. I spent Monday afternoon listening to their pitches at the West Coast Pitch Festival, hosted by Hub SoMa in San Francisco.

Across all the presentations, there were certain stylistic traits that made a presentation stand out as either good or not so good, and that may have applicability in many investment presentations by social ventures.

1. In a sympathetic audience, sell the social problem more quickly. This was an audience predisposed to care about the social issues these ventures are addressing, yet a number of the presentations spent more than half of their allotted time trying to convince the audience of the importance of the problem. Scope of the problem, context of the problem, and a quick analysis of why what exists now isn't cutting it, yes, but move faster through this and into the model meat of the presentation.

2. Get to the big, bombastic, mouth watering picture faster...The emotion that these entrepreneurs have to be trying to inspire is "holy shit, I want in, now." These social investors have to feel like they'd have to be insane *not* to want to invest. At least that's the goal. Making the picture be that exiting requires convincing people of the problem, yes, but more importantly, it requires making your solution seem so clear, so tangible, so full of opportunity that buying in is a no brainer. There was one presentation that was for a really awesome company, but in which it was only the very last slide for the very last few seconds that they shared their audacious goal of reaching 100,000,000 people in the next five years.

3. ...Then work back to how, with as much proof as you have. An essential part of achieving the excitement above is having a compelling logic for why what you're selling will work. A proof of concept with saleable results is best, but whatever it is, the "how" has to be believable. One of the biggest challenges of anyone pitching for resources in the social investment space is that there are still way more examples of organizations that talk a big game than real executers in the field. Ultimately execution matters more than inspiration. A related problem was that main piece of the execution plan for many of the pitches was "We will partner with X, which will open all the doors we need." Much easier said than done.

4. Contextualize it. Maybe the biggest challenge for me was that, because there was a real diversity of business models and financial needs, it was often hard to contextualize how you were supposed to be evaluating the company in front of you. Knowing whether the presenter was looking for resources for a nonprofit, a $1-3m annual business, or a $10m+ company makes a big difference in terms of how you think about the project as it relates to your individual portfolio as an investor. I think almost everyone would have benefitted from an overview slide that gave the key points in the first 10 seconds.

5. Confidence wins. The fastest way anyone lost my attention was by appearing timid. Nervous jitters are normal and fine, but ultimately the entrepreneurship game is about willing something not currently there into existence. This takes an immense amount of convincing. Convincing investors, team members, existing power structures, and anyone else that you need to move in some way. Confidence matters as much or more to me in the social space than in the web space, because I think we have a higher burden to change the narrative. It's still too easy for people to write our field off as a set of small, charitable endeavors outside of mainstream business.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Whittemore