The Realist Idealist

My father has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in southern Indiana in 1974.  A lot has happened since then in the energy industry, in the auto industry, and in my family.
I wrote a couple weeks ago about “my energy history,” and how closely tied my family - and [...]

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As many of you know… and as many of you don’t know… I recently took up work in the clean energy field as the Internet Director/Chief Technology Officer/Strategic Communications guy of the Energy Action Coalition.
James Hansen has testified that Energy Action is one of the only environmentally or energy-focused organizations truly doing what needs to [...]

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Just above Ben Stein’s column in yesterday’s Sunday Times (telling us that things really aren’t that bad in our nation’s economy …Bueller? Bueller? …anyone?) was a piece by Alan Blinder with the title “A Modest Proposal: Eco Friendly Stimulus”

The gist of Blinder’s proposal can be boiled down to providing “cash” to low-income Americans for their [...]

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“The current race is to see who will control renewable energy technologies, and we are in the race,” Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil told reporters. “We have the human and financial resources, and we have the will.”
Minister Khelil’s statement was made in the recent announcement that Algeria is undertaking a massive initiative to generate enough [...]

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I just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin this weekend, and without knowing exactly how to say this, I’ll simply say that I was completely inspired.  “Inspired” is quite an understatement actually.  I found myself at times with chills running through my body as Isaacson described the various successes and challenges Franklin faced throughout [...]

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The buying power of the casual consumer can be harnessed to impact the environmental actions of business. We can get companies to make choices that are sustainable and transformative. And we can do it with the carrot …not the stick.
Watch this video (highly recommend the longer version) to see exactly how it works.

CarrotMob is [...]

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No matter how much I try not to have the conversations about online fundraising - mostly because others who know much more about it than I should be having them - I sure do end up talking about it an awful lot.
Along those lines one of my colleagues at Idealist just sent me a link [...]

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To be perfectly honest, as much as I love the products that come out, I get a little tired of writing and talking about Google and Salesforce. I really wish some other companies would develop and innovate on the same level and provide some new tools to the folks out there trying to [...]

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My programmatic highlight of SXSW Interactive a few weeks ago, by far, was the keynote address given by Jane McGonigal - a noted game designer and games researcher, specializing in pervasive games and alternate reality games.
In all honesty, before the speech, I wasn’t in any way interested in games or what Jane had to say. [...]

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http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html
As we all know Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So in true realist-idealist fashion Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first [...]

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