The Realist Idealist

Yes, the pensions of the 1990’s are slowly disappearing. It makes sense - companies have been negotiating with unions and the like with promises that, as demographics have shifted (people began living longer and retiring earlier), they cannot afford over the long term.
But, it’s worse than that.
Cash invested in Pensions is tax deductible. [...]

[Read more →]

“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 [...]

[Read more →]

This six part series by Richard Behar of Fast Company entitled “China in Africa” is the single best piece of investigative journalism I’ve read in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever.

Behar breaks down and brilliantly weaves the geo-political, business, governmental, community, historical, and personality issues that plague a handful of resource-rich countries across the sub-Saharan [...]

[Read more →]

I first heard Van Jones speak in 2005 in Berkeley. I still get chills recalling his call for a “new politics” a “new religion” and truly a new way of operating in society.
I’ve followed Van since then through his work with the Ella Baker Center and just saw him here today at the 2008 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

Gas prices won’t be going down for a while. But at least we as consumers can ease the pain by voting with our consumer dollars, and patronizing oil companies that are devoting at least a small share of their revenue to sustainable practices.
HIP Investor has rigorously evaluated and rated the top ten oil companies (HIP [...]

[Read more →]

Making good things (actually) happen is hard.
On any large scale, trying to make the world a bit better place is messy and complicated and almost always full of the same back-room shenanigans chronicled throughout the political, business, and tech sectors, but with one not-so-small difference: everyone involved acts like it’s not, and almost no one [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

In early October YouTube announced the YouTube for Nonprofits Program and a special site for them that would allow them to have full branding of a page and free processing of donations for Google Checkout.
Since then, hundreds of nonprofits from the ONE Campaign to the Clinton Foundation to PlayPumps International have launched pages and raised [...]

[Read more →]

I spent all of yesterday afternoon at Google’s DC offices for a meeting of Leadership 18 - a coalition of the country’s largest and most well respected nonprofit organizations - at which we talked about large nonprofits use of new technology in their work (particularly Google’s technology). As the United Way was the [...]

[Read more →]