Review: SUPERSTORM: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy by Kathryn Miles

Two years ago tonight, Superstorm Sandy hit New York with a vengeance. Whatever you call her: hurricane, superstorm, Frankenstorm, Sandy was a massive, monster storm. 

Sandy was the second costliest hurricane in recorded history. Only 2005’s Hurricane Katrina was costlier in terms of damages -- $68 billion and counting as of the spring of 2014 – and Sandy was responsible for at least 286 deaths in seven countries.

Sandy’s storm surge swamped New York City, flooding tunnels, subways, and streets; cutting off power to residents in and around the city.

At 49 feet above sea level in Park Slope, where we rode out Sandy, we were relatively unscathed, safely ensconced in our apartment building, tucked up on a little one-block, one-way Place, in city parlance.

Sure, we heard the howling winds and saw the rain ripping sideways like an overzealous carnival shooter trying to win the prize kewpie doll. And in the aftermath of the storm, we saw the downed trees scattered about the neighborhood, across blocks, on top of cars, or simply uprooted.

But down the hill – down the slope – in Gowanus and Red Hook, across the bay in Staten Island, and out on Rockaway, the devastation was stunning. While we had power, food, water, and even Internet access, many others had barely anything, forced from their homes or unable to return. We had shelters and help centers and volunteers. It felt far from the madness of the storm’s wrath.

As the days unfolded after Sandy hit New York and New Jersey, we began to learn about the devastation in her wake. We felt even more fortunate. The images and stories that emerged were at times horrific: an uncontrollable fire raging on Breezy Point, caused by rising sea water; a Staten Island mom who lost her twin boys in the storm surge; cars floating in the flood waters outside the Battery Tunnel; a couple crushed by a tree while walking their dog in Ditmas Park.

There were many other stories, as Kathryn Miles reveals in her new book Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, some familiar from the media coverage, others impossible to know unless you were living it. Miles first wrote about Sandy for Outside Magazine; her story on the wreck of the replica HMS Bounty was a powerful piece of magazine reportage.

But Miles proves, as she did with her previous book, All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, The Legendary Irish Famine Ship that she excels at long-form narrative. That earlier book was about the lone ship to sail during the famine years without losing a single passenger where countless others had failed. As in that earlier book, Miles writes well not just about the sea (she lives in Maine and is an avid sailor), but she deftly brings to light the lives of the people whose stories she tells.

Miles follows the storm as it first hits the radar of the National Weather Service and then National Hurricane Center, and builds as the storm itself metastasizes, swallowing up another storm to its north, and eventually colliding with not just land, but with a nor’easter plummeting down towards the coast from the north.

The result reads like an historical potboiler as she builds the narrative of the storm out of the lives of the people tracking it, trying to avoid it, and getting trapped in it.

There are the requisite colorful characters worthy of a novel: the Hurricane Hunters, who fly a C130 into the hurricane to collect data; Lixion Avila, torn between his two loves, storms and ballet, as he attends a ballet convention in Cuba at the time Sandy starts to build; Chris Landsea, whose name must have determined his profession; and Claudine Christian and Robin Walbridge, the former a late-comer to the crew aboard the Bounty who died at sea; the latter, the captain who is presumed to have gone down with his ship.

Readers familiar with Miles’ previous book will recognize her technique, which builds and swirls much like the hurricane it depicts, time-lapsed glimpses of each character as they try to understand what this storm will do and where it will go or how to avoid and get around it. Superstorm is a page-turner, as they say, and I couldn’t put it down.

The end result is a remarkable chronicle of Sandy’s impact, not just on the land, but on so many people, on the way such storms will be reported in the future, and about the need for resilience measures for our cities and coastal areas.

Superstorm is a gripping read and, despite a few very minor editorial flaws -- she doesn’t close the loop on a couple of stories she sets up, such as the fate of the couple in Ditmas Park and their dog who waited by its fallen caretakers, for example -- should be read by all who want to understand the storms of the past to help deal with or keep out of the way of the superstorms of the future.

As Miles herself writes in her afterward (sic): “Sandy was the worst-case scenario that was never supposed to happen. New York may have fared better than Haiti, but the storm show just how vulnerable we all are…But sometimes, that’s just not enough. Sometimes, Nature breaks all the rules. And it always plays to win.”

Hopefully, that's a lesson Miles can help us learn before the next superstorm hits.

Review: Evil Plans and The New Capitalist Manifesto

Ever since the financial collapse of 2008, I've sensed a groundswell of an emerging new vision for our economy.

I'm not talking about specific, quick fixes or big government interventions, but a wholesale rebooting away from an economy based upon free credit, cheap oil, and toxic assets.

I'm talking about a new, values-based and highly creative way of doing business, living our lives, and building our world. A better way that unleashes the power of human creativity to do what our species does best: adapt and innovate.

Two new books exemplify this new vision of the world: Hugh MacLeod's Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination and Umair Haque's The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business.

On the surface, these two books appear to have little in common: Haque's is "covered" in crinkled brown paper wrapper, as if the reader should hide this dangerous book; MacLeod's is bright yellow with one of Hugh's trademark purple cartoon monsters practically shouting its subversiveness to the world.

Inside, despite very different writing styles and design, the two authors reveal much more in common.

MacLeod's premise is we should "unify work and love," do what we love and we will create real, lasting value. He believes "we are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary."

Haque asks "What are the wellsprings, deep and true, of a more enduring, meaningful, authentic prosperity?" He believes the future of capitalism requires a "more authentic, sustainable, meaningful value for every dollar, rupee, or renminbi spent."

Neither author delivers a blueprint for the future for readers to follow. Rather, they challenge all of us to create our own "evil plan," our own vision of the world we want to live in.

As Haque suggests, "to destroy less, to create more."

Or as MacLeod puts it in one of his chapter titles, "The 'Creative Life' Is No Longer One of Many Economic Options; It's Now the Only Option We've Got."

Buy these books and read them and go create your own future.

Review: Ray Anderson's "Confessions of a Radical Industrialist"

"Will we bankrupt the future, or assure it?" Ray Anderson asks in his new book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. "Or should we find ways to create wealth sustainably through the efficient use of resources, renewable energy, and closed-loop manufacturing processes that use recycled waste as raw materials?"

Anderson has been at the forefront of the sustainability movement for some time. But for 20 years he was your typical plunderer, to paraphrase the author.

He "founded Interface in 1973 to equip the emerging, technology-driven 'office of the future' with a new kind of carpet, a floor covering that could change along with its owners needs," as he writes. He built the business into a global leader in the commercial carpet industry.

In 1994, however, a colleague from the company's research division passed on a memo from a sales associate that said some customers wanted to know, "What is Interface doing for the environment?" Another associate gave him a copy of Paul Hawken's groundbreaking book, The Ecology of Commerce.

That started Ray Anderson on his journey of discovery -- both personal and corporate -- that led to the company deciding to be a global leader in sustainability and never make a carpet from virgin raw materials again.

It's a story he has told before, on stage and in his 1995 book, Mid-Course Correction, and a third of this new book covers ground from that earlier memoir. But in retelling his personal journey Anderson connects his readers to his true purpose: to demonstrate that sustainability is a worthy and profitable journey and that the journey is the destination.

Along the way, Anderson makes clear the business case for sustainability -- and for accomplishing it "with good old capitalist self-interest firmly in mind."

Anderson never loses sight of the fact that "financial success is the key to achieving sustainability," as he writes in this new book. "A bankrupt company is clearly not sustainable. But sustainability is also a big key to achieving financial success. We have proved that earning a bigger and better, more legitimate profit is possible."

It's an important lesson and one supported by his book's subtitle, "Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth." I like that he leads with Profits and People; too often, environmentalists try to lead with the planet first and lose sight of the people and their self-interest.

That's why Ray Anderson's story is a good one and Confessions of a Radical Industrialist is an important book. (It's not a perfect book, I must say, and suffers a bit from overstating some points and pontification in spots. Yet the overall message is important enough to forgive these flaws.)

"Efficiency equals profits, profits equal jobs, and good jobs mean a strong economy," Anderson writes. To Ray Anderson, sustainability offers a new business model and a new future characterized by new thinking, new products, and new profits.

(Note: As of this writing, I have just learned that Ray Anderson has been diagnosed with cancer and is heading for further tests at the MD Anderson Center in Houston. My prayers go out to Ray and his family.)

   

Review: Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World by Amy Seidl

It was late spring by the time I started reading Amy Seidl's book, Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World, but it was hard to tell.

April showers had given way to, well, May showers; and some of the warmest days of the year had produce intense clouds of pollen that were producing equally intense allergy symptoms in every one I met.

Dramatic and even extreme changes in weather patterns are one of the expected changes of a warming world. Seidl offers several others, including some terrifying possibilities involving insects, disease vectors, and pathogens. Oh my.

Seidl has written a book that is equal parts nature memoir, climate witness journal (a new genre!), and environmental impact study. Ultimately, it is a book that is both scientific and personal without being either dry or cloying. A none too difficult feat.

Seidl is an accomplished ecologist and field scientist, and her book is informed and made informative by fact and research.

But Seidl is also a mother and her observations are infused with a mother's concern and love for her children and their world.

The two aspects are complementary and together make for an engaging mix. Seidl explains the science of climate change as well as the potential impacts. She does so by bringing the impacts home in a way that makes it accessible to her readers.

Early in the book, in fact, she identifies this as a concern of hers:

"From my window I see no glaciers. I don't live near the ocean nor has my family's trip to coastal Maine been put on hold. The forecast of the scale of change that the earth will experience in the next century is unfathomable, and yet we are asked to believe it now because the risk of not believing is too grave."

From her window, in her farm, in her hollow in rural Vermont, Amy Seidl witnesses changes to her local climate and asks us to bear witness, too, in ours. Not to stand idly by and let it happen but

"to look to the landscapes where we live and ask: how they are signaling what the future holds; how do they contain indicators of the oncoming flux? By seeing these signals and rediscovering life in the landscapes where we live, we will expand our relationship to life itself and wake to what it means to live in a warming world."

Amy Seidl has written a powerful and approachable book about our 21st Century dilemma and a call for "a new set of values" with which to deal with it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Climate Change Is Biggest Health Threat Of 21st Century: Report (huffingtonpost.com)
• Dire warning: Climate change may displace up to 200 million (cnn.com)
• The gathering storm (boston.com)
• Climate adaptation is not enough (guardian.co.uk)
• EARTH MEANDERS: Radical Idealism: Come Home to Gaia (ecoearth.info)

Review: Perfect Power by Robert Galvin and Kurt Yeager

Robert Galvin knows a thing or two about technology revolutions. As founder and CEO of Motorola, Galvin helped transform the telecommunications industry. The cell phone was developed while he led Motorola and went up against a deeply entrenched and government regulated monopoly.

Galvin foresees a similar opportunity – and similar challenges – with the electricity revolution. Just as the decentralized cell phone was a threat to hard-wired phone companies, decentralized energy is a similar threat to centralized power.

In Perfect Power: How the Microgrid Revolution Will Unleash Cleaner, Greener, and More Abundant Energy, Galvin and co-author Kurt Yeager, from power-industry think-tank the Electric Power Research Institute, offer their view on the coming energy revolution.

The revolution will not be postponed, Galvin and Yeager conclude, because today's consumers and their devices demand it. But what's needed is for electricity to be viewed, as Edison originally envisioned it, "as the enabling vehicle for innovative consumer products and services, not as just another form of commodity energy."

Galvin and Yeager's answer is a new, revitalized smart microgrid system to replace the outmoded centralized system based on technologies developed prior to the 1950s. Galvin and Yeager call for investment in a transformative infrastructure and loosening of rules and regulations that inhibit decentralized, entrepreneurial responses to increasing energy needs.

One such bureaucratic barrier to distributed generation and decentralized microgrids, according to Galvin and Yeager, is that "only public utilities or governments [can] run wires that cross a public street or even to power remote villages."

While we've seen challenges to this status quo from energy entrepreneurs around the world, such as Fabio Rosa in Brazil, I wonder whether a certain amount of regulation is appropriate here in the US. I'm not sure I want my neighbor tapping into the electrical wires running down our street, potentially putting the whole system at risk. But a well-trained, certified group of service providers might be a different story.

Indeed, this is what the authors call for, envisioning "the emergence and growth of local service businesses, not unlike plumbing, heating, and electronic specialists, that install, maintain, and fine-tune the perfect power system to the highest quality standards, while dramatically cutting costs for all consumers."

Increasing energy demand in the US and around the world – almost one-third of the world's population is currently without electricity and that number is expected to double by mid-century – will force the hand, much like consumer demand for cell phones transformed the way we communicate.

Galvin and Yeager see an abundance of opportunity in the problem of upwardly spiraling demand and need, but not from government prescriptions and regulations, despite recent developments in the US.

"The key to change is free enterprise," the authors conclude. "This means no barriers to entry, the availability of clear and accurate price signals, an absence of subsidies, and the elimination of predatory practices."

In fact, the revolution has already begun. As the authors suggest, "Consumers, communities, and utilities alike are being confronted with a 'perfect storm' of converging cost, quality, and environmental issues that urgently require the smart, entrepreneurial transformation of our obsolete electricity infrastructure and its state-regulated monopoly, retail service business model."

The book struggles between being a manifesto for a new energy model and investment advice manual. The lists of companies and institutions at the end of each chapter seem tangential and superfluous. I would have cut the book by 100 pages or more, making it the perfect size for a cross country flight.

As it is, I'm not sure the audience for this book will wade through the authors' enthusiasm for their "perfect" model and promotional language associated with Galvin's Electricity Institute to find the kernels of good information about the coming energy revolution.

Review: Billion Dollar Green by Tobin Smith

"You've got to have shitloads of M-O-N-E-Y, money," Liz Phair growled, back when she knew how to growl. It's true.

Readers of this blog know I believe the only way we shift to a new green economy and address global environmental issues is by turning greed to green.

When it's clear money can be made, folks will turn to greener pastures. From the number of green investing books I've seen over the past year, people are starting to think maybe the time has come.

I was surprised by a book Wiley sent me recently, Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the Eco Revolution. Surprised, in part, because it didn't look like a "green" book.

Sure its color is green and the type is ecofriendly. But then there's the guy in the suit. He looks like a banker in his contrast-collar shirt and pinstripes or a television personality the way he's facing the camera awaiting his cue.

Enter Tobin Smith, founder and editor of ChangeWave Investing and co-star of Fox News Channel's "Bulls & Bears."

Smith, who had a bestseller with his 2000 book ChangeWave Investing: Picking the Next Monster Stocks of the New Economy, has built his reputation on identifying ways to make money from periods of change.

Only trouble is, everything changed once this book hit the shelves. Green was golden when this book was being written and when it went to press, but by December green's gold had tarnished just a bit too much for most investors.

It's not Smith's fault. He has some good insights in Billion Dollar Green. It's just that the profit may be a longer way off.

I agree with many of his green stock choices (including some of my longs) and the future market potential he sees in the smart grid, LED lighting, efficiency, and advanced batteries.

Perhaps Smith's best insight occurs in his preface:

"It was this early recognition of the secular shift in the supply and demand for fossil fuels in the new twenty-first century global economy that led us to conclude that, for the very first time, economics -- not just environmentalism or tree-hugging wannabes -- would drive the decades-plus secular transition to alternative energy technology."

That's the new green economy, baby. Driven by the economic opportunity, not altruistic idealism. Bring it on!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Bulls & Bears: Tobin Smith's Coulter Doll embodies the FOX Stock Show madness (crooksandliars.com)
• Liz Phair Does Banana Republic Ad (stereogum.com)
• CNBC Thrives as Hosts Deliver News With Attitude (nytimes.com)

Review: Strategies for the Green Economy by Joel Makower

Joe Makower is truly a green guru.

Two decades ago he wrote The Green Consumer (which we published when I worked at Viking Penguin), and over the past 20 years he's become one of the leading advisers and sustainability strategists to Fortune 500 companies.

He knows how to navigate green waters and has ridden enough green waves to show you how to do it too.

Best of all, he doesn't take himself too seriously -- and he doesn't think consumers will ever completely make the change. In other words, you can believe what he says.

Countless pretenders would have you believe that people will change their way of living and buy their way to a better future or greener pastures. Makower, in his new book, Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business, says it's probably not possible, given how much consumer habits -- and people in general -- would have to change.

And after more than two decades, Makower seems to think that the more things change the more things stay the same. All the green marketing efforts -- and even the greening of many products and services -- has failed to move the needle when it comes to taking action.

And it turns out, we're all to blame.

"The result of all this--motivated but distrustful consumers, proactive but humble companies, aggressive but often misguided activists, the media's mixed messages, and the lack of norms and standards of what is 'good enough' -- is that it is almost impossible to create a workable green strategy that meets the expectations of a confused and cynical marketplace," Makower writes. "Did I mention that this is a dysfunctional conversation?"

Makower has the research to back up his claims, although the lack of any notes in the book makes it difficult to verify some of the source materials. He has reviewed and studied most of the major consumer-related research on green awareness and attitudes, and he shares with his readers how to interpret such data for their own use.

Part of the problem, according to Makower, stems from the relative complexity of the issues, whether it's climate change, environmental degradation or what it means to be a "good enough" green company. It turns out; it really isn't easy being green, after all.

"What many people don't seem to know (or have forgotten) is that the 'three R's' [reduce, reuse, recycle] represent more than just a clever alliteration; they are a hierarchy of priorities," Makower writes.

He identifies a corresponding hierarchy when it comes to climate change: Reduce your overall consumption of energy; purchase as much as possible from Renewable sources; and Remedy the climate impacts of nonrenewable energy consumed by purchasing carbon offsets.

The staccato style of the book's chapters, which read a bit like a series of loosely connected blog posts (maybe they were?), can be a little disconcerting. Makower covers a lot of ground in such a relatively short book.

Makower concludes that the "virus called the green economy has not hit critical mass." More companies are paying attention and developing programmatic strategies (look at Wal-Mart, GE, and others). "But a high level of interest does not a tipping point make."

Still, in the end, Makower believes there are enormous opportunities for success -- for consumers, companies, and for ordinary citizens. And green will be an enduring issue for businesses and shareholders for years to come.

Strategies for the Green Economy begins to provide a roadmap for companies to create lasting value by going green.


(Disclosure: I formerly wrote for GreenBiz.com, one of Joel Makower's publications.)

Review: Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy?

No matter what your company does or where it's located Climate Change is going to have an impact on your business.

As CEO, it is imperative you understand the potential impacts and opportunities presented by the issue.

But with the tremendous amount of noise out there, on both sides of the issue, it may be difficult to sift through it to find the right information to inform your business decisions and strategy.

Along comes a slim volume in Harvard Business Press' Memo to the CEO series, Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy? by Andrew J. Hoffman and John G. Woody.

Short enough to read on your next transcontinental or international flight, this book provides all the background, current thinking about impacts and opportunities, and upcoming policy decisions that will affect your business.

You will also learn how some of the most successful companies are getting ahead of the game. Companies like SwissRe, which has come up with a three-tiered approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), or Duke Energy, which is anticipating regulations to come and making sure they have a seat at the table when they are secured.

Hoffman, associate director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, and Woody, a deal associate at MMA Renewable Ventures, have devised a simple, three-step approach for you to follow to best position your company.

Beginning with understanding your company's carbon footprint and taking action to reduce its size, Hoffman and Woody walk you through assessing the business opportunities and how to influence policy as it's being developed.

"Some business associations and lobbyists still dispute the science of climate change, but their numbers are dwindling," the authors conclude. "And businesses themselves are focusing on the undeniable economics of the problem. While some companies are adapting out of near-term operational necessity, others are acting to mitigate long-term strategic vulnerabilities, and the most forward-thinking are seizing on new business opportunities created by climate change and devising ways to make money from clean energy and efficient technology."

Pick up Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy? and read it, have your management team read it, and then decide what your company needs to do to stay ahead in the game.

Review: Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg

I remember the day when I was no longer at the top of the food chain.

I was flying into Lower Talarik Creek in southwestern Alaska with nothing but a fly rod, a note book, a sleeping bag, and hubris. As we circled the lagoon, the float plane pilot pointed out 10 or 12 brown bears that had already secured the fishing hole.

We landed anyway and the bears disappeared. The low brush was barely enough to hide them. They were gone, but they were out there.

Until you've experienced the fear, adrenaline rush, and deep respect you feel in close proximity with a large predator, you haven't really lived.

As a species we have a complex relationship with predators, whether large cats, bears, wolves, sharks, or killer whales. It's a mixture of deep-seated fear and loathing, along with time-honored respect and admiration. Some of it goes back so far in our DNA that it is no longer top-of-mind. Most of us don't have to worry about it, safely ensconced in our cities, towns, and bedroom communities.

But Will Stolzenburg worries about it plenty. So do the biologists, activists, ranchers and others he writes about in Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators, being published this month by Bloomsbury.

Stolzenburg, a former colleague at the Nature Conservancy and a writer for Science News, Conservation, and Nature Conservancy magazine, admits he is biased in favor of big predators. But he also understands the complexity of the psychology around their interaction with Homo sapiens.

"Over the thousands of millennia that our own lineage has spent in the company of killing beasts," Stolzenburg writes. "Competing with them for food and running from them as food -- the great meat-eaters have quite naturally etched themselves into the human persona."

Stolzenburg has written a compelling book, a short history of our relationship with predator species, which uses scientists and their stories to tell the story of that relationship and of the importance of predators on land and sea.

His story starts with an unlikely hero, the starfish (Pisaster ochraceous), which prevents mussels such as Myltilus californianus from crowding other species off rock habitats. Who amongst us would classify the sea star among the big charismatic megafauna? But they play an important role.

As do sea otters, which keep sea urchin populations down and minimizes their destruction of kelp forests. And then there are the usual suspects: wolves, coyotes and big cats that maintain a check on populations of smaller mammals and other species to avoid cascading, sometimes catastrophic changes.

Stolzenburg reviews the arguments surrounding the importance of predators to their habitats as well as the various attempts to extirpate them and to bring them back from the brink.

"The great predators are great barometers of our maturity as a species," he concludes. "If we can live with an animal that could just as soon eat us as an apple, if we can make room for an animal that traverses entire states looking for a mate, how better to define the art of compassion"

He follows the major thought leaders in conservation biology of the past 40 years on their journeys of discovery, enlightenment, and sometimes ridicule. The stories are fascinating and Stolzenburg makes the tales come to life in an almost Scott Turow novel way. (If you think scientist-researchers and field biologists lead boring lives in the academe, Stolzenburg will convince you otherwise.)

Equally fascinating are some of the depictions and explorations of the predators themselves, especially the chapters on killer whales and on "the loneliest predator," man. Fascinating, too, how recent some of the thinking is about species interaction and interdependency, until you realize that conservation biology as a field is relatively young.

Will Stolzenburg knows how to tell a story and his narrative is a good read. Part history, part mystery, part philosophical treatise, Where the Wild Things Were is an important book in the field of conservation, but also as a history of our species and our relationship with the others with which we share the planet.

Book Review: Power of the People: America's New Electricity Choices by Carol Sue Tombari

Imported oil, dirty coal, energy inefficiencies and waste, and truncated investment in alternative energy development have landed us in a quandary. Where do we turn for the power we need to run our wired and wireless economy and our increasingly mobile culture?

Carol Sue Tombari, former director of the State of Texas's energy efficiency and renewable energy programs and currently on staff at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, describes some answers in her new book, Power of the People: America's New Electricity Choices.

Tombari provides a concise and cogent overview of how we got in this mess and a primer for how we can get out of it. Essentially, Tombari argues that we need a combination of vigorous policy agendas and massive investments in what we've called on this blog "The New Green Economy."

We are "sleepwalking toward disaster," argues the author, but she tempers her cynicism with equal doses of optimism and faith -- faith that we have the know-how and ingenuity to get us out of this mess.

If only we would wake up and change where we're going and what we're doing.

"I'm not talking about an overnight energy revolution, Tombari concludes. "Really, it's more like an evolution, incorporating both twentieth- and twenty-first-century technologies as we transition to the completely different, carbon-constrained reality in the coming years."

For anyone who wants a quick study of the path we've been on, as well as the good, the bad, and the balance of those choices, and the potential for alternatives, Power of the People is required reading.

"Renewable energy and energy efficiency can be expected to develop a larger presence in the marketplace," writes Tombari, "especially as the cost of twentieth-century fuels continues to go up and the capital costs of renewables continue to go down."

But our energy "needs remain humongous and continue to grow," Tombari argues. "Energy efficiency in particular will gain significantly greater market share because of its no-regrets nature and the fact that it doesn't require the investment of materials needed by utility-scale technologies."

While "we will continue to rely heavily on central station power plants, especially in the near- and mid-term," according to Tombari, "we as individuals, as neighbors, as citizens of our towns and states, can lead our government...Our roots as a nation are in the grass. We know how to do this."

Her optimism is infectious. Power of the People is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of our nation and our planet.

Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krup and Miriam Horn: A Review

Entrepreneurs can save the planet, but they need a cap-and-trade system to do it.

That's the premise of Earth: The Sequel, by Fred Krup and Miriam Horn, and published in March by W.W. Norton.

The authors, the head of Environmental Defense and a journalist now working for the same, respectively, argue passionately on behalf of emissions cap-and-trade as the solution to unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans (and others) to solve the climate crisis.

They also tell the story of some of "cutting-edge" innovators in the clean energy space, people like Conrad Burke of Innovalight, the solar nanotechnology company, Isaac Berzin, the chemical engineer who co-founded algae-farm biofuel developer GreenFuel Technologies, and the colorful Bernie Karl of Chena Hot Springs, who is trying to capitalize on geothermal energy found below the Alaska bush with the help of Fortune 500 company United Technologies Corporation.

The stories are simply told, some of them compelling, some bordering on boosterism, but the focus on entrepreneurs is welcome. There's nary a whiff of skepticism in these pages, however, which read like a virtual catalog of potential clean tech investments.

I realize the authors don't want to back one technology solution over another -- and the new green economy requires not just one silver bullet but a full chamber -- but a little more critical analysis of the full panoply would have been nice (see Pernick and Wilder's The Clean Revolution for more in-depth analysis of the sector).

Private investment is fine, the authors reason, whether entreprenuer or venture capitalist; however, it can't scale without a cap on carbon emissions. In their view, a cap is the only thing that will make alternative energy more affordable to generate. Without it, we will neither reduce emissions enough nor grow the burgeoning clean tech industry.

"To save the planet from calamity," write Krup and Horn, "innovation and deployment of known technologies must occur now at a pace as intense and a scope as vast as the settlement of the western frontier."

Scientists have determined we need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by midcentury to "stabilize the global climate." According to the authors, "we must produce at least 14 trillion watts of carbon-free energy by 2050 -- about as much power as we now get from the entire fossil energy business" to reach that goal.

The advantage of a cap is that it puts a true limit on total emissions; the problem is it can lead to higher prices for consumers and windfalls for certain companies.

Companies need the stability and predictability of a cap. As Dupont CEO Chad Holliday, whose company is part of a coalition calling for a national cap, says in a quote from the book, "You need some certainty on the incentives side and on the market side, because we are talking about multiyear investments, billions of dollars that will take a long time to pay off."

A national cap would provide that certainty. We just need to make sure it covers all the carbon economy and that the permits are sold not given away free, as in the current European Union scheme. There is even talk of a cap-and-dividend style program that would make equal payments to all Americans (along the lines of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend).

"We have before us an extraordinary opportunity," Krup and Horn conclude. "to harness the power of the United States of America's huge and dynamic markets to ensure a safe future...Enacting a cap on carbon will gather U.S. ingenuity and resourcefulness to serve a higher purpose: protecting this planet for generations to come. We have the talent and a brief window of time to create the world of possibilities. All we need is the resolve."

Higher purpose or base greed, I don't care; let's just get moving on the new green economy.

In the end, as NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg offers in his advance praise blurb, "Earth: The Sequel makes it crystal clear that we can build a low-carbon economy while unleashing American entrepreneurs to save the planet, putting optimism back into the environmental story."

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, a Review

Social entrepreneurs. They have been variously defined as people with game-changing models to address the world's most pressing social problems or individuals who address market failures by using new business models to affect change globally by acting locally. Or just crazy people.

Whatever your definition, social entrepreneurs can be pretty unreasonable people: tenacious, stubborn, and focused on pursuing their ideas to the fullest.

Judging by The Power of Unreasonable People, the new book by SustainAbility's John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, until recently managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which takes its title from a quote by George Bernard Shaw, there are plenty of them out there ready to take on the world or at least disrupt its equilibrium.

Jean-Baptiste Say, author of A Treatise on Political Economy (1803), is credited with coining the term "entrepreneur" as someone who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower production into an area of higher yield and production."

Add the word "social" and you have someone applying that same principle to the concerns of civil society. Wherever there is a market failure that leads to a social or environmental ill, you're likely to find a social entrepreneur coming up with a solution.

Whether you're talking about Takao Furuno, whose ducks are used to protect rice crops; Fabio Rosa, who has pioneered systems to electrify rural Brazil; or Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement, who aims "to plant trees to provide sustainable sources of firewood and halt soil erosion," you're talking about people who will not rest until their idea is realized and the world is changed as a result.

These "unreasonable people" are making steady progress not by, "giving a man a fish or even teaching him to fish," to paraphrase Ashoka's founder Bill Drayton, who is credited with coining the term social entrepreneur, "but by revolutionizing the fishing industry."

As such, according to Elkington and Hartigan, social entrepreneurs are "highly sensitive barometers for detecting market risks and opportunities." The authors suggest it's an important reason that global corporations are scouting for high-impact social entrepreneurs.

But how to find them and where?

The social entrepreneurs I know say, "You know one when you see one." After my recent trip to India, where I met half a dozen or so in as many days, I kind of understand what they mean.

Elkington and Hartigan offer "Ten Characteristics of Successful Social Entrepreneurs" that may help to call them out, including "Try to shrug off the constraints of ideology or discipline"; "Identify and apply practical solutions to social problems, combining innovation, resourcefulness, and opportunity"; "Show a dogged determination that pushes them to take risks that others wouldn't dare"; and "Display a healthy impatience (e.g. they don't do well in bureaucracies...)." Describe anyone you know?

They also offer a useful framework of three models for the types of organizations social entrepreneurs set up: leveraged non-profit ventures, hybrids, and social business ventures, which try to put some parameters around some of the more classic types of ventures.

To date, most of the social entrepreneur ventures with which I am familiar are of the leveraged non-profit variety. But issues of sustainability and technological innovation seem poised to demand alternative approaches.

Much of this important book draws on the stories of social entrepreneurs from around the globe who are focusing on social value creation. And this is a good and useful thing. Where the authors stray a bit too far afield, in my view, is when they erect too large a tent.

While I appreciate GE's ecoimagination as great market innovation, it seems clear that a large multinational corporation such as GE can hardly be described as a social entrepreneur, even if they ditch the company's Six Sigma culture. Even with the disruptive nature of GE's marketing and product development, most social entrepreneurs would chafe at the bonds of their corporate culture.

Shedding light on social entrepreneurs who are bringing solutions and innovations to the "epochal challenges" we face is a timely exercise. David Bornstein did it well with How to Change the World, and Elkington and Hartigan have complemented that earlier work in the field.

The bottom line is: we need more celebrants of such agents of change and perhaps even need to cultivate the art of being unreasonable. For if Shaw was right that "all progress depends upon the unreasonable man," then we are at risk if we do not call them out and give them the resources they need. It may just save our assets.


(Disclosure: The author is a vice president of Ashoka, which seeks, invests in, and supports social entrepreneurs around the world.)

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus, a Review

Can we unleash the power of free markets to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and climate change? This is a question we ask all the time at The Green Skeptic. We believe in the power of free markets and the most creative business models to address the most pressing problems of the day.

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, with which he pioneered microcredit and later received the Nobel Peace Prize, has written an engaging book that examines a new approach to purpose-driven business models: he calls it "social business."

In Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism Dr. Yunus sets out to map a new way of doing business and doing good.

The social business concept is an outgrowth of Dr. Yunus's thinking that led to such projects as Grameen Phone, which is now the largest phone service provider in Bangladesh, the eye care hospitals Grameen is investing in, and Grameen Danone, a joint venture to produce and distribute affordable, fortified yogurt to malnourished children.

Social business uses the value creation of profit-driven business models -- the business must meet genuine market needs and generate a profit -- but turns the profits back into further value creation or directly into the social purpose being addressed by the business. In Yunus's model, the original investors receive only an amount equal to their initial investment or even less.

"Social business is the missing piece of the capitalist system," Yunus writes. "Introduction of it into the system may save the system by empowering it to address the overwhelming global concerns that now remain outside of mainstream business thinking."

Driving profits back into the original purpose, where profits essentially stay with the company as opposed to being distributed to shareholders, allows for greater growth potential and expansion. This is where social businesses, as conceived by Yunus, differ from non-profits, which traditionally rely on philanthropic capital for growth and stability.

I agree with Dr. Yunus that the traditional non-profit is an unsustainable model. "The social business dollar is much more powerful than the charity dollar," Yunus writes. "Whereas the charity dollar can be used only once, the social-business dollar recycles itself again and again, ad infinitum, to deliver benefits to more and more people."

Where I differ with Yunus is in his assertion that a profit-maximizing company (PMC) can't also serve a social purpose. I understand the argument that PMCs are beholden to the shareholders first, and maximizing their return on investment is job one. This can clearly lead to some conflicts.

But what if you are selective about your shareholders and state upfront that investors are allowed to take a small percentage of profits (say, 1-3 percent), and that the overage would be plowed back into the business for future value creation?

Yes there may be pressure from shareholders to create maximum value for them, but is there a way to ensure that Values don't conflict with value? I'm not convinced it's as black and white as Yunus makes it; perhaps there's room for a little gray.

Yunus is a consummate storyteller, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog. And even in the brief retelling of the Grameen story (necessary for those who haven't read his earlier book, Banker to the Poor), he captivates the reader. The stories lend a charm to what is otherwise a prescriptive book. He wants us to embrace the social business model and even offers some suggestions for how to get started.

In the end, Yunus believes it "is possible to eliminate poverty from our world because it is not natural to human beings -- it is artificially imposed on them." He has dedicated himself to "putting poverty in the museums once and for all" and implores us to join him in the fight.

We need only think of alternative ways to tap into the human potential. As Dr. Yunus said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in December 2006 (and reprinted in its entirety as an Epilogue to this book):

"By defining 'entrepreneur' in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling-- a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world."

What a wonderful idea whose time has come. In Creating a World Without Poverty, Muhammad Yunus shows one path to realizing that vision.


------
(Disclosure: Muhammad Yunus is a member of Ashoka's Global Academy, a non-paid position; the views in this post are solely those of the author and do not reflect his current employer, Ashoka, or other organizations with which he is associated.)

Break Through: From Ashes of Environmentalism Comes Hope and Imagination?

Environmentalists have it all wrong.

We don't need no stinking limits, what we need is economic growth fueled by a massive investment in alternative energy that positively transforms the living standards of people around the world.

We need a new, new economy that is not based on what we can't do or shouldn't do, but on what we can do.

We need energy independence and ecological security. We need an agenda that puts investment, jobs, and economic growth front and center.

The spirit of possibility is at hand, we need only take it up -- and secure a front-loaded investment in R&D from the Department of Defense to get this thing moving.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box. Readers of The Green Skeptic are familiar enough with my thoughts on the matter.

Much of this kind of thinking runs through the pages of Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's new book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, which I've just finished.

You remember them? They got many pairs of green knickers in a twist with their essay calling for abandoning the environmental movement (and a few cheers from some of the more skeptical among us).

They've written an important book. Flawed, but important. And a little bipolar.

One the one hand, it's a much-needed critique of the way the environmental movement thinks and speaks of its issues. This follows logically on their original essay. And it is sort of in the vein of William Easterly and John Perkins' confessionals/attacks on their former selves.

I mean, these guys were strategists for some of the doom and gloomers; now they've seen the light and the error of their ways.

In terms of making change, their basic argument is that people rate the environment and global warming low on their list of concerns, relative to other concerns like economic security, terrorism, etc. And the enviros haven't been listening; they want to convince.

For example, Americans are more concerned by rising energy prices than the prospects of global warming. Yet the prevailing environmental messaging strategy calls for raising energy prices even higher through taxes and such. Certainly a disconnect there. Ya think?

But when it comes to providing hope beyond some flowery rhetoric, Nordhaus and Shellenberger offer very little new thinking.

A little pimping for their Apollo-style energy proposal, which was introduced into Congress by Representative Jay Inslee of Washington, and the authors are off on quite a few tangents about NIMBYism and facing the fact that we are now like Gods and we'd better get used to it.

The second half of the book could have used some heavy editing and shaping by the gang at Houghton-Mifflin. You can get by with a snarky attitude if you really have something to say, believe me. In the end, however, you have to bring your whole game.

I wanted a little more pragmatism in the chapter of that name. And what was the point of that attack on Francis Fukuyama in the final chapter? At times, such as in the clever analysis of how Tony Blair lost the war on global warming on the world stage, it seemed like a clever magazine article run amok.

The authors fall short in facing some of the realities of climate change. It is happening, will affect millions of people directly, and we will have to find a way to adapt and mitigate the severity, while making investments in technologies that will help us get there. (I felt they sold short the adaptation piece in particular, in the rush to push their investment agenda.)

That said, the authors rightly point out that to succeed in turning this around, we need remember what we're great at: "imagining, experimenting, and inventing the future."

We can imagine a better future if we set our minds to it. So what are we waiting for?