Fred Wilson pointed me to this new widget I've just added to my blog (see bottom of right sidebar) that will help you print or email pages from The Green Skeptic in a way that will save paper. Of course, not printing it at all will save even more.
As Fred described it in his post today: "It's called the ECO-SAFE merit badge. But I call it my blog printing widget. From it, you can email this page, email a pdf of this page, or download a pdf of this page. It's goal is to reduce the amount of paper that is wasted printing blogs."
Find out more at: ECO-SAFE.com
For the past few months I've also been beta-testing a program called GreenPrint World that allows you to reduce the number of pages you print when printing documents. It scans the pages before sending them to your printer and highlights extraneous pages or pages with very little print suggesting you may want to remove them from the print job. It also creates PDFs with one click.
The extra step is a bit annoying when trying to print that document on the fly between meetings, but I've already saved 103 pages or $10.40 since installing the program. And having a few extra clicks to make before printing has definitely made me more conscious of what I am printing.
(I do wish GreenPrint World allowed you to reduce the size of the document with one click like you can in Microsoft Word's "Print Preview" function. That would help save that widow on the last page so she doesn't take up an entire sheet of paper!)
Find out more about GreenPrint World and download the latest version of the program at: printgreener.com
25 March 2008
24 March 2008
Innovation: Dave Eggers and his TED Wish for Engaging with Local Public Schools
Stop what you are doing right now and take 20 minutes to watch this very inspiring talk by 2008 TED Prize winner and author Dave Eggers. His wish? That the TED community personally, creatively engage with local public schools.
With charateristic aplomb and earnestness, Eggers talks about "how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don't need to go that far, he reminds us -- it's as simple as asking a teacher 'How can I help?' He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School."
Thanks to Paul Pedrosky at Infectious Greed for alerting me to the posting of the video.
[Note: Initially, I can't seem to get the embedding code to work, so here is a link to the page on TED.com: Eggers @ TED]
With charateristic aplomb and earnestness, Eggers talks about "how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don't need to go that far, he reminds us -- it's as simple as asking a teacher 'How can I help?' He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School."
Thanks to Paul Pedrosky at Infectious Greed for alerting me to the posting of the video.
[Note: Initially, I can't seem to get the embedding code to work, so here is a link to the page on TED.com: Eggers @ TED]
Microfinance: Microcredit Isn't Perfect and It Isn't Enough to End Poverty
"Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic," writes James Surowiecki, on the Financial Page of last week's New Yorker. "What Microloans Miss," is another in a recent spate of articles decrying the hype around microcredit (see my earlier post on another such article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review last summer).
Microcredit is neither perfect nor a panacea. That's a given, but to claim that the vogue around is more hype than real progress seems a tad overdone.
"This vogue has translated into a flood of real dollars," writes Surowiecki, "institutional and individual investments in microfinance more than doubled between 2004 and 2006, to $4.4 billion, and the total volume of loans made has risen to $25 billion, according to Deutsche Bank. Unfortunately, it has also translated into a flood of hype. There’s no doubt that microfinance does a tremendous amount of good, yet there are also real limits to what it can accomplish. Microloans make poor borrowers better off. But, on their own, they often don’t do much to make poor countries richer."
True enough. What microloans accomplish best may be a way to provide a safety net for poor people in countries where access to credit and financing is limited. Muhammad Yunus, the "godfather of microfinance," saw the innovation as a way to help poor people escape the usury of moneylenders.
"But can microcredit achieve the massive changes its proponents claim?" ask Karol Boudreaux and Tyler Cowen in "The Micromagic of Microcredit," their recent essay in The Wilson Quarterly. "Is it the solution to poverty in the developing world, or something more modest -- a way to empower the poor, particularly poor women, with some control over their lives and their assets?"
Boudreaux and Cowen make some good points, many based upon their own experiences in Africa and Asia, and their essay is worth reading in full.
"Most microcredit banks charge interest rates of 50 to 100 percent on an annualized basis (loans, typically, must be paid off within weeks or months)," write Boudreaux and Cowen. That's not as scandalous as it sounds -- local moneylenders demand much higher rates. The puzzle is a matter of basic economics: How can people in new businesses growing at perhaps 20 percent annually afford to pay interest at rates as high as 100 percent?
"The answer is that, for the most part, they can’t. By and large, the loans serve more modest ends—laudable, but not world changing."
The authors report that "in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, Joel Mwakitalu, who runs the Small Enterprise Foundation, a local microlender, told us that 60 percent of his loans are used to send kids to school; 40 percent are for investments. A study of microcredit in Indonesia found that 30 percent of the borrowed money was spent on some form of consumption."
In the end, the authors surmise, "the cash allows a poor entrepreneur to maintain her business without having to sacrifice the life or education of her child. In that sense, the money is for the business, but most of all it is for the child. Such lifesaving uses for the funds are obviously desirable, but it is also a sad reality that many microcredit loans help borrowers to survive or tread water more than they help them get ahead."
Microcredit provides access to financing to which traditional "informal sector" people do not have access. Banks typically will not loan to the informal sector. Microcredit may even help poor people save more rather than get out of debt, by increasing their asset base -- a family with a cow that provides milk, natural fertilizer and biofuel or helps plow the fields is better off than a family without a cow.
Boudreaux and Cowen explain that "microcredit is making people's lives better around the world. But for the most part, it is not pulling them out of poverty. It is hard to find entrepreneurs who start with these tiny loans and graduate to run commercial empires.
"The more modest truth is that microcredit may help some people, perhaps earning $2 a day, to earn something like $2.50 a day. That may not sound dramatic, but when you are earning $2 a day it is a big step forward. And progress is not the natural state of humankind; microcredit is important even when it does nothing more than stave off decline."
Even Yunus, whose latest book is about a new innovation he calls "social business" doesn't claim microcredit is enough to eliminate poverty.
What Surowiecki argues for is greater investment in small- to medium-sized businesses (SMEs). He, like Aneel Karnani, who wrote the SSIR piece to which I referred above, argues that "businesses that can generate jobs for others are the best hope of any country trying to put a serious dent in its poverty rate. Sustained economic growth requires companies that can make big investments -- building a factory, say --and that can exploit the economies of scale that make workers more productive and, ultimately, richer."
Some others seem to agree, as Surowiecki points out, that "what poor countries need most, then, is not more microbusinesses. They need more small-to-medium-sized enterprises, the kind that are bigger than a fruit stand but smaller than a Fortune 1000 corporation."
SMEs represent the "missing middle" that "require backers who want to invest in companies rather than just lend to them."
Recently this missing middle got a high-powered group of such backers: Google.org, the Soros Economic Development Fund, and the Omidyar Network have launched a new US$17 million Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company in India "to create job opportunities and spur greater economic participation for a larger segment of the population."
And this is a good thing. For as Jake de Grazia, formerly of PlaNet Finance China, writes on his blog, A More Perfect Market, "all communities are going to need more than just microfinance. Maybe the ideal more is the nurturing of SMEs and the creation of jobs."
"The real issue," as Boudreaux and Cowen conclude in their essay, "is that we so often underestimate the severity and inertia of global poverty. Natalie Portman may not be right when she says that an end to poverty is 'just a mouse click away,' but she's right to be supportive of a tool that helps soften some of poverty’s worst blows for many millions of desperate people."
The question, really, is not whether microcredit is enough, but rather how can we provide the full range of financial services to the poor to which most of us have access?
Microcredit is neither perfect nor a panacea. That's a given, but to claim that the vogue around is more hype than real progress seems a tad overdone.
"This vogue has translated into a flood of real dollars," writes Surowiecki, "institutional and individual investments in microfinance more than doubled between 2004 and 2006, to $4.4 billion, and the total volume of loans made has risen to $25 billion, according to Deutsche Bank. Unfortunately, it has also translated into a flood of hype. There’s no doubt that microfinance does a tremendous amount of good, yet there are also real limits to what it can accomplish. Microloans make poor borrowers better off. But, on their own, they often don’t do much to make poor countries richer."
True enough. What microloans accomplish best may be a way to provide a safety net for poor people in countries where access to credit and financing is limited. Muhammad Yunus, the "godfather of microfinance," saw the innovation as a way to help poor people escape the usury of moneylenders.
"But can microcredit achieve the massive changes its proponents claim?" ask Karol Boudreaux and Tyler Cowen in "The Micromagic of Microcredit," their recent essay in The Wilson Quarterly. "Is it the solution to poverty in the developing world, or something more modest -- a way to empower the poor, particularly poor women, with some control over their lives and their assets?"
Boudreaux and Cowen make some good points, many based upon their own experiences in Africa and Asia, and their essay is worth reading in full.
"Most microcredit banks charge interest rates of 50 to 100 percent on an annualized basis (loans, typically, must be paid off within weeks or months)," write Boudreaux and Cowen. That's not as scandalous as it sounds -- local moneylenders demand much higher rates. The puzzle is a matter of basic economics: How can people in new businesses growing at perhaps 20 percent annually afford to pay interest at rates as high as 100 percent?
"The answer is that, for the most part, they can’t. By and large, the loans serve more modest ends—laudable, but not world changing."
The authors report that "in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, Joel Mwakitalu, who runs the Small Enterprise Foundation, a local microlender, told us that 60 percent of his loans are used to send kids to school; 40 percent are for investments. A study of microcredit in Indonesia found that 30 percent of the borrowed money was spent on some form of consumption."
In the end, the authors surmise, "the cash allows a poor entrepreneur to maintain her business without having to sacrifice the life or education of her child. In that sense, the money is for the business, but most of all it is for the child. Such lifesaving uses for the funds are obviously desirable, but it is also a sad reality that many microcredit loans help borrowers to survive or tread water more than they help them get ahead."
Microcredit provides access to financing to which traditional "informal sector" people do not have access. Banks typically will not loan to the informal sector. Microcredit may even help poor people save more rather than get out of debt, by increasing their asset base -- a family with a cow that provides milk, natural fertilizer and biofuel or helps plow the fields is better off than a family without a cow.
Boudreaux and Cowen explain that "microcredit is making people's lives better around the world. But for the most part, it is not pulling them out of poverty. It is hard to find entrepreneurs who start with these tiny loans and graduate to run commercial empires.
"The more modest truth is that microcredit may help some people, perhaps earning $2 a day, to earn something like $2.50 a day. That may not sound dramatic, but when you are earning $2 a day it is a big step forward. And progress is not the natural state of humankind; microcredit is important even when it does nothing more than stave off decline."
Even Yunus, whose latest book is about a new innovation he calls "social business" doesn't claim microcredit is enough to eliminate poverty.
What Surowiecki argues for is greater investment in small- to medium-sized businesses (SMEs). He, like Aneel Karnani, who wrote the SSIR piece to which I referred above, argues that "businesses that can generate jobs for others are the best hope of any country trying to put a serious dent in its poverty rate. Sustained economic growth requires companies that can make big investments -- building a factory, say --and that can exploit the economies of scale that make workers more productive and, ultimately, richer."
Some others seem to agree, as Surowiecki points out, that "what poor countries need most, then, is not more microbusinesses. They need more small-to-medium-sized enterprises, the kind that are bigger than a fruit stand but smaller than a Fortune 1000 corporation."
SMEs represent the "missing middle" that "require backers who want to invest in companies rather than just lend to them."
Recently this missing middle got a high-powered group of such backers: Google.org, the Soros Economic Development Fund, and the Omidyar Network have launched a new US$17 million Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company in India "to create job opportunities and spur greater economic participation for a larger segment of the population."
And this is a good thing. For as Jake de Grazia, formerly of PlaNet Finance China, writes on his blog, A More Perfect Market, "all communities are going to need more than just microfinance. Maybe the ideal more is the nurturing of SMEs and the creation of jobs."
"The real issue," as Boudreaux and Cowen conclude in their essay, "is that we so often underestimate the severity and inertia of global poverty. Natalie Portman may not be right when she says that an end to poverty is 'just a mouse click away,' but she's right to be supportive of a tool that helps soften some of poverty’s worst blows for many millions of desperate people."
The question, really, is not whether microcredit is enough, but rather how can we provide the full range of financial services to the poor to which most of us have access?
22 March 2008
World Water Day: No Drop Left Behind
Water is one of the most precious resources on Earth. Clean drinking water is essential to human life -- but only 10 percent of global water use is for human consumption.
The other 90 percent is used for a combination of direct inputs to industry, agriculture, transportation, recreation, producing hydropower and cooling nuclear power plants, and sustaining the ecosystems upon which we depend.
Over the last century, according to the United Nations, water use increased sixfold, twice as fast as the population rate.
The increase has led to water shortages around the globe. Experts from the International Water Management Institute now estimate that by 2025 over three quarters of the people on Earth will be affected by water scarcity.
Today, 40 percent of people globally (@ 2.8 billion) deal with some degree of water scarcity. Whether physical shortage or issue of access, shortages are increasing demand and competition for water. (Darfur is the poster example for what conflicts can arise from the perfect storm of water scarcity.)
March 22nd is World Water Day,a UN General Assembly designation to call attention to the issue of water scarcity and push for more sustainable management of the resource.
Clearly, global water use patterns are not sustainable. Some scientists claim that current water use rates will lead to such a shortage that there may not be enough water to produce the food needed by the world in 2050.
Not to mention the potential collapse of important ecosystems and the corresponding benefits, which may have a cascading effect on people and economies.
Integrated water resources management may help the situation, as some propose, but it is clear that we need a better method for calculating the true value of our fresh water resources.
The bottom line: No longer can we assume that past abundance of water is a guarantee for our future water returns.
The other 90 percent is used for a combination of direct inputs to industry, agriculture, transportation, recreation, producing hydropower and cooling nuclear power plants, and sustaining the ecosystems upon which we depend.
Over the last century, according to the United Nations, water use increased sixfold, twice as fast as the population rate.
The increase has led to water shortages around the globe. Experts from the International Water Management Institute now estimate that by 2025 over three quarters of the people on Earth will be affected by water scarcity.
Today, 40 percent of people globally (@ 2.8 billion) deal with some degree of water scarcity. Whether physical shortage or issue of access, shortages are increasing demand and competition for water. (Darfur is the poster example for what conflicts can arise from the perfect storm of water scarcity.)
March 22nd is World Water Day,a UN General Assembly designation to call attention to the issue of water scarcity and push for more sustainable management of the resource.
Clearly, global water use patterns are not sustainable. Some scientists claim that current water use rates will lead to such a shortage that there may not be enough water to produce the food needed by the world in 2050.
Not to mention the potential collapse of important ecosystems and the corresponding benefits, which may have a cascading effect on people and economies.
Integrated water resources management may help the situation, as some propose, but it is clear that we need a better method for calculating the true value of our fresh water resources.
The bottom line: No longer can we assume that past abundance of water is a guarantee for our future water returns.
21 March 2008
Social Entrpreneurs: NY Times' David Brooks on Why Social Entrepreneurs Matter
David Brooks has an Op-ed in today's New York Times on social entrepreneurs. He points to why this emerging approach, which mixes venture capital with doing good, is important and argues for investment in the sector.
Worth a look: http://tinyurl.com/3crxjz
(Disclosure: The author of this blog is a vice president with Ashoka; Brooks mentions Ashoka and several Ashoka Fellows)
Worth a look: http://tinyurl.com/3crxjz
(Disclosure: The author of this blog is a vice president with Ashoka; Brooks mentions Ashoka and several Ashoka Fellows)
19 March 2008
Vacation Reflections: The View from South Florida
High winds and turbulent waters have kept us off the beach and boats this year in Hobe Sound.
As we retreat to the pool and search for alternative ways to play during Spring Break, it's afforded me more time than usual for reflection.
Real estate is in the dumps down here and sales are sluggish, according to people familiar with the situation. Foreclosures in South Florida continue to rise and the region leads the nation in inflation.
Even so, just driving around here there seems no shortage of development projects happening in Martin County, despite the economic slowdown.
There also seems to be an burgeoning concern about the South Florida environment and increasing sentiment favoring opportunities in the new green economy.
A few examples:
Publix Super Markets has a new organic market play, GreenWise, that is designed to capture a growing healthy food market segment. It started with small sections of shelf space in their regular stores, but is expanding to at least three freestanding locations in 2008.
Martin County has plans to purchase 1,900 acres of the Harmony Ranch and an additional 1,222-acre property near a Florida Power & Light power plant as part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
Martin County has thus far spent $13.2M of an expected $25M in sales tax revenue for land conservation, according to Jim Sherman, assistant county administrator.
A recently released survey conducted by the South Forida Business Journal indicated that a majority of Florida residents approve of increased spending on the state's solar energy infrastructure.
87 percent of South Florida residents surveyed support such investments to help the Sunshine State seize a solar future. (See article: http://tinyurl.com/23soz4)
Wind projects are also picking up, with St. Lucie Wind leading the way, despite the usual NIMBY hang-ups associated with large wind farms. And Florida's DEP recently commissioned a study to assess the potential for inland wind development. With the wind at 20 mph the past few days around here, it seems an abundant resource.
So, the market fluctuations of the past few days continue to play out and potential bank collapses loom. All of this affects South Floridians, especially those in the housing market, as much if not more than elsewhere in the country.
In terms of what I see here on the Treasure Coast this week, there is little panic and much forward thinking. Of course, it could just be the effects of four days in the sun, but I don't think so.
Update: Representative Tim Mahoney (D-Palm Beach Gardens) on the future of Florida and the Treasure Coast: "We can never be a development-based state again. We cannot build our economy around home building. We're just running out of space. We have to have a new industry; we have to broaden our economy. The things we have to look at that are home runs for us are tourism, eco-tourism, biofuels, biotech."
As we retreat to the pool and search for alternative ways to play during Spring Break, it's afforded me more time than usual for reflection.
Real estate is in the dumps down here and sales are sluggish, according to people familiar with the situation. Foreclosures in South Florida continue to rise and the region leads the nation in inflation.
Even so, just driving around here there seems no shortage of development projects happening in Martin County, despite the economic slowdown.
There also seems to be an burgeoning concern about the South Florida environment and increasing sentiment favoring opportunities in the new green economy.
A few examples:
Publix Super Markets has a new organic market play, GreenWise, that is designed to capture a growing healthy food market segment. It started with small sections of shelf space in their regular stores, but is expanding to at least three freestanding locations in 2008.
Martin County has plans to purchase 1,900 acres of the Harmony Ranch and an additional 1,222-acre property near a Florida Power & Light power plant as part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
Martin County has thus far spent $13.2M of an expected $25M in sales tax revenue for land conservation, according to Jim Sherman, assistant county administrator.
A recently released survey conducted by the South Forida Business Journal indicated that a majority of Florida residents approve of increased spending on the state's solar energy infrastructure.
87 percent of South Florida residents surveyed support such investments to help the Sunshine State seize a solar future. (See article: http://tinyurl.com/23soz4)
Wind projects are also picking up, with St. Lucie Wind leading the way, despite the usual NIMBY hang-ups associated with large wind farms. And Florida's DEP recently commissioned a study to assess the potential for inland wind development. With the wind at 20 mph the past few days around here, it seems an abundant resource.
So, the market fluctuations of the past few days continue to play out and potential bank collapses loom. All of this affects South Floridians, especially those in the housing market, as much if not more than elsewhere in the country.
In terms of what I see here on the Treasure Coast this week, there is little panic and much forward thinking. Of course, it could just be the effects of four days in the sun, but I don't think so.
Update: Representative Tim Mahoney (D-Palm Beach Gardens) on the future of Florida and the Treasure Coast: "We can never be a development-based state again. We cannot build our economy around home building. We're just running out of space. We have to have a new industry; we have to broaden our economy. The things we have to look at that are home runs for us are tourism, eco-tourism, biofuels, biotech."
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