The Ecomodernists: A new way of thinking about climate change and human progress

Making progress on climate change and energy in an age of extremes.

Funding the News: Summary of Shorenstein Center study on foundations and nonprofit media

June 18, 2018–In a new Shorenstein Center study conducted with colleagues at Northeastern University, we assess major patterns in foundation support for nonprofit journalism and media in the half decade leading up to the 2016 election, focusing specifically on support for digital news nonprofits. Launched over the past fifteen years, digital news nonprofits at the […]

Strategic philanthropy in the post cap-and-trade years: Summary of new paper on U.S. foundation funding

In a paper published this week, I review the history of U.S. philanthropic strategy relative to climate change, before assessing the important 5-year period following the defeat of the 2010 cap and trade bill and leading up to the 2016 elections. I analyze $557 million distributed across 2,502 grants by 19 major foundations, detailing the financial […]

The gene editing conversation: Public dialogue will require major investments

In 2014 biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley awoke from a nightmare that would shift the focus of her world-class scientific career. Two years earlier, with her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier, now director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, Doudna had achieved one of the most […]

Divided expectations: Why we need a new dialogue about science, inequality, and society

If you are reading this column, you have likely benefited from the scientific and technological advances that have transformed the world’s economy. For well-educated professionals who form the core audience for popular science magazines, these innovations have created new wealth and career opportunities. Yet paradoxically, the very success of the science and engineering sector has […]

The Ecomodernists: Journalists reimagining a sustainable future

Sept. 3, 2017 — In The Planet Remade (2015), journalist Oliver Morton imagined a future scenario where the Earth’s climate has been changed by geoengineering. A collective of countries with little power in world affairs secretly agrees to a low-cost plan to cool the planet. With funding from a billionaire, the collective flies several planes […]