Bill Weihl, former Green Czar at Google will start work greening Facebook in late January next year. As Fresh Dialogues predicted on his departure from Google last November, Weihl will stay in the green arena and plans to “advance sustainability” at Facebook. No details yet on his job title or the extent of his responsibilities, but he confirmed, “the focus will be on sustainability, clean energy, energy efficiency, etc.” We anticipate Weihl will use his extensive experience and passion for green to drive Facebook’s sustainable practices, leveraging its game-changing apps and Facebook’s vast membership of over 800 million active users.
Under his leadership at Google from 2006 to 2011, the company took a unique role in green policy advocacy as well as over $700 M in cutting edge clean energy investment. In July, Fresh Dialogues covered Google’s Green Dream, an audacious report outlining how the right green investment and policy could positively impact the economy and the planet. Without Weihl at the helm, Green at Google may lose some impetus, although Google’s Parag Chokshi assured us green investment and programs will continue. A new Green Czar has not yet been announced.
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Innovation and Silicon Valley go together like bits and bites. Another month another innovation competition. But Intel’s Global Challenge caught our attention for the breadth and quality of its innovators from around the world, who competed for $100,000 in prize money and the chance to pitch some of the valley’s top venture capitalists at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Fresh Dialogues was delighted to see a good number of environmentally conscious innovators made the cut, including PolySol, a recyclable alternative to plastic, made from coconut husks; Nitrate Production System, a low-cost earth-friendly fertilizer and ValleyFeed, a wireless wildfire detection system. These innovative teams came from India, Jordan and Saudi Arabia/Lebanon respectively. Closer to home, NextDrop, a Berkeley based team demonstrated a ground breaking system that uses crowd-sourcing technology to monitor and facilitate efficient water use in India. The venture capital judges agreed and gave NextDrop the Social Innovation Award.
The award winning team includes National Science Foundation Fellow, Emily Kumpel (pictured) who is a PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. She brings her water management experience in Madagascar and Tanzania to NextDrop’s diverse team who include Ashish Jhina, Thejovardhana Kote, Anu Sridharan, Madhusadhan B, and Ari Almos.
We look forward to following their progress blog as they scale up NextDrop’s project in India.
He’s known as the “sexiest” astrophysicist alive, host of Nova ScienceNow on PBS, and Stephen Colbert’s favorite interviewee. Neil deGrasse Tyson may be more comfortable talking black holes and cosmic quandaries, but on Friday evening in Silicon Valley, Fresh Dialogues asked him to weigh in about climate change and he didn’t disappoint. Beginning – like any good scientist – with the facts (evidence from chemistry, biology and geology); he made this challenge to climate deniers:
“You have to be mature enough to recognize something can be true even if you don’t like the consequences of it. That’s what it means to be a mature adult.”
Tyson shared plans for “an experiment” he will describe during his next appearance on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (slated for next February). Here’s a preview:
“All climate scientists should announce they’re going to take their entire life savings and invest in industries that will thrive under the conditions of global warming. All those in denial of global warming – which tends to be some of the wealthier people of the nation – won’t do that. As global warming unfolds, that will be the greatest inversion of wealth the world has ever seen. That’s all it takes,” said Tyson, adding with a smile and a shrug, “I could get rich off this.”
He then got serious, “I’m a public scientist and it’s not my goal in life to exploit your ignorance ’cause I’ll get your money, because you won’t believe what I’m telling you. I’d rather you recognize the value of scientific research and we all move into the future together.”
Fresh Dialogues wonders if Tyson has shared his plan with green economy investor Al Gore, who’s been criticized for “putting his money where his mouth is.” Some say Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire.”
Days before the Global Climate Conference in Durban South Africa, NBC’s Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw delivered a strong message in Silicon Valley for those who deny climate change. “It’s real, we see it in our weather systems,” he said and made a somber call to action, saying everyone needs to take a part. Brokaw, who has hosted two documentaries about global warming for the Discovery Channel, says he’s planning an expedition to Antarctica with a team of climate scientists to record the glacial melting next January.
Brokaw cited carbon based fuels and energy consumption as major issues, and stopped short of making specific policy recommendations, but said that the Obama administration missed a valuable opportunity to do something substantial about energy and jobs. “People could have got allied with that,” he added.
He acknowledged his part in contributing to the problem (long commutes in polluting LA traffic to visit his beloved mother), but is now doing what he can to be greener. He recently adopted solar in his Montana Ranch, recouping his capital investment in only three years. In this intimate video, he waxes lyrical about the piping hot water and heating system – even during long Montana winters.
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Brokaw ended on an upbeat note, saying that he thinks the younger generation will change things for the better.
The video was recorded on November 21st, 2011 at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley, moderated by KGO TV’s Dan Ashley. Brokaw is promoting his new oeuvre The Time of Our Lives, a conversation about America; Who we are, where we’ve been, and where we need to go now, to recapture the American Dream.
One day after Steven Chu defends his department’s handling of the DoE loan guarantee to Solyndra, we look at the impact of Solyndra on the venture capital industry. In this exclusive interview, Andrew Chung, the newest member of the Khosla Ventures investment team, shares his views on the Post Solyndra era. Will the failure of Solyndra have a significant impact on cleantech investment? How does Chung respond to critics who say that cleantech investment is a disaster?
The downside
“Downstream, there are other investors who are a bit more skittish about investing in following rounds…”
The upside
“In the past twelve months, we have three companies that have gone public and generated over $1.1B in profits for the firm. ..It’s possible to make money in cleantech and drive a lot of change and drive significant returns.”
The future
“It’s still relatively early…we are in the second inning of an extra inning game, in the development of this industry.”
“(At Khosla Ventures) we continue to be incredibly excited about the cleantech opportunity…we just raised a $1.1B fund, half of it is going to be in cleantech.”
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Check back soon for more highlights from our interview with Chung:
On America’s comparative advantage vis a vis China
On what we can learn from China’s cleantech policies
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