BM-Procter & Gamble: The return of A.G.

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Procter & Gamble


The return of A.G.


May 24th 2013, 14:00 by M.B. | NEW YORK




LAST November, Bob McDonald, the embattled boss of Procter & Gamble, invited three of his predecessors, Alan Lafley, John Pepper and Ed Artzt, to address a gathering of 250 senior managers as they wrestled with the challenges facing the world’s biggest consumer-goods company. In some respects, that was a remarkable act of self-confidence by an incumbent chief executive fighting for his job, who joined in the standing ovation that each man got after talking about the “enduring qualities of P&G” and sharing his own experiences of leading the firm through difficult times. With hindsight, however, it may simply have served to remind P&G’s top people of someone they missed.

Mr McDonald never seemed entirely comfortable in the leading role he accepted in 2009 at the firm where he had worked for three decades, especially as growth slowed and an activist hedge-fund run by Bill Ackman started to lobby for management change. On May 23rd it was announced that Mr McDonald will retire at the end of June, to be replaced by the man who groomed him for the top job, Mr Lafley (above), still affectionately referred to within the firm by his first two initials, A.G.


Ironically, since dropping to below $60 last June, P&G’s share price had risen by one third, which for a while encouraged Mr McDonald’s supporters to think that he had weathered the storm. He had started to refocus on achieving stronger results in rich countries, markets that some investors felt had been neglected as P&G successfully pursued (initially less lucrative) growth in emerging economies. Some vigorous job-cutting had started to improve profit margins. Yet the return of Mr Lafley suggests that there remains much to be done to make the firm great again.

Since “retiring” in 2009, Mr Lafley has served on the board of General Electric and worked as a partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a private-equity firm. He also teamed up with his old pal Roger Martin, a consultant turned business-school professor, to write “Playing to Win”, a best-selling book on corporate strategy illustrated with success stories from his first stint in charge of P&G, when in ten years he roughly doubled its sales while increasing profit margins. These successes included transforming the fortunes of familiar brands such as Pampers, Tide and Olay and the profitable acquisition of Gillette.

Whether Mr Lafley can reproduce his old magic remains to be seen. Second acts by returning chief executives have a decidedly mixed record. Steve Jobs did better the second time at Apple than the first, and Howard Schultz has confounded those who thought he should not have returned to Starbucks. Michael Dell’s homecoming to the computer-maker he founded has not gone so well, and he is now hoping that taking the company private will finally do the trick.

Indeed, there is an ominously long list of disastrous second-act chief executives. Kenneth Lay's return ended with the bankruptcy of Enron, his trial for fraud and early death. Ted Waitt could not revive Gateway, the computer-maker he founded, after he took up the reins again in 2001. Paul Allaire, who successfully ran Xerox during the 1990s, lasted only 15 months the second time around. After the applause greeting his return to the P&G stage dies down, Mr Lafley will have to show that he still knows how to play to win, rather than merely how to write about it.



Source: www.economist.com

GRalInt-Drug-law reform

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Time to light up










Drug-law reform


Inching forward



Restless politicians are changing the debate about narcotics liberalisation


May 25th 2013






SEVEN of the world’s eight most violent countries lie on the bloody trafficking route from the cocaine fields of the Andes to the nostrils of North America. So it is unsurprising that Latin American leaders are fed up with the way drugs are policed. The international rules on prohibition were laid down by the United Nations more than 50 years ago, making drug policy difficult for individual countries to reform. But diplomats and do-gooders are finding ever more chinks in prohibition’s legal armour.

The latest attempt came on May 17th, when the Organisation of American States (OAS), a regional inter-governmental club, presented a report that pushed the limits of what can be said about drugs in polite diplomatic company. Drawn up with the input of academics, officials, policemen and others (including a journalist from The Economist), it envisioned a future in which by 2025 cannabis is legal in much of Europe and the Americas, a regional market for coca-leaf (cocaine’s raw ingredient) is in operation, and the UN’s anti-drug conventions are up for renegotiation.


This was only one of four “scenarios”; the OAS took pains to make clear it was not advocating or even forecasting such changes. The approach was suggested by Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, where the same technique has been used to negotiate with rebels in past peace talks. Three other scenarios outlined in the report were worthy but tame. None contained new policy proposals. Though big on radical ideas, the report was timid in evaluating them: its 190 pages contained not a single recommendation.

Nonetheless, it is the first time legalisation has been seriously explored by an inter-governmental organisation. Such outfits are normally “burial grounds” for innovative ideas on drug policy, says Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance, a pro-legalisation group. Countries such as Uruguay, which later this year may become the first to legalise the recreational use of pot, “will be reassured that what they are doing is a legitimate possibility”, says Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch of the Open Society Foundations, another pro-legalisation body, funded from the deep pockets of George Soros, a financier. State governments in America that have taken their own route to legalisation may be heartened, too.

The report will be debated at the OAS’s annual summit next month in Guatemala; the government there is perhaps the hemisphere’s most radical on drug policy. Otto Pérez Molina, the president, has called for the legalisation—and strict regulation—of all narcotics, including the hard ones. A former military man who has burned down his fair share of cannabis fields, he makes a strange ally to the libertarian-minded legalisation movement. But he has said that fighting the drug war only made him realise its futility. He has appointed Fernando Carrera, a former local head of the Open Society Foundations, as his foreign secretary.

Meanwhile in Europe, politicians in Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands are badgering their national governments to legalise marijuana along similar lines to the states of Colorado and Washington across the Atlantic. New Zealand is about to pass legislation to regulate “legal highs”. Defenders of international drug laws can expect no respite.




Source: www.economist.com

EDUC-Online college courses/Outsourcing education

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(Photo credit: AFP)











Online college courses


Outsourcing education



May 27th 2013, 14:44 by W.W. | HOUSTON




LECTURE halls can seat only so many students, but it's easy enough to broadcast lectures online to tens of thousands. Ventures such as EdX, a non-profit consortium involving a dozen universities, and Coursera, a for-profit business, are now focused on making courses taught by outstanding instructors available to millions of students. Some universities are using these so-called MOOCs, short for "massively open online courses", to supplement their standard curriculum, and the possibility that these offerings may in time replace flesh and blood university professors has become a source of distress among academics.

The philosophy faculty of San Jose State University (SJSU) recently broke with university administrators (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/education/san-jose-state-philosophy-dept-criticizes-online-courses.html) by refusing to offer a "blended" course, which would combine outsourced online lectures with classroom discussion, based on Michael Sandel's famous Harvard lecture series on justice. In an open letter to Mr Sandel (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Document-an-Open-Letter/138937/) , the philosophers of SJSU worry about the effectiveness of prepackaged, one-size-fits-all courses, the hazards of a homogenised curriculum dominated by a handful of superstar professors, and air a number of other sensible concerns. When they get right down to it, though, they admit they're protecting their turf.

Arguing that the university's move toward online and blended courses is "financially driven and involves a compromise of quality", the SJSU philosophy department cited a comment from Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, at the announcement of the state's deal with EdX. "The old education financing model, frankly, is no longer sustainable", Mr Newsom said. "This is the crux of the problem", the philosophers submit. "With prepackaged MOOCs and blended courses, faculty are ultimately not needed".


They are not wrong to see trouble on the horizon. California legislators are considering a new law (http://www.thenation.com/blog/174048/california-cuny-and-moocs#) that would require state universities to offer college credit for approved online courses. However, the threat is rather more general. John Hechinger and Michael McDonald of Bloomberg report (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/harvard-for-free-meets-resistance-as-u-s-professors-see-threat.html) :


Faculty are rightly concerned because the Internet is likely to reduce the number of professors and colleges over time, said Michael Horn, executive director of education for the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a San Mateo, California-based nonprofit research organization.

Christensen, a Harvard business school professor, has predicted that in 15 years, half of all universities will be out of business because higher education, with its skyrocketing costs, is ripe for technological upheaval.

Scary stuff for the professoriate! However, before we rush, for thrift's sake, to technologically upheave, it's worth asking why costs are "skyrocketing". It's not because classrooms and professors have become so much more expensive. Rather, it's the metastatic growth of university administration. As the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323316804578161490716042814.html) reported in December:


Across U.S. higher education, nonclassroom costs have ballooned, administrative payrolls being a prime example. The number of employees hired by colleges and universities to manage or administer people, programs and regulations increased 50% faster than the number of instructors between 2001 and 2011, the U.S. Department of Education says. It's part of the reason that tuition, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has risen even faster than health-care costs.

That is to say, students have faced rapidly rising tuition costs not due to large increases in the cost of instruction, but mostly due to the dramatic, rapid growth of the university bureaucratic class, which offers nothing of obvious worth to the education of their universities' increasingly cash-strapped and indebted students.

According to a 2010 study on administrative bloat (http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/administrative-bloat-american-universities-real-reason-high-costs-higher-education) from the libertarian Goldwater Institute, tuition tripled from 1993 to 2007 at my own school, the University of Houston. Over that period, instructional spending per student changed not at all, while administrative spending per pupil nearly doubled. This is fairly representative of the national pattern. This seems to me to suggest that state university systems might first seek savings in leaner management before outsourcing instruction to glorified versions of YouTube. Public-university systems might take a page from Sweden, a paradisaical Scandinavian social democracy, which outsources to private companies the management of some of its public hospitals, as Schumpeter discusses (http://www.economist.com/news/business/21578020-sweden-leading-world-allowing-private-companies-run-public-institutions-hospital?fsrc=rss%7Cbus) , and recommends. In any case, it's outrageous that students should be made to pay ever more to support assistants to assistant deans, in exchange for the right to earn a degree filling in worksheets and ignoring videotapes from home.

Of course, it's hard to imagine fat and happy university bureaucracies falling on their swords. It will be up to others to start carving the cruft out of university administration. Why not the soon-to-be "disrupted" professoriate? Because, I'm afraid, the instructional class just loves big government too much, and is therefore disinclined to see unnecessary and/or overpaid public employees as a real problem, even when it's about to get them replaced by a screen. That's why the philosophy department at San Jose State is bitching to Michael Sandel when it ought to be baying for the blood of California deans.





Source: www.economist.com

ENER/GralINt-The future of energy-Video

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Source: www.economist.com

ENER/GralINt-Measuring energy efficiency in buildings/Turn that light off!

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Measuring energy efficiency in buildings


Turn that light off!


May 28th 2013, 16:49 by H.G. | NEW YORK




FOR some people there are two important numbers when it comes to buying a car: the price and the miles it does per gallon (for others, looks, style, brand and the whole driving experience are what counts). Property is no different. A cheaper house price will save you money at the time of your purchase, and a high energy-efficiency rating (EER) will save you cash on each month’s energy bill. One problem with the latter is that there are far too many factors in each property to produce a single rating.

According to the 2012 global Energy Efficiency Indicator survey, 44% of the respondents said they wanted a green building-certification, but the process was hindered by the lack of a common EER. The key to resolving this is to combine the two systems most widely in use, the operational-rating system and the asset-rating system, depending on the stage of the building.


The operational-rating system is best for a building already occupied because it measures how the property is faring. It takes old utility bills, the square foot measurement of the building, a few other bits of information and crunches all this into a percentile rating. In the past five years, two states and a handful of cities in America have begun to use that system. It sounds accurate, but it has a glaring problem by comparing a decades-old building to a brand new one. That’s where the asset rating comes in.

This looks at the energy systems in a building and predicts how efficient it could be. It is used for new buildings, because it shows a buyer the absolute best it will be energy-wise if it is run most efficiently. But once the building is up and running, the operational-rating system must also be included because it shows how energy efficient the building is when run by the current owner and used in the current capacity.

It sounds like a buraeucratic nightmare, but Clay Nesler, the vice-president for global energy and sustainability for the building-efficiency business of Johnson Controls, a conglomerate specialising in energy efficiency, says that EERs should be seen "as one of a number of tools that when combined with other policies can really drive greater investment in energy efficiency".

In Australia, for example, the government will only lease space in buildings with high energy-efficiency ratings. And since the government leases more buildings than anyone else, those buildings with lower ratings will suffer.

Three years ago the European Union adopted the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, in which all member states are required to include a certain level of energy performance for all buildings. But according to the EEI survey, respondents from both developed and emerging regions favoured policies where tax incentives and rebates were awarded in accordance with a property’s energy-efficiency rating. So it would be more effective if government programmes combined with the two rating systems to implement incentives in accordance with energy efficiency. And help people get those green certificates.








Source: www.economist.com

REL/GralINt-Common saints, common shrines/Metaphysically divided, tangibly linked

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(Photo credit: Giannis Fafoutis)













Common saints, common shrines


Metaphysically divided, tangibly linked

May 27th 2013, 16:47 by BC




AS I write this posting, huge crowds of people are converging on a remote Greek village whose main feature is a large, modern church. What attracts the pilgrims, many of whom trudge over dusty, undulating roads for an entire day, is not the church itself but the small, robed body of a saint known as John the Russian, visible behind a glass case strewn with flowers. Hundreds of miles to the east, in a slightly larger town in central Turkey, which is now all Muslim, people also revere this man. Not just on one day but all year round, they remember him as somebody whose devotion and piety still casts an enduring glow of holiness over the places and objects that marked his life.

For a holy man who continues to influence so many humble Christians and Muslims, he is quite a shadowy figure. It seems that in the early 18th century, while fighting for the Tsar against the Ottomans, a young soldier was captured and taken into the service of a Turkish officer, a local bigwig in a town called Urgup in Turkish and Prokopi or Prokopion in Greek. Somehow a relationship which began as servitude turned into one of loyalty and mutual esteem. One of the few detailed stories told about the saint is a unusual case of religious crossover. John's overlord was on pilgrimage in Mecca, but feeling nostalgic for Urgup. Telepathically sensing this, John prayed for his master and a dish of steaming pilaf, exactly the sort he loved to eat back home, appeared before the homesick pilgrim, in a familiar-looking dish.


In 1924, as part of a swap of religious minorities, the Christian population of Urgup/Prokopi had to migrate to Greece, and they brought Saint John's body with them. They settled in a village on the island of Evia and called the place Prokopi after their Anatolian homeland. The saint became the centre of a huge local cult in Greece, but he is not forgotten in the Turkish place where he spent most of his life.

Dotted across the former Ottoman empire, and in many other parts of the world, there are hundreds of other shrines, objects and relics which have played a part in the rites of more than one religion. Even where Christians, Muslims and others have been separated by the advent of nationalism and modernity, the memory of shrine-sharing often persists.

Another example: the monastery of Mar Elias (the prophet Elijah) outside Bethlehem is a place where Christians and Muslims continued until very recent times to congregate for a summer festival. As Glenn Bowman, a social scientist, has written, the two communities had different beliefs about the history of the place and its holy objects, such as an icon and a chain, but the location itself brought them together. This sort of thing has been going on for a long time. Sozomen, an ancient historian, described how Mamre near Hebron (traditionally the site of an angelic visitation to Abraham) attracted Christian, Jewish and pagan pilgrims, all of whom gave different reasons for making the journey.

Site-sharing or relic-sharing is not always amicable, and a place or object that draws people together in one generation can send them into a frenzy of violent competition in the next. Religious authorities tend to be suspicious of common shrines. But it's a curious fact of religious history that people with utterly different metaphysical beliefs can sense holiness or transcendence in the same place or the same person. Depending on how the situation is managed, that can be a bond, or an occasion for bitter competition and strife. Nothing is predetermined. But in any part of the world with a history of religious strife, the authorities surely have a duty to encourage amicable sharing rather than the other sort, wherever it is possible.






Source: www.economist.com

POL/GRalInt-A memo to Barack Obama-Audio

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Source: www.economist.com

ENER-Natural gas:Fuel for the future?

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Natural gas


Difference Engine: Fuel for the future?


May 27th 2013, 21:13 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES




AMERICA’S unexpected, and most welcome, bonanza of natural gas from its vast shale deposits seems to be doing as much to reduce pollution as many of the efforts introduced over the years to restrict emissions from vehicles, power stations and other sources. The biggest breakthrough the energy industry has seen in decades, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) combined with horizontal drilling, has released unprecedented quantities of gas from this shale. As a consequence, the spot price of domestically produced natural gas has tumbled from a high of over $12 per million British Thermal Units in 2008 to less than $2 in 2012, before settling at around $4 today (a million BTUs is roughly equivalent to a gigajoule of energy).

Increasing use of this cheap, clean gas means power stations across the country have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions to levels not seen since 1992—despite serving a population that has grown by almost a quarter since then. On a per capita basis, carbon dioxide emissions from power stations are now at their lowest since President Eisenhower left office in 1961.

This is because, when purged of impurities, natural gas (which is more or less pure methane) is the cleanest fossil fuel around. It produces 30% less carbon dioxide per unit of heat than petrol does, and 45% less than coal. Conventional coal-fired power stations churn out 900kg (1,980 pounds) of the gas for every megawatt-hour of electricity they generate. Natural-gas plants emit little more than half that amount.


Given such remarkably cheap natural gas, the outlook for coal is dire. On average, coal-fired power stations still produce the cheapest electricity. And between them, they still account for 37% of the electricity generated in America (compared with 30% from natural gas, 19% from uranium, 7% from hydro, 5% from renewables and 1% from oil). But coal-fired stations, with their belching smokestacks, are notorious polluters, and face tough new air-quality standards that will render many older ones uneconomic.

At present, natural-gas plants have lower operating costs than only 9% of coal-fired stations. But the tougher emission standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will make natural-gas plants as economically attractive as 65% of existing coal-fired stations, according to researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

The EPA’s more stringent standards include lower emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, soot and mercury. At present, natural-gas plants produce only one class of emission—nitrogen oxides—that exceeds the new EPA thresholds. Many coal-fired plants exceed all the proposed thresholds, says Lincoln Pratson, leader of the study team at Duke. That will make it more expensive—prohibitively so, in many cases—for them to comply.

Industry has got the message. A year ago, Southern Company of Atlanta, Georgia, long one of America’s biggest operators of coal-fired power stations, generated more electricity from natural gas than it did from coal. In 2010, power-plant owners across America announced plans to retire over 40 gigawatts—roughly 12%—of their coal-fired capacity in favour of natural gas.

As the transition to gas gathers pace, the need for a more comprehensive network of pipelines and storage facilities has become apparent. Such infrastructure would also assist a second—and in some ways more radical—shift in the way gas is used. For it may be the future of road transport, too.

American commercial vehicles already use a lot of natural gas. For several decades now, local-delivery vans, buses and rubbish collectors, which rarely stray far from their refuelling stations and operate mainly within towns, have been switching to compressed natural gas (CNG) to lower fuel costs and to minimise their impact on the environment. Long-distance hauliers would do likewise if there were more highway filling stations with CNG pumps. All of which is encouraging for natural-gas producers. But for real change to happen, private motorists will have to follow suit.

They might be tempted. At an equivalent in energy terms of around $2.20 a US gallon, CNG costs a little over half what Americans pay for petrol. But making the change is not easy.

First, only one car model designed to run on CNG, the Honda Civic GX, is currently available in America. And it is not cheap. The basic model costs $26,300 compared with $18,200 for a comparable petrol-engined Civic.The two models have similar fuel economy (31-32 mpg—ie, 7.6-7.4 litres/100km—on the combined city/highway cycle), but the GX is nowhere near as spritely as its petrol-powered twin.

Second, enthusiasts wishing to retrofit existing vehicles to burn the stuff face enormous hurdles. Kits to do so cost anything from $12,000 to $18,000, and have to be installed by a licensed technician. That is because it is illegal in America for private individuals to tamper with a vehicle’s emission system—which is what has to be done to enable a petrol or a diesel engine to run on natural gas.

Third, it is not just the up-front cost that puts many motorists off CNG. The paucity of filling stations is an even bigger deterrent. America has around 600 natural-gas stations open to the public, compared with 118,000 petrol stations. The Honda GX’s pressurised natural-gas tank (holding the energy equivalent of an eight-gallon petrol tank) is good for about 240 miles (380km). Trips out of town have therefore to be planned strategically, via CNG filling stations spaced few and far between.

This third objection could be overcome if CNG vehicles were hybrids, able to run on petrol as well as natural gas. That is one of the goals of America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), a trade group in Washington, DC. ANGA has had popular models from half a dozen manufacturers, including BMW, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, retrofitted to run on both fuels. A number of these “bi-fuel” demonstrators were previewed at a Southern California Gas facility in Los Angeles on May 21st. To drum up further interest, the trade group intends to introduce its bi-fuel lineup to the wider public at events around the country over coming months.

Which fuel actually will power the car of the future is up for grabs. A century ago, lead-acid batteries and even steam engines vied with diesel and petrol as serious alternatives in the emerging automobile industry. Now lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen-powered fuel cells and methanol, as well as methane, are queuing up to take on the older fossil-fuel contenders. Two things are clear, though: there is a lot of natural gas out there; and it is extremely cheap. In both electricity generation and road transport, it will be a hard act to beat.




Source: www.economist.com

GRalINt-TED Talks-Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism

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Transcript:






There's something that I'd like you to see.

(Video) Reporter: It's a story that's deeply unsettledmillions in China:footage of a two-year-old girlhit by a van and left bleeding in the street by passersby,footage too graphic to be shown.The entire accident is caught on camera.The driver pauses after hitting the child,his back wheels seen resting on her for over a second.Within two minutes, three people pass two-year-old Wang Yue by.The first walks around the badly injured toddler completely.Others look at her before moving off.

Peter Singer: There were other peoplewho walked past Wang Yue,and a second van ran over her legsbefore a street cleaner raised the alarm.She was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. She died.

I wonder how many of you, looking at that,said to yourselves just now, "I would not have done that.I would have stopped to help."Raise your hands if that thought occurred to you.

As I thought, that's most of you.And I believe you. I'm sure you're right.But before you give yourself too much credit,look at this.UNICEF reports that in 2011,6.9 million children under fivedied from preventable, poverty-related diseases.UNICEF thinks that that's good newsbecause the figure has been steadily coming downfrom 12 million in 1990. That is good.But still, 6.9 millionis 19,000 children dying every day.Does it really matterthat we're not walking past them in the street?Does it really matter that they're far away?I don't think it does make a morally relevant difference.The fact that they're not right in front of us,the fact, of course, that they're of a different nationalityor race, none of that seems morally relevant to me.What is really important is,can we reduce that death toll? Can we savesome of those 19,000 children dying every day?

And the answer is, yes we can.Each of us spends moneyon things that we do not really need.You can think what your own habit is,whether it's a new car, a vacationor just something like buying bottled waterwhen the water that comes out of the tapis perfectly safe to drink.You could take the money you're spendingon those unnecessary thingsand give it to this organization,the Against Malaria Foundation,which would take the money you had givenand use it to buy nets like this oneto protect children like this one,and we know reliably that if we provide nets,they're used, and they reduce the number of childrendying from malaria,just one of the many preventable diseasesthat are responsible for some of those 19,000 childrendying every day.

Fortunately, more and more peopleare understanding this idea,and the result is a growing movement:effective altruism.It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.The heart, of course, you felt.You felt the empathy for that child.But it's really important to use the head as wellto make sure that what you do is effective and well-directed,and not only that, but also I think reason helps usto understand that other people, wherever they are,are like us, that they can suffer as we can,that parents grieve for the deaths of their children,as we do,and that just as our lives and our well-being matter to us,it matters just as much to all of these people.So I think reason is not just some neutral toolto help you get whatever you want.It does help us to put perspective on our situation.And I think that's whymany of the most significant people in effective altruismhave been people who have had backgroundsin philosophy or economics or math.And that might seem surprising,because a lot of people think,"Philosophy is remote from the real world;economics, we're told, just makes us more selfish,and we know that math is for nerds."But in fact it does make a difference,and in fact there's one particular nerdwho has been a particularly effective altruistbecause he got this.

This is the website of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,and if you look at the words on the top right-hand side,it says, "All lives have equal value."That's the understanding,the rational understanding of our situation in the worldthat has led to these peoplebeing the most effective altruists in history,Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

(Applause)

No one, not Andrew Carnegie, not John D. Rockefeller,has ever given as much to charityas each one of these three,and they have used their intelligenceto make sure that it is highly effective.According to one estimate, the Gates Foundationhas already saved 5.8 million livesand many millions more, people, getting diseasesthat would have made them very sick,even if eventually they survived.Over the coming years, undoubtably the Gates Foundationis going to give a lot more,is going to save a lot more lives.Well, you might say, that's fine if you're a billionaire,you can have that kind of impact.But if I'm not, what can I do?So I'm going to look at four questions that people askthat maybe stand in the way of them giving.

They worry how much of a difference they can make.But you don't have to be a billionaire.This is Toby Ord. He's a research fellow in philosophyat the University of Oxford.He became an effective altruist when he calculatedthat with the money that he was likely to earnthroughout his career, an academic career,he could give enough to cure 80,000 people of blindnessin developing countriesand still have enough leftfor a perfectly adequate standard of living.So Toby founded an organizationcalled Giving What We Can to spread this information,to unite people who want to share some of their income,and to ask people to pledge to give 10 percentof what they earn over their lifetimeto fighting global poverty.Toby himself does better than that.He's pledged to live on 18,000 pounds a year --that's less than 30,000 dollars --and to give the rest to those organizations.And yes, Toby is married and he does have a mortgage.

This is a couple at a later stage of life,Charlie Bresler and Diana Schott,who, when they were young, when they met,were activists against the Vietnam War,fought for social justice,and then moved into careers, as most people do,didn't really do anything very active about those values,although they didn't abandon them.And then, as they got to the age at which many peoplestart to think of retirement, they returned to them,and they've decided to cut back on their spending,to live modestly, and to give both money and timeto helping to fight global poverty.

Now, mentioning time might lead you to think,"Well, should I abandon my career and put all of my timeinto saving some of these 19,000 livesthat are lost every day?"One person who's thought quite a bit about this issueof how you can have a career that will havethe biggest impact for good in the world is Will Crouch.He's a graduate student in philosophy,and he's set up a website called 80,000 Hours,the number of hours he estimatesmost people spend on their career,to advise people on how to have the best,most effective career.But you might be surprised to knowthat one of the careers that he encourages people to consider,if they have the right abilities and character,is to go into banking or finance.Why? Because if you earn a lot of money,you can give away a lot of money,and if you're successful in that career,you could give enough to an aid organizationso that it could employ, let's say, five aid workersin developing countries, and each one of themwould probably do about as much goodas you would have done.So you can quintuple the impactby leading that kind of career.Here's one young man who's taken this advice.His name is Matt Weiger.He was a student at Princeton in philosophy and math,actually won the prize for the best undergraduate philosophy thesislast year when he graduated.But he's gone into finance in New York.He's already earning enoughso that he's giving a six-figure sum to effective charitiesand still leaving himself with enough to live on.Matt has also helped me to set up an organizationthat I'm working with that has the name takenfrom the title of a book I wrote,"The Life You Can Save,"which is trying to change our cultureso that more people think thatif we're going to live an ethical life,it's not enough just to follow the thou-shalt-notsand not cheat, steal, maim, kill,but that if we have enough, we have to share some of thatwith people who have so little.And the organization draws together peopleof different generations,like Holly Morgan, who's an undergraduate,who's pledged to give 10 percentof the little amount that she has,and on the right, Ada Wan,who has worked directly for the poor, but has nowgone to Yale to do an MBA to have more to give.

Many people will think, though,that charities aren't really all that effective.So let's talk about effectiveness.Toby Ord is very concerned about this,and he's calculated that some charitiesare hundreds or even thousands of timesmore effective than others,so it's very important to find the effective ones.Take, for example, providing a guide dog for a blind person.That's a good thing to do, right?Well, right, it is a good thing to do,but you have to think what else you could do with the resources.It costs about 40,000 dollars to train a guide dogand train the recipient so that the guide dogcan be an effective help to a blind person.It costs somewhere between 20 and 50 dollarsto cure a blind person in a developing countryif they have trachoma.So you do the sums, and you get something like that.You could provide one guide dogfor one blind American,or you could cure between 400and 2,000 people of blindness.I think it's clear what's the better thing to do.But if you want to look for effective charities,this is a good website to go to.GiveWell exists to really assess the impact of charities,not just whether they're well-run,and it's screened hundreds of charitiesand currently is recommending only three,of which the Against Malaria Foundation is number one.So it's very tough. If you want to look for other recommendations,thelifeyoucansave.com and Giving What We Canboth have a somewhat broader list,but you can find effective organizations,and not just in the area of saving lives from the poor.I'm pleased to say that there is now also a websitelooking at effective animal organizations.That's another cause that I've been concerned aboutall my life, the immense amount of sufferingthat humans inflicton literally tens of billions of animals every year.So if you want to look for effective organizationsto reduce that suffering,you can go to Effective Animal Activism.And some effective altruists think it's very importantto make sure that our species survives at all.So they're looking at ways to reduce the risk of extinction.Here's one risk of extinction that we all became aware ofrecently, when an asteroid passed close to our planet.Possibly research could help us not only to predictthe path of asteroids that might collide with us,but actually to deflect them.So some people think that would be a good thing to give to.There's many possibilities.

My final question is,some people will think it's a burden to give.I don't really believe it is.I've enjoyed giving all of my lifesince I was a graduate student.It's been something fulfilling to me.Charlie Bresler said to me that he's not an altruist.He thinks that the life he's saving is his own.And Holly Morgan told me that she used to battle depressionuntil she got involved with effective altruism,and now is one of the happiest people she knows.I think one of the reasons for thisis that being an effective altruist helps to overcomewhat I call the Sisyphus problem.Here's Sisyphus as portrayed by Titian,condemned by the gods to push a huge boulderup to the top of the hill.Just as he gets there, the effort becomes too much,the boulder escapes, rolls all the way down the hill,he has to trudge back down to push it up again,and the same thing happens again and againfor all eternity.Does that remind you of a consumer lifestyle,where you work hard to get money,you spend that money on consumer goodswhich you hope you'll enjoy using?But then the money's gone, you have to work hardto get more, spend more, and to maintainthe same level of happiness, it's kind of a hedonic treadmill.You never get off, and you never really feel satisfied.Becoming an effective altruist gives youthat meaning and fulfillment.It enables you to have a solid basis for self-esteemon which you can feel your life was really worth living.

I'm going to conclude by telling youabout an email that I receivedwhile I was writing this talk just a month or so ago.It's from a man named Chris Croy, who I'd never heard of.This is a picture of him showing him recovering from surgery.Why was he recovering from surgery?

The email began, "Last Tuesday,I anonymously donated my right kidney to a stranger.That started a kidney chainwhich enabled four people to receive kidneys."

There's about 100 people each year in the U.S.and more in other countries who do that.I was pleased to read it. Chris went on to saythat he'd been influenced by my writings in what he did.Well, I have to admit, I'm also somewhat embarrassed by that,because I still have two kidneys.But Chris went on to say that he didn't thinkthat what he'd done was all that amazing,because he calculated that the number of life-yearsthat he had added to people, the extension of life,was about the same that you could achieveif you gave 5,000 dollars to the Against Malaria Foundation.And that did make me feel a little bit better,because I have given more than 5,000 dollarsto the Against Malaria Foundationand to various other effective charities.

So if you're feeling badbecause you still have two kidneys as well,there's a way for you to get off the hook.

Thank you.

(Applause)

GRalInt-TED Talks-Phil Hansen: Embrace the shake

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Transcript:





So, when I was in art school,I developed a shake in my hand,and this was the straightest line I could draw.Now in hindsight, it was actually good for some things,like mixing a can of paint or shaking a Polaroid,but at the time this was really doomsday.This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist.

The shake developed out of, really,a single-minded pursuit of pointillism,just years of making tiny, tiny dots.And eventually these dots went from being perfectly roundto looking more like tadpoles, because of the shake.So to compensate, I'd hold the pen tighter,and this progressively made the shake worse,so I'd hold the pen tighter still.And this became a vicious cycle that ended upcausing so much pain and joint issues,I had trouble holding anything.And after spending all my life wanting to do art,I left art school, and then I left art completely.

But after a few years, I just couldn't stay away from art,and I decided to go to a neurologist about the shakeand discovered I had permanent nerve damage.And he actually took one look at my squiggly line,and said, "Well, why don't you just embrace the shake?"

So I did. I went home, I grabbed a pencil,and I just started letting my hand shake and shake.I was making all these scribble pictures.And even though it wasn't the kind of artthat I was ultimately passionate about, it felt great.And more importantly, once I embraced the shake,I realized I could still make art.I just had to find a different approachto making the art that I wanted.

Now, I still enjoyed the fragmentation of pointillism,seeing these little tiny dots come togetherto make this unified whole.So I began experimenting with other ways to fragment imageswhere the shake wouldn't affect the work,like dipping my feet in paint and walking on a canvas,or, in a 3D structure consisting of two-by-fours,creating a 2D image by burning it with a blowtorch.I discovered that, if I worked on a larger scale and with bigger materials,my hand really wouldn't hurt,and after having gone from a single approach to art,I ended up having an approach to creativitythat completely changed my artistic horizons.This was the first time I'd encountered this ideathat embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity.

At the time, I was finishing up school,and I was so excited to get a real job and finally afford new art supplies.I had this horrible little set of tools, and I felt likeI could do so much more with the suppliesI thought an artist was supposed to have.I actually didn't even have a regular pair of scissors.I was using these metal shears until I stole a pairfrom the office that I worked at.

So I got out of school, I got a job, I got a paycheck,I got myself to the art store,and I just went nuts buying supplies.And then when I got home, I sat downand I set myself to task to really try to create somethingjust completely outside of the box.But I sat there for hours, and nothing came to mind.The same thing the next day, and then the next,quickly slipping into a creative slump.And I was in a dark place for a long time, unable to create.And it didn't make any sense, because I was finally ableto support my art, and yet I was creatively blank.

But as I searched around in the darkness,I realized I was actually paralyzed by all of the choicesthat I never had before.And it was then that I thought back to my jittery hands.Embrace the shake.And I realized, if I ever wanted my creativity back,I had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the boxand get back into it.

I wondered, could you become more creative, then,by looking for limitations?What if I could only create with a dollar's worth of supplies?At this point, I was spending a lot of my evenings in --well, I guess I still spend a lot of my evenings in Starbucks —but I know you can ask for an extra cup if you want one,so I decided to ask for 50.Surprisingly, they just handed them right over,and then with some pencils I already had,I made this project for only 80 cents.It really became a moment of clarification for methat we need to first be limitedin order to become limitless.

I took this approach of thinking inside the boxto my canvas, and wondered what if, instead ofpainting on a canvas, I could only paint on my chest?So I painted 30 images, one layer at a time,one on top of another,with each picture representing an influence in my life.Or what if, instead of painting with a brush,I could only paint with karate chops? (Laughter)So I'd dip my hands in paint,and I just attacked the canvas,and I actually hit so hard that I bruised a joint in my pinkieand it was stuck straight for a couple of weeks.

(Laughter) (Applause)

Or, what if instead of relying on myself,I had to rely on other peopleto create the content for the art?So for six days, I lived in front of a webcam.I slept on the floor and I ate takeout,and I asked people to call me and share a story with meabout a life-changing moment.Their stories became the artas I wrote them onto the revolving canvas.

(Applause)Or what if instead of making art to display,I had to destroy it?This seemed like the ultimate limitation,being an artist without art.This destruction idea turned into a yearlong projectthat I called Goodbye Art,where each and every piece of art had to be destroyed after its creation.In the beginning of Goodbye Art, I focused onforced destruction, like this image of Jimi Hendrix,made with over 7,000 matches.(Laughter)Then I opened it up to creating art that was destroyed naturally.I looked for temporary materials,like spitting out food --(Laughter) —sidewalk chalkand even frozen wine.

The last iteration of destructionwas to try to produce something that didn't actually exist in the first place.So I organized candles on a table, I lit them, and then blew them out,then repeated this process over and over with the same set of candles,then assembled the videos into the larger image.So the end image was never visible as a physical whole.It was destroyed before it ever existed.

In the course of this Goodbye Art series,I created 23 different pieceswith nothing left to physically display.What I thought would be the ultimate limitationactually turned out to be the ultimate liberation,as each time I created,the destruction brought me back to a neutral placewhere I felt refreshed and ready to start the next project.It did not happen overnight.There were times when my projects failed to get off the ground,or, even worse, after spending tons of time on themthe end image was kind of embarrassing.But having committed to the process, I continued on,

and something really surprising came out of this.As I destroyed each project,I was learning to let go,let go of outcomes, let go of failures,and let go of imperfections.And in return, I found a process of creating artthat's perpetual and unencumbered by results.I found myself in a state of constant creation,thinking only of what's nextand coming up with more ideas than ever.

When I think back to my three years away from art,away from my dream, just going through the motions,instead of trying to find a different way to continue that dream,I just quit, I gave up.And what if I didn't embrace the shake?Because embracing the shake for mewasn't just about art and having art skills.It turned out to be about life, and having life skills.Because ultimately, most of what we dotakes place here, inside the box, with limited resources.Learning to be creative within the confines of our limitationsis the best hope we have to transform ourselvesand, collectively, transform our world.

Looking at limitations as a source of creativitychanged the course of my life.Now, when I run into a barrieror I find myself creatively stumped,I sometimes still struggle,but I continue to show up for the processand try to remind myself of the possibilities,like using hundreds of real, live worms to make an image,using a pushpin to tattoo a banana,or painting a picture with hamburger grease.

(Laughter)

One of my most recent endeavorsis to try to translate the habits of creativity that I've learnedinto something others can replicate.

Limitations may be the most unlikely of placesto harness creativity, but perhapsone of the best ways to get ourselves out of ruts,rethink categories and challenge accepted norms.And instead of telling each other to seize the day,maybe we can remind ourselves every dayto seize the limitation.

Thank you.

(Applause)

ARCH/DSGN/GRalINt-TED Talks-Alastair Parvin: Architecture for the people by the people

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Transcript:





When we use the word "architect" or "designer,"what we usually mean is a professional,someone who gets paid,and we tend to assume that it's those professionals who are going to be the ones to help us solve the really big, systemic design challenges that we face like climate change, urbanization and social inequality.That's our kind of working presumption.And I think it's wrong, actually.

In 2008, I was just about to graduate from architecture school after several years, and go out and get a job,and this happened.The economy ran out of jobs.And a couple of things struck me about this.One, don't listen to career advisers.And two, actually this is a fascinating paradox for architecture,which is that, as a society, we've never needed design thinking more,and yet architecture was literally becoming unemployed.It strikes me that we talk very deeply about design,but actually there's an economics behind architecture that we don't talk about, and I think we need to.

And a good place to start is your own paycheck.So, as a bottom-of-the-rung architecture graduate,I might expect to earn about 24,000 pounds.That's about 36,000, 37,000 dollars.Now in terms of the whole world's population,that already puts me in the top 1.95 richest people,which raises the question of, who is it I'm working for?The uncomfortable fact is that actually almost everything that we call architecture today is actually the business of designing for about the richest one percent of the world's population,and it always has been.The reason why we forgot that is because the times in history when architecture did the most to transform society were those times when, actually, the one percent would build on behalf of the 99 percent, for various different reasons,whether that was through philanthropy in the 19th century,communism in the early 20th,the welfare state, and most recently, of course,through this inflated real estate bubble.And all of those booms, in their own various ways,have now kicked the bucket,and we're back in this situation where the smartest designers and architects in the worldare only really able to work for one percent of the population.

Now it's not just that that's bad for democracy,though I think it probably is,it's actually not a very clever business strategy, actually.I think the challenge facing the next generation of architects is, how are we going to turn our client from the one percent to the 100 percent?And I want to offer three slightly counterintuitive ideas for how it might be done.

The first is, I think we need to question this idea that architecture is about making buildings.Actually, a building is about the most expensive solution you can think of to almost any given problem.And fundamentally, design should be much, much more interested in solving problems and creating new conditions.So here's a story.The office was working with a school,and they had an old Victorian school building.

And they said to the architects, "Look,our corridors are an absolute nightmare.They're far too small. They get congested between classes.There's bullying. We can't control them.So what we want you to do is re-plan our entire building,and we know it's going to cost several million pounds,but we're reconciled to the fact."

And the team thought about this, and they went away,and they said, "Actually, don't do that.Instead, get rid of the school bell.And instead of having one school bell that goes off once,have several smaller school bells that go off in different places and different times,distribute the traffic through the corridors."It solves the same problem,but instead of spending several million pounds,you spend several hundred pounds.Now, it looks like you're doing yourself out of a job,but you're not. You're actually making yourself more useful.Architects are actually really, really good at this kind of resourceful, strategic thinking.And the problem is that, like a lot of design professions,we got fixated on the idea of providing a particular kind of consumer product,and I don't think that needs to be the case anymore.

The second idea worth questioning is this 20th-century thing that mass architecture is about big --big buildings and big finance.Actually, we've got ourselves locked into this Industrial Era mindset which says that the only people who can make cities are large organizations or corporations who build on our behalf,procuring whole neighborhoods in single, monolithic projects, and of course,form follows finance.So what you end up with are single, monolithic neighborhoods based on this kind of one-size-fits-all model.And a lot of people can't even afford them.But what if, actually, it's possible now for cities to be made not just by the few with a lot but also by the many with a bit?And when they do, they bring with them a completely different set of values about the place that they want to live.And it raises really interesting questions about,how will we plan cities? How will finance development?How will we sell design services?What would it mean for democratic societies to offer their citizens a right to build?And in a way it should be kind of obvious, right,that in the 21st century, maybe cities can be developed by citizens.

And thirdly, we need to remember that,from a strictly economic point of view,design shares a category with sex and care of the elderly --mostly it's done by amateurs.And that's a good thing.Most of the work takes place outside of the monetary economy in what's called the social economy or the core economy,which is people doing it for themselves.And the problem is that, up until now,it was the monetary economy which had all the infrastructure and all the tools.

So the challenge we face is, how are we going to build the tools, the infrastructure and the institutions for architecture's social economy?And that began with open-source software.And over the last few years, it's been moving into the physical world with open-source hardware,which are freely shared blueprints that anyone can download and make for themselves.And that's where 3D printing gets really, really interesting.Right? When suddenly you had a 3D printer that was open-source, the parts for which could be made on another 3D printer.Or the same idea here, which is for a CNC machine,which is like a large printer that can cut sheets of plywood.What these technologies are doing is radically lowering the thresholds of time and cost and skill.They're challenging the idea that if you want something to be affordable it's got to be one-size-fits-all.And they're distributing massivelyreally complex manufacturing capabilities.We're moving into this future where the factory is everywhere,and increasingly that means that the design team is everyone.That really is an industrial revolution.And when we think that the major ideological conflicts that we inherited were all based around this question of who should control the means of production,and these technologies are coming back with a solution:actually, maybe no one. All of us.

And we were fascinated by what that might mean for architecture.So about a year and a half ago,we started working on a project called WikiHouse,and WikiHouse is an open-source construction system.And the idea is to make it possible for anyone to go online, access a freely shared library of 3D models which they can download and adapt in,at the moment, SketchUp, because it's free, and it's easy to use,and almost at the click of a switcht hey can generate a set of cutting files which allow them, in effect,to print out the parts from a house using a CNC machine and a standard sheet material like plywood.And the parts are all numbered,and basically what you end up with is a really big IKEA kit.(Laughter)And it goes together without any bolts.It uses wedge and peg connections.And even the mallets to make it can be provided on the cutting sheets as well.And a team of about two or three people,working together, can build this.They don't need any traditional construction skills.They don't need a huge array of power tools or anything like that,and they can build a small house of about this size in about a day.

(Applause)

And what you end up with is just the basic chassis of a house onto which you can then apply systems like windows and cladding and insulation and services based on what's cheap and what's available.Of course, the house is never finished.We're shifting our heads here, so the house is not a finished product.With the CNC machine, you can make new parts for it over its life or even use it to make the house next door.So we can begin to see the seed of a completely open-source,citizen-led urban development model, potentially.

And we and others have built a few prototypes around the world now,and some really interesting lessons here.One of them is that it's always incredibly sociable.People get confused between construction work and having fun.But the principles of openness go right down into the really mundane, physical details.Like, never designing a piece that can't be lifted up.Or, when you're designing a piece,make sure you either can't put it in the wrong way round,or, if you do, it doesn't matter, because it's symmetrical.Probably the principal which runs deepest with us is the principal set out by Linus Torvalds,the open-source pioneer,which was that idea of, "Be lazy like a fox."Don't reinvent the wheel every time.Take what already works, and adapt it for your own needs.Contrary to almost everything that you might get taught at an architecture school, copying is good.

Which is appropriate, because actually,this approach is not innovative.It's actually how we built buildings for hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolutionin these sorts of community barn-raisings.The only difference between traditional vernacular architecture and open-source architecture might be a web connection,but it's a really, really big difference.We shared the whole of WikiHouse under a Creative Commons license,and now what's just beginning to happen is that groups around the world are beginning to take it and use it and hack it and tinker with it, and it's amazing.There's a cool group over in Christchurch in New Zealand looking at post-earthquake development housing,and thanks to the TED city Prize,we're working with an awesome group in one of Rio's favelas to set up a kind of community factory and micro-university.These are very, very small beginnings,and actually there's more people in the last week who have got in touch and they're not even on this map.I hope next time you see it, you won't even be able to see the map.

We're aware that WikiHouse is a very, very small answer,but it's a small answer to a really, really big question,which is that globally, right now, the fastest-growing cities are not skyscraper cities.They're self-made cities in one form or another.If we're talking about the 21st-century city,these are the guys who are going to be making it.You know, like it or not, welcome to the world's biggest design team.

So if we're serious about problems like climate change, urbanization and health,actually, our existing development models aren't going to do it.As I think Robert Neuwirth said, there isn't a bank or a corporation or a government or an NGO who's going to be able to do it if we treat citizens only as consumers.How extraordinary would it be, though, if collectively we were to develop solutions not just to the problem of structure that we've been working on,but to infrastructure problems like solar-powered air conditioning,off-grid energy, off-grid sanitation --low-cost, open-source, high-performance solutions that anyone can very, very easily make,and to put them all into a commons where they're owned by everyone and they're accessible by everyone?A kind of Wikipedia for stuff?And once something's in the commons,it will always be there.How much would that change the rules?And I think the technology's on our side.

If design's great project in the 20th century was the democratization of consumption --that was Henry Ford, Levittown, Coca-Cola, IKEA —I think design's great project in the 21st century is the democratization of production.And when it comes to architecture in cities,that really matters.Thank you very much.(Applause)

GralINt/TED Talks-Judy MacDonald Johnston: Make a plan for a good end of life

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Transcript:






What would be a good end of life?And I'm talking about the very end.I'm talking about dying.

We all think a lot about how to live well.I'd like to talk about increasing our chances of dying well.I'm not a geriatrician.I design reading programs for preschoolers.What I know about this topiccomes from a qualitative study with a sample size of two.In the last few years, I helped two friendshave the end of life they wanted.Jim and Shirley Modini spent their 68 years of marriageliving off the grid on their 1,700-acre ranchin the mountains of Sonoma County.They kept just enough livestock to make ends meetso that the majority of their ranch would remain a refugefor the bears and lions and so many other thingsthat lived there.This was their dream.

I met Jim and Shirley in their 80s.They were both only children who chose not to have kids.As we became friends, I became their trusteeand their medical advocate,but more importantly, I becamethe person who managed their end-of-life experiences.And we learned a few things about how to have a good end.

In their final years, Jim and Shirleyfaced cancers, fractures, infections, neurological illness.It's true.At the end, our bodily functionsand independence are declining to zero.What we found is that, with a plan and the right people,quality of life can remain high.The beginning of the end is triggeredby a mortality awareness event, and during this time,Jim and Shirley chose ACR nature preservesto take their ranch over when they were gone.This gave them the peace of mind to move forward.It might be a diagnosis. It might be your intuition.But one day, you're going to say, "This thing is going to get me."Jim and Shirley spent this timeletting friends know that their end was nearand that they were okay with that.

Dying from cancer and dying from neurological illnessare different.In both cases, last days are about quiet reassurance.Jim died first. He was conscious until the very end,but on his last day he couldn't talk.Through his eyes, we knew when he needed to hear again,"It is all set, Jim. We're going to take care of Shirleyright here at the ranch,and ACR's going to take care of your wildlife forever."

From this experience I'm going to share five practices.I've put worksheets online,so if you'd like, you can plan your own end.

It starts with a plan.Most people say, "I'd like to die at home."Eighty percent of Americans die in a hospitalor a nursing home.Saying we'd like to die at home is not a plan.A lot of people say, "If I get like that, just shoot me."This is not a plan either; this is illegal.(Laughter)A plan involves answeringstraightforward questions about the end you want.Where do you want to be when you're no longer independent?What do you want in terms of medical intervention?And who's going to make sure your plan is followed?

You will need advocates.Having more than one increases your chanceof getting the end you want.Don't assume the natural choice is your spouse or child.You want someone who has the time and proximityto do this job well, and you want someonewho can work with people under the pressureof an ever-changing situation.

Hospital readiness is critical.You are likely to be headed to the emergency room,and you want to get this right.Prepare a one-page summary of your medical history,medications and physician information.Put this in a really bright envelopewith copies of your insurance cards, your power of attorney,and your do-not-resuscitate order.Have advocates keep a set in their car.Tape a set to your refrigerator.When you show up in the E.R. with this packet,your admission is streamlined in a material way.

You're going to need caregivers.You'll need to assess your personality and financial situationto determine whether an elder care communityor staying at home is your best choice.In either case, do not settle.We went through a number of not-quite-right caregiversbefore we found the perfect teamled by Marsha,who won't let you win at bingo just because you're dyingbut will go out and take videos of your ranch for youwhen you can't get out there,and Caitlin, who won't let you skip your morning exercisesbut knows when you need to hearthat your wife is in good hands.

Finally, last words.What do you want to hear at the very end,and from whom would you like to hear it?In my experience, you'll want to hearthat whatever you're worried about is going to be fine.When you believe it's okay to let go, you will.

So, this is a topic that normally inspires fear and denial.What I've learnedis if we put some time into planning our end of life,we have the best chance of maintaining our quality of life.Here are Jim and Shirley just after decidingwho would take care of their ranch.Here's Jim just a few weeks before he died,celebrating a birthday he didn't expect to see.And here's Shirley just a few days before she diedbeing read an article in that day's paperabout the significance of the wildlife refugeat the Modini ranch.

Jim and Shirley had a good end of life,and by sharing their story with you,I hope to increase our chances of doing the same.

Thank you.

(Applause)

GralInt-TED Talks-Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?

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Transcript:






Okay, I'm going to show you again something about our diets.And I would like to know what the audience is,and so who of you ever ate insects?That's quite a lot.(Laughter)But still, you're not representing the overall population of the Earth.(Laughter)Because there's 80 percent out there that really eats insects.But this is quite good.

Why not eat insects? Well first, what are insects?Insects are animals that walk around on six legs.And here you see just a selection.There's six million species of insects on this planet,six million species.There's a few hundreds of mammals --six million species of insects.In fact, if we count all the individual organisms,we would come at much larger numbers.In fact, of all animals on Earth,of all animal species,80 percent walks on six legs.But if we would count all the individuals,and we take an average weight of them,it would amount to something like 200 to 2,000 kilograms for each of you and me on Earth.That means that in terms of biomass,insects are more abundant than we are,and we're not on a planet of men,but we're on a planet of insects.Insects are not only there in nature,but they also are involved in our economy,usually without us knowing.

There was an estimation,a conservative estimation, a couple of years ago that the U.S. economy benefited by 57 billion dollars per year.It's a number -- very large --a contribution to the economy of the United States for free.And so I looked up what the economy was paying for the war in Iraq in the same year.It was 80 billion U.S. dollars.Well we know that that was not a cheap war.So insects, just for free,contribute to the economy of the United States with about the same order of magnitude,just for free, without everyone knowing.And not only in the States,but in any country, in any economy.

What do they do?They remove dung, they pollinate our crops.A third of all the fruits that we eat are all a result of insects taking care of the reproduction of plants.They control pests,and they're food for animals.They're at the start of food chains.Small animals eat insects.Even larger animals eat insects.But the small animals that eat insects are being eaten by larger animals,still larger animals.And at the end of the food chain, we are eating them as well.There's quite a lot of people that are eating insects.And here you see me in a small, provincial town in China, Lijiang --about two million inhabitants.If you go out for dinner, like in a fish restaurant,where you can select which fish you want to eat,you can select which insects you would like to eat.And they prepare it in a wonderful way.And here you see me enjoying a meal with caterpillars, locusts,bee pupae -- delicacies.And you can eat something new everyday.There's more than 1,000 species of insects that are being eaten all around the globe.That's quite a bit more than just a few mammals that we're eating,like a cow or a pig or a sheep.More than 1,000 species --an enormous variety.And now you may think, okay,in this provincial town in China they're doing that, but not us.

Well we've seen already that quite some of you already ate insects maybe occasionally,but I can tell you that every one of you is eating insects, without any exception.You're eating at least 500 grams per year.What are you eating?Tomato soup, peanut butter,chocolate, noodles --any processed food that you're eating contains insects,because insects are here all around us,and when they're out there in nature they're also in our crops.Some fruits get some insect damage.Those are the fruits, if they're tomato,that go to the tomato soup.If they don't have any damage, they go to the grocery.And that's your view of a tomato.But there's tomatoes that end up in a soup,and as long as they meet the requirements of the food agency,there can be all kinds of things in there,no problem.In fact, why would we put these balls in the soup,there's meat in there anyway?(Laughter)In fact, all our processed foods contain more proteins than we would be aware of.So anything is a good protein source already.

Now you may say,"Okay, so we're eating 500 grams just by accident."We're even doing this on purpose.In a lot of food items that we have --I have only two items here on the slide --pink cookies or surimi sticksor, if you like, Campari --a lot of our food products that are of a red color are dyed with a natural dye.The surimi sticks[of] crabmeat, or is being sold as crab meat,is white fish that's being dyed with cochineal.Cochineal is a product of an insect that lives off these cacti.It's being produced in large amounts,150 to 180 metric tons per year in the Canary Islands in Peru,and it's big business.One gram of cochineal costs about 30 euros.One gram of gold is 30 euros.So it's a very precious thing that we're using to dye our foods.

Now the situation in the world is going to change for you and me, for everyone on this Earth.The human population is growing very rapidly and is growing exponentially.Where, at the moment, we have something between six and seven billion people,it will grow to about nine billion in 2050.That means that we have a lot more mouths to feed,and this is something that worries more and more people.There was an FAO conference last October that was completely devoted to this.How are we going to feed this world?And if you look at the figures up there,it says that we have a third more mouths to feed,but we need an agricultural production increase of 70 percent.And that's especially because this world population is increasing,and it's increasing, not only in numbers,but we're also getting wealthier,and anyone that gets wealthier starts to eat more and also starts to eat more meat.And meat, in fact, is something that costs a lot of our agricultural production.

Our diet consists, [in] some part, of animal proteins,and at the moment, most of us here get it from livestock,from fish, from game.And we eat quite a lot of it.In the developed world it's on average 80 kilograms per person per year,which goes up to 120in the United States and a bit lower in some other countries,but on average 80 kilogramsper person per year.In the developing world it's much lower.It's 25 kilograms per person per year.But it's increasing enormously.In China in the last 20 years,it increased from 20 to 50,and it's still increasing.So if a third of the world population is going to increase its meat consumption from 25 to 80 on average,and a third of the world population is living in China and in India,we're having an enormous demand on meat.And of course, we are not there to say that's only for us, it's not for them.They have the same share that we have.

Now to start with, I should say that we are eating way too much meat in the Western world.We could do with much, much less --and I know, I've been a vegetarian for a long time,and you can easily do without anything.You'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway.But then there's a lot of problems that come with meat production,and we're being faced with that more and more often.The first problem that we're facing is human health.Pigs are quite like us.They're even models in medicine,and we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human.That means that pigs also share diseases with us.And a pig disease,a pig virus, and a human virus can both proliferate,and because of their kind of reproduction,they can combine and produce a new virus.This has happened in the Netherlands in the 1990s during the classical swine fever outbreak.You get a new disease that can be deadly.We eat insects -- they're so distantly related from us that this doesn't happen.So that's one point for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the conversion factor.You take 10 kilograms of feed,you can get one kilogram of beef,but you can get nine kilograms of locust meat.So if you would be an entrepreneur,what would you do?With 10 kilograms of input,you can get either one or nine kg. of output.So far we're taking the one, or up to five kilograms of output.We're not taking the bonus yet.We're not taking the nine kilograms of output yet.So that's two points for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the environment.If we take 10 kilograms of food --(Laughter)and it results in one kilogram of beef,the other nine kilograms are waste,and a lot of that is manure.If you produce insects, you have less manure per kilogram of meat that you produce.So less waste.Furthermore, per kilogram of manure,you have much, much less ammonia and fewer greenhouse gases when you have insect manure than when you have cow manure.So you have less waste,and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign as it is with cow dung.So that's three points for insects.

(Laughter)

Now there's a big "if," of course,and it is if insects produce meat that is of good quality.Well there have been all kinds of analyses and in terms of protein, or fat, or vitamins,it's very good.In fact, it's comparable to anything we eat as meat at the moment.And even in terms of calories, it is very good.One kilogram of grasshoppers has the same amount of calories as 10 hot dogs, or six Big Macs.So that's four points for insects.

(Laughter)

I can go on,and I could make many more points for insects,but time doesn't allow this.So the question is, why not eat insects?I gave you at least four arguments in favor.We'll have to.Even if you don't like it,you'll have to get used to this because at the moment,70 percent of all our agricultural land is being used to produce livestock.That's not only the land where the livestock is walking and feeding,but it's also other areas where the feed is being produced and being transported.We can increase it a bit at the expense of rainforests,but there's a limitation very soon.And if you remember that we need to increase agricultural production by 70 percent,we're not going to make it that way.We could much better change from meat, from beef,to insects.And then 80 percent of the world already eats insects,so we are just a minority --in a country like the U.K., the USA,the Netherlands, anywhere.On the left-hand side, you see a market in Laos where they have abundantly present all kinds of insects that you choose for dinner for the night.On the right-hand side you see a grasshopper.So people there are eating them,not because they're hungry,but because they think it's a delicacy.It's just very good food.You can vary enormously.It has many benefits.

In fact, we have delicacy that's very much like this grasshopper:shrimps, a delicacy being sold at a high price.Who wouldn't like to eat a shrimp?There are a few people who don't like shrimp,but shrimp, or crabs,or crayfish,are very closely related.They are delicacies.In fact, a locust is a "shrimp" of the land,and it would make very good into our diet.So why are we not eating insects yet?Well that's just a matter of mindset.We're not used to it,and we see insects as these organisms that are very different from us.That's why we're changing the perception of insects.And I'm working very hard with my colleague, Arnold van Huis,in telling people what insects are,what magnificent things they are,what magnificent jobs they do in nature.And in fact, without insects,we would not be here in this room,because if the insects die out,we will soon die out as well.If we die out, the insects will continue very happily.

(Laughter)

So we have to get used to the idea of eating insects.And some might think, well they're not yet available.Well they are.There are entrepreneurs in the Netherlands that produce them,and one of them is here in the audience,Marian Peeters, who's in the picture.I predict that later this year, you'll get them in the supermarkets --not visible, but as animal protein in the food.And maybe by 2020,you'll buy them just knowing that this is an insect that you're going to eat.And they're being made in the most wonderful ways.A Dutch chocolate maker.(Music)(Applause)So there's even a lot of design to it.

(Laughter)

Well in the Netherlands, we have an innovative Minister of Agriculture,and she puts the insects on the menu in her restaurant in her ministry.And when she got all the Ministers of Agriculture of the E.U.over to the Hague recently,she went to a high-class restaurant,and they ate insects all together.It's not something that is a hobby of mine.It's really taken off the ground.So why not eat insects?You should try it yourself.A couple of years ago, we had 1,750 people all together in a square in Wageningen town,and they ate insects at the same moment,and this was still big, big news.I think soon it will not be big news anymore when we all eat insects,because it's just a normal way of doing.

So you can try it yourself today,and I would say, enjoy.And I'm going to show to Bruno some first tries,and he can have the first bite.

(Applause)

Bruno Giussani: Look at them first. Look at them first.

Marcel Dicke: It's all protein.

BG: That's exactly the same [one] you saw in the video actually.And it looks delicious.They just make it [with] nuts or something.

MD: Thank you.

(Applause)

ClimateChange/GralInt-TED Talks-Allan Savory: How to green the world´s deserts and reverse climate change

The following information is used for educational purposes only.














Transcript:






The most massivetsunami perfect stormis bearing down upon us.This perfect stormis mounting a grim reality, increasingly grim reality,and we are facing that realitywith the full beliefthat we can solve our problems with technology,and that's very understandable.Now, this perfect storm that we are facingis the result of our rising population,rising towards 10 billion people,land that is turning to desert,and, of course, climate change.

Now there's no question about it at all:we will only solve the problemof replacing fossil fuels with technology.But fossil fuels, carbon -- coal and gas --are by no means the only thingthat is causing climate change.

Desertificationis a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,and this happens only whenwe create too much bare ground.There's no other cause.And I intend to focuson most of the world's land that is turning to desert.

But I have for you a very simple messagethat offers more hope than you can imagine.We have environmentswhere humidity is guaranteed throughout the year.On those, it is almost impossibleto create vast areas of bare ground.No matter what you do, nature covers it up so quickly.And we have environmentswhere we have months of humidityfollowed by months of dryness,and that is where desertification is occurring.Fortunately, with space technology now,we can look at it from space,and when we do, you can see the proportions fairly well.Generally, what you see in greenis not desertifying,and what you see in brown is,and these are by far the greatest areas of the Earth.About two thirds, I would guess, of the world is desertifying.

I took this picture in the Tihamah Desertwhile 25 millimeters -- that's an inch of rain -- was falling.Think of it in terms of drums of water,each containing 200 liters.Over 1,000 drums of water fell on every hectareof that land that day.The next day, the land looked like this.Where had that water gone?Some of it ran off as flooding,but most of the water that soaked into the soilsimply evaporated out again,exactly as it does in your gardenif you leave the soil uncovered.Now, because the fate of water and carbonare tied to soil organic matter,when we damage soils, you give off carbon.Carbon goes back to the atmosphere.

Now you're told over and over, repeatedly,that desertification is only occurringin arid and semi-arid areas of the world,and that tall grasslands like this onein high rainfall are of no consequence.But if you do not look at grasslands but look down into them,you find that most of the soil in that grasslandthat you've just seen is bare and covered with a crust of algae,leading to increased runoff and evaporation.That is the cancer of desertificationthat we do not recognize till its terminal form.

Now we know that desertification is caused by livestock,mostly cattle, sheep and goats,overgrazing the plants,leaving the soil bare and giving off methane.Almost everybody knows this,from nobel laureates to golf caddies,or was taught it, as I was.Now, the environments like you see here,dusty environments in Africa where I grew up,and I loved wildlife,and so I grew up hating livestockbecause of the damage they were doing.And then my university education as an ecologistreinforced my beliefs.

Well, I have news for you.We were once just as certainthat the world was flat.We were wrong then, and we are wrong again.And I want to invite you nowto come along on my journey of reeducation and discovery.

When I was a young man,a young biologist in Africa,I was involved in setting aside marvelous areasas future national parks.Now no sooner — this was in the 1950s —and no sooner did we remove the hunting,drum-beating people to protect the animals,then the land began to deteriorate,as you see in this park that we formed.Now, no livestock were involved,but suspecting that we had too many elephants now,I did the research and I proved we had too many,and I recommended that we would have to reduce their numbersand bring them down to a level that the land could sustain.Now, that was a terrible decision for me to have to make,and it was political dynamite, frankly.So our government formed a team of expertsto evaluate my research.They did. They agreed with me,and over the following years,we shot 40,000 elephants to try to stop the damage.And it got worse, not better.Loving elephants as I do,that was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life,and I will carry that to my grave.One good thing did come out of it.It made me absolutely determinedto devote my life to finding solutions.

When I came to the United States, I got a shock,to find national parks like this onedesertifying as badly as anything in Africa.And there'd been no livestock on this landfor over 70 years.And I found that American scientistshad no explanation for thisexcept that it is arid and natural.So I then began lookingat all the research plots I couldover the whole of the Western United Stateswhere cattle had been removedto prove that it would stop desertification,but I found the opposite,as we see on this research station,where this grassland that was green in 1961,by 2002 had changed to that situation.And the authors of the position paper on climate changefrom which I obtained these picturesattribute this change to "unknown processes."

Clearly, we have never understoodwhat is causing desertification,which has destroyed many civilizationsand now threatens us globally.We have never understood it.Take one square meter of soiland make it bare like this is down here,and I promise you, you will find it much colder at dawnand much hotter at middaythan that same piece of ground if it's just covered with litter,plant litter.You have changed the microclimate.Now, by the time you are doing thatand increasing greatly the percentage of bare groundon more than half the world's land,you are changing macroclimate.But we have just simply not understoodwhy was it beginning to happen 10,000 years ago?Why has it accelerated lately?We had no understanding of that.

What we had failed to understandwas that these seasonal humidity environments of the world,the soil and the vegetationdeveloped with very large numbers of grazing animals,and that these grazing animalsdeveloped with ferocious pack-hunting predators.Now, the main defense against pack-hunting predatorsis to get into herds,and the larger the herd, the safer the individuals.Now, large herds dung and urinate all over their own food,and they have to keep moving,and it was that movementthat prevented the overgrazing of plants,while the periodic tramplingensured good cover of the soil,as we see where a herd has passed.

This picture is a typical seasonal grassland.It has just come through four months of rain,and it's now going into eight months of dry season.And watch the change as it goes into this long dry season.Now, all of that grass you see abovegroundhas to decay biologicallybefore the next growing season, and if it doesn't,the grassland and the soil begin to die.Now, if it does not decay biologically,it shifts to oxidation, which is a very slow process,and this smothers and kills grasses,leading to a shift to woody vegetationand bare soil, releasing carbon.To prevent that, we have traditionally used fire.But fire also leaves the soil bare, releasing carbon,and worse than that,burning one hectare of grasslandgives off more, and more damaging, pollutantsthan 6,000 cars.And we are burning in Africa, every single year,more than one billion hectares of grasslands,and almost nobody is talking about it.We justify the burning, as scientists,because it does remove the dead materialand it allows the plants to grow.

Now, looking at this grassland of ours that has gone dry,what could we do to keep that healthy?And bear in mind, I'm talking of most of the world's land now.Okay? We cannot reduce animal numbers to rest it morewithout causing desertification and climate change.We cannot burn it without causingdesertification and climate change.What are we going to do?There is only one option,I'll repeat to you, only one optionleft to climatologists and scientists,and that is to do the unthinkable,and to use livestock,bunched and moving,as a proxy for former herds and predators,and mimic nature.There is no other alternative left to mankind.

So let's do that.So on this bit of grassland, we'll do it, but just in the foreground.We'll impact it very heavily with cattle to mimic nature,and we've done so, and look at that.All of that grass is now covering the soilas dung, urine and litter or mulch,as every one of the gardeners amongst you would understand,and that soil is ready to absorb and hold the rain,to store carbon, and to break down methane.And we did that,without using fire to damage the soil,and the plants are free to grow.

When I first realizedthat we had no option as scientistsbut to use much-vilified livestockto address climate change and desertification,I was faced with a real dilemma.How were we to do it?We'd had 10,000 years of extremely knowledgeable pastoralistsbunching and moving their animals,but they had created the great manmade deserts of the world.Then we'd had 100 years of modern rain science,and that had accelerated desertification,as we first discovered in Africaand then confirmed in the United States,and as you see in this pictureof land managed by the federal government.Clearly more was neededthan bunching and moving the animals,and humans, over thousands of years,had never been able to deal with nature's complexity.But we biologists and ecologistshad never tackled anything as complex as this.So rather than reinvent the wheel,I began studying other professions to see if anybody had.And I found there were planning techniquesthat I could take and adapt to our biological need,and from those I developed what we callholistic management and planned grazing,a planning process,and that does address all of nature's complexityand our social, environmental, economic complexity.

Today, we have young women like this oneteaching villages in Africahow to put their animals together into larger herds,plan their grazing to mimic nature,and where we have them hold their animals overnight --we run them in a predator-friendly manner,because we have a lot of lands, and so on --and where they do this and hold them overnightto prepare the crop fields,we are getting very great increases in crop yield as well.

Let's look at some results.This is land close to land that we manage in Zimbabwe.It has just come through four months of very good rainsit got that year, and it's going into the long dry season.But as you can see, all of that rain, almost of all it,has evaporated from the soil surface.Their river is dry despite the rain just having ended,and we have 150,000 peopleon almost permanent food aid.Now let's go to our land nearby on the same day,with the same rainfall, and look at that.Our river is flowing and healthy and clean.It's fine.The production of grass, shrubs, trees, wildlife,everything is now more productive,and we have virtually no fear of dry years.And we did that by increasing the cattle and goats400 percent,planning the grazing to mimic natureand integrate them with all the elephants, buffalo,giraffe and other animals that we have.But before we began, our land looked like that.This site was bare and eroding for over 30 yearsregardless of what rain we got.Okay? Watch the marked tree and see the changeas we use livestock to mimic nature.This was another sitewhere it had been bare and eroding,and at the base of the marked small tree,we had lost over 30 centimeters of soil. Okay?And again, watch the changejust using livestock to mimic nature.And there are fallen trees in there now,because the better land is now attracting elephants, etc.This land in Mexico was in terrible condition,and I've had to mark the hillbecause the change is so profound.

(Applause)

I began helping a family in the Karoo Desert in the 1970sturn the desert that you see on the right thereback to grassland,and thankfully, now their grandchildren are on the landwith hope for the future.And look at the amazing change in this one,where that gully has completely healedusing nothing but livestock mimicking nature,and once more, we have the third generation of that familyon that land with their flag still flying.

The vast grasslands of Patagoniaare turning to desert as you see here.The man in the middle is an Argentinian researcher,and he has documented the steady decline of that landover the years as they kept reducing sheep numbers.They put 25,000 sheep in one flock,really mimicking nature now with planned grazing,and they have documented a 50-percent increasein the production of the land in the first year.

We now have in the violent Horn of Africapastoralists planning their grazing to mimic natureand openly saying it is the only hope they haveof saving their families and saving their culture.Ninety-five percent of that landcan only feed people from animals.

I remind you that I am talking aboutmost of the world's land here that controls our fate,including the most violent region of the world,where only animals can feed peoplefrom about 95 percent of the land.What we are doing globally is causing climate changeas much as, I believe, fossil fuels,and maybe more than fossil fuels.But worse than that, it is causing hunger, poverty,violence, social breakdown and war,and as I am talking to you,millions of men, women and childrenare suffering and dying.And if this continues,we are unlikely to be able to stop the climate changing,even after we have eliminated the use of fossil fuels.

I believe I've shown you how we can work with natureat very low costto reverse all this.We are already doing soon about 15 million hectareson five continents,and people who understandfar more about carbon than I docalculate that, for illustrative purposes,if we do what I am showing you here,we can take enough carbon out of the atmosphereand safely store it in the grassland soilsfor thousands of years,and if we just do that on about half the world's grasslandsthat I've shown you,we can take us back to pre-industrial levels,while feeding people.I can think of almost nothingthat offers more hope for our planet,for your children,and their children, and all of humanity.

Thank you.

(Applause)Thank you. (Applause)

Thank you, Chris.

Chris Anderson: Thank you. I have,and I'm sure everyone here has,A) a hundred questions, B) wants to hug you.I'm just going to ask you one quick question.When you first start this and you bring in a flock of animals,it's desert. What do they eat? How does that part work?How do you start?

Allan Savory: Well, we have done this for a long time,and the only time we have ever had to provide any feedis during mine reclamation,where it's 100 percent bare.But many years ago, we took the worst land in Zimbabwe,where I offered a £5 notein a hundred-mile driveif somebody could find one grassin a hundred-mile drive,and on that, we trebled the stocking rate,the number of animals, in the first year with no feeding,just by the movement, mimicking nature,and using a sigmoid curve, that principle.It's a little bit technical to explain here, but just that.

CA: Well, I would love to -- I mean, this such an interesting and important idea.The best people on our blog are going to come and talk to youand try and -- I want to get more on thisthat we could share along with the talk. AS: Wonderful.

CA: That is an astonishing talk, truly an astonishing talk,and I think you heard that we all are cheering you on your way.Thank you so much. AS: Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

(Applause)