December 23, 2025

I Wish, I Will

by Keith Schneider0

  NEW YORK — The three-day Clinton Global Initiative concluded with a flurry of new commitments including a five-year, $4 billion pledge by Pacific Gas & Electric and Ausra to build solar thermal generating stations that both companies says is cost-competitive with fossil fuel generation. California-based Ausra will build at least 1,000 megawatts of solar power plants and PG&E will purchase at least 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal, and the deal will eliminate over 36 million tons of CO2 emissions …

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Online, Televised, Blogged, YouTube and More New Media at the Clinton Initiative

by Keith Schneider2

NEW YORK — Live television images from the various plenary and working sessions are everywhere at the Clinton Global Initiative. They appear on screens as big as king size bed sheets in the main conference hall. They illuminate flat screens that stand in the halls and smaller meeting rooms. A row of small screens decorate a refreshment area close to the lobby of the Sheraton New York. This demonstration of televised ubiquity is just the leading edge of a communications strategy …

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Climate Change Is A New Global Organizing Principle

by Keith Schneider5

  NEW YORK — The X Prize Foundation, which developed a new philanthropic idea called “revolution through competition,” told participants today at the Clinton Global Initiative that it would commit $300 milion in the next  seven years to help solve global crises in each of the four CGI focus areas. The foundation said it is developing new prizes to increase access to renewable fuels, improve energy efficiency, and promote use of cleaner fuels. It also will have …

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Straightening The Noodles at Clinton Global Initiative, Plus Jolie-Pitt

by Keith Schneider2

  NEW YORK – This morning at the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative, Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s chief executive, explained to hundreds of international leaders why his  corporate behemoth, one of the iconic companies of this age, has very quickly embraced environmental sensitivity and energy efficiency as a business strategy. It’s all about the benefits that occur when you “straighten the noodles,” he said. Specifically, Mr. Scott described what happened when Wal-Mart asked executives at Betty Crocker, …

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Onward to Clinton Global Initiative in New York

by Keith Schneider0

[youtube]9Jhu6uk3sMw[/youtube] Three years ago when he founded the Clinton Global Initiative, which has emerged as one of the most influential and prestigious annual gatherings of world leaders, former President Bill Clinton understood that the new century’s formative operating principles depended on collaboration, not hierarchy. Only through the efforts of  untraditional allies working together could people make progress on any idea or project of real significance. If you doubt this, just consider that in the 20th …

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You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

by Keith Schneider4

As a lifelong member of the tribe of career adventurists it’s time to announce another turn in the journey. I am leaving the Michigan Land Use Institute to take a new position as senior editor and strategist for Circle of Blue, an independent online journalism, research, and movement building organization focused on helping to solve the freshwater crisis. What’s especially keen, along with the great promise of a new way to influence a global environmental and economic crisis, is that I won’t have …

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Flip: High Speed Camera Yields New Way To See World

by Keith Schneider1

[youtube]LDbR-yW8Pf0[/youtube] A long time ago I followed my parents to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and saw for the first time how a television and a phone (so what, say the teenagers who hang around my house) would eventually converge into a new communications appliance that At&T  called a “picturephone.” That was big stuff, though, in those days and it cemented in me a keen curiousity about gadgets and technology.  That was the era of space shots and moon …

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Flip: Finding A Heavy Breeze

by Keith Schneider0

  This entry in Mode Shift’s Flip category, which spotlights great online applications of multi-media technology, introduces a brand new mapping tool to help local government officials, utilities, and entrepreneurs identify suitable places to build commercial-scale wind turbines in Michigan. Developed by the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University, and dubbed the Michigan Prospecting Tool by its developers, Charles McKeown and Benjamin Calnin, the online tool provides users an easy and elegant way to find the windiest places in …

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Michigan’s Energy Schizophrenia

by Keith Schneider8

Late last month I had the chance to spend the day with scientists at Michigan State University who are involved in carrying out the work of the new Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a partnership between MSU and the University of Wisconsin financed by a five-year, $125 million federal research grant. It is one of three such centers across the country determined to fill America’s national gas tank with fuel made from plants. Bruce Dale, a chemical engineer at …

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Before Grassoline, Settling A Dispute Among Experts

by Keith Schneider18

David Pimentel, an ecologist who spent all of his career at Cornell University after earning his doctorate in entomology in 1951, is one of the most respected environmental scientists of his generation. He was among the select group of young ecologists who in the 1960s first identified the environmental and public health hazards of farm chemicals, and helped build the scientific case for healthier, more environmentally-sensitive agriculture practices. The fact that organic crops are the fastest growing sector …

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