We have written about and linked to others’ thoughts on altruism more than once, thinking we will eventually have an ultimate illumination on its origins and how to increase its likelihood. Likewise on our main theme as an organization, with regard to entrepreneurial conservation. We also keep a watch out for big companies (versus entrepreneurs) and governments (as in the case of the state initiative in the banner above, which is discussed below) doing the right thing.

Thanks to this article in the New Yorker for bringing our attention to the efforts to bring sustainable and affordable water to the good folks of Texas, and at the same time raising our awareness of the tightrope walking between big businesses that have many motivations to participate in innovative conservation schemes, and the organizations that have been the innovators in this regard for decades:

Mark Tercek, the head of the Nature Conservancy, recently took a tour of the largest chemical-manufacturing facility in North America: the Dow plant in Freeport, Texas. The Nature Conservancy, which is responsible for protecting a hundred and nineteen million acres in thirty-five countries, is the biggest environmental nongovernmental organization in the world. Tercek, accompanied by two colleagues, had come to Freeport because the facility—a welter of ethylene crackers and smokestacks built next to a river that flows into the Gulf of Mexico—is at the center of a pilot collaboration that he hopes will reshape conservation.The key idea is to create tools that can assign monetary value to natural resources. Continue reading →