The Search For Solutions  

Grist reports that Google has announced an expansion of its philanthropic investing beyond alternative energy - to include disease control and poverty reduction. Poverty reduction is important from the view of both global warming and peak oil - while more prosperous people (by and large) consume more, they can also afford to buy (and invest in) cleaner energy sources - and they (by and large) have fewer children, easing the long term pressure caused by population growth.

Google has announced it's expanding the goals of its philanthropic arm, Google.org, beyond alternative energy to include fighting disease, averting pandemics and other mass crises, and alleviating poverty in the developing world. Along with the expansion of its mission, Google.org announced some of the recipients of the first round of grants and investments yesterday, totaling about $25 million. Over $7.5 million was announced for organizations as part of Google's "protect and prevent" initiative to combat pandemics, over $3 million is slated for organizations to "inform and empower to improve public services" in South Asia, and over $3 million will go toward investments in smallish businesses in the developing world to help ease poverty. $10 million is also destined for eSolar, a solar-thermal-power company working on utility-scale projects, as part of Google's ongoing alternative-energy programs. Over the next three years, the organization plans to spend up to $150 million more over its five mission areas including the two eco-goals announced last year.

Google said Thursday that it had come up with a plan that began to fulfill the pledge it made to investors when it went public nearly four years ago to reserve 1 percent of its profit and equity to "make the world a better place."

The philanthropy the company has set up - Google.org, or DotOrg as Googlers call it - will spend as much as $175 million in its first round of grants and investments during the next three years, Google officials said. While it is like other companies' foundations in making grants, it will also be untraditional in making for-profit investments, encouraging Google employees to participate directly and lobbying public officials for changes in policies, company officials said.

DotOrg officials said they had decided to spend the money on five initiatives: disease and disaster prevention; improving the flow of information to hold governments accountable in community services; helping small and midsize enterprises; developing renewable energy sources that are cheaper than coal; and investing in the commercialization of plug-in vehicles.

Google may be one of the 10 richest U.S. corporations as measured by market value, but its budget for philanthropy is minuscule, compared with the $70 billion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Still, Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, expressed hope in 2004 that "someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact." ...

The director of Google.org is Larry Brilliant. Brilliant, a medical doctor who moved to an ashram in northern India in the 1970s and went on to play a major role in eradicating smallpox in the country, likened his moral quandary in figuring out how to spend Google.org's money to that faced by a saint wandering the streets of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges.

"There are 500 steps between the road and the Ganges," he said. "On every step are beggars, lepers, people who have no arms or legs, people literally starving. The saint has a couple of rupees; how does a good and honorable person make a resource allocation decision? Do you weigh a hand that's missing more than a leg? Someone who's starving versus a sick child? In a much less dramatic way, that's what the last 18 months have been for us."