About SolveClimate
Why SolveClimate
The adequacy of the global response to climate change rests in America's hands. The power of its $13 trillion economy and its unparalleled per capita appetite for carbon make its influence, both at home and abroad, decisive. Policymakers know what needs to be done to solve the problem of global warming. They also know that action even in this time of economic distress is imperative and affordable, for both recovery and future prosperity must be green. Every honest citizen of the world knows the price of inaction is unthinkable and unquantifiable, for inaction leads only to catastrophic human suffering from natural systems run amok.
Through our work at SolveClimate we aim to hold our leaders accountable for solutions, for in the final analysis, the climate crisis is testing the moral validity of our way of life. Will America respond with courage and leadership to the global distress for which it is both historically and presently responsible more than any other nation?
Our reporters bring you the latest news and analysis of events, policies and actions from around the world that are either saving or imperiling both planet and people. We are looking for the big solutions that can have an immediate and measurable impact and the long-term fixes that are charting the course toward a new energy future. We will be keeping a particularly close eye on whether the new U.S. administration under President Barack Obama can turn its promises about building a clean energy economy into effective government solutions.
As Nobel Laureate Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, put it:
What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is a defining moment.
Join the discussion. Get involved. This is your future.
Editorial Staff
David Sassoon, Founder
In the early 1980’s, I spent a number of years in Kathmandu, Nepal as a UN Volunteer and as a photographer working in the black-and-white documentary tradition. What attracted me there was curiosity about its "sacred geography," which was largely intact and undisturbed by modern media culture or a dependence on fossil energy. It left an enduring imprint, and since returning, I've never quite recovered from culture shock.
My re-entry was sudden. Two weeks after landing back in New York, I registered at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Though I had been washed clean of cultural reference points from my long sojourn abroad—and thus was essentially bewildered—I still managed to earn a masters degree to add to a BA from Harvard. So, well-equiped with these credentials, I put down my cameras and started slapping the keyboard.
For the next decade, I worked in the non-profit arena with organizations promoting social development, human rights and cultural preservation. In that stretch I founded and published a quarterly tabloid called Action for Children, which UNICEF distributed worldwide in three languages. (I once got fan mail from a prisoner in a Nigerian jail.) I also founded and ran short-lived educational tabloid called EarthPost, which, before its demise, was being read by a few thousand students scattered around the country. The next decade found me in the private sector publicizing emerging science for clients of multi-national communications agencies. (That's code for "public relations.")
It was a difficult though valuable detour. In 2003, I returned to working for the public interest with the launch of my own company called Science First, through which I work in support of solutions to global warming and to articulate the urgent social and economic case for climate action.
SolveClimate is a journalistic extension and amplification of that effort, and a digital experiment in advancing the common good.
Stacy Feldman, Co-Founder, Foreign Editor
My first foray into journalism was in 1998, in a tiny village in Ghana, where I worked on a small-scale documentary on the economic development struggles of the area. Still interested in visual media, I took a job in television in Austin, Texas when the Africa project came to a close. Following a short-lived stint in broadcast news, I got a break writing for the Jerusalem Report magazine in Israel. From there I spent some time in India before moving to New York to attend Columbia University, where I earned a masters from the School of International and Public Affairs.
For three years after my studies, I worked for a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing equity into the public school system. My next job was for an environmental organization. It became my window into the world of the climate change issue, and helped to plant the seeds for my work at SolveClimate.
Stacy Morford, Managing Editor
I began my journalism career exploring rural issues in the American Heartland and Appalachia. It was obvious how vital the health of the planet and the stability of the climate were to both regions. In the Midwest, I drove hundreds of miles on back roads, talking to farmers, hydrologists and government officials about the depleting of the Ogallala Aquifer and the degrading of soil, water and air quality by expanding factory farms.
In the early 1990s, I started reporting on state government, first in Kansas and then in Kentucky, where mining, tobacco and poverty seemed to touch every bill. I returned to Kansas City as the AP’s first political editor for Kansas and Missouri, then transferred to New York as a national editor. I worked most of the past 10 years on the AP National Desk. During that time, I earned a master’s degree in cognitive psychology at Columbia University and spent 18 months in Chicago coordinating political coverage amid three major political scandals and the rise of Barack Obama.
Journalism—reporting—should focus on what matters, not what entertains. It should inspire people to reach farther while giving them the information they need to improve their lives, their communities and their planet. That is why I joined SolveClimate.
Contributors and Correspondents
Max Ajl is a research associate for the North American Congress on Latin America and has written on Latin American politics and economics for the Guardian.
Brian Angliss is an electrical engineer, web site designer and photographer. He is a co-founder of Scholars & Rogues and a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.
Elizabeth Balkan is the founder of New Energy and Environment Digest and a China-focused consultant who advises private and public stakeholders on energy and climate policy, as well as cleantech investment strategies.
Rachel Barge is director of Campus InPower, a national organization that trains students in the financing of large-scale campus energy and sustainability projects.
Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur and writer who has founded and led several successful companies, most recently Working Assets. His books include The People's Land; Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism; Capitalism 3.0; and Climate Solutions a Citizen's Guide.
Bill Becker is the Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a national initiative to develop a bold and decisive national climate plan.
J.F. Berg is a founding member of Post Carbon Toronto. His writing focuses on energy and emissions and their micro and macro implications ecologically, economically and socially.
Leslie Berliant is a partner at BLU MOON Group, a cause marketing firm that specializes in advocacy campaigns. She writes about the environment for publications including Celsias, PNN and the LOHAS Journal.
Michael Brune is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network and a founding board member of Oil Change International. He is the author of Coming Clean.
Richard Graves is the founder of Fired Up Media, editor of It's Getting Hot in Here—dispatches from the youth climate movement, and associate producer for LinkTV's Earth Focus.
Daniel J. H. Greenwood is a professor of corporate finance and corporate law at Hofstra Law School. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
L.D. Gussin consults across smart grid, demand efficiency, renewable energy and carbon finance. His novel of ideas The Seeker Academy was published in 2007.
Dan Haugen is a journalist who covers business, technology and the environment for print and online publications, including MinnPost.com and Twin Cities Business.
Stewart J. Hudson is president of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, a leader in funding state-level climate protection efforts and in connecting those efforts to federal initiatives.
Patricia Kirk is a freelance writer who focuses on green building, smart growth, and renewable energy topics. She has written for Urban Land, Architech magazine and building industry publications.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear and Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time.
Mindy S. Lubber is president of Ceres, a leading U.S. coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. She also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk.
Edward Mazria is the founder of Architecture 2030. He speaks internationally on the subject of the architecture, design, energy and climate change.
Michael Northrop is director of the Sustainable Development Program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Matthew Phelan is a research chemist who worked in the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries. He is a contributing editor to Current Science magazine and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Chemical Engineering magazine, Anthem and MTV Iggy.
Laura Shin is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Audubon and other publications.