Author: Michael Belinsky

Bosses

Rob #1 interviewed on NPR recently;

EPA Issues New Standards For Coal-Burning Plants : NPR.

Rob #2 interviewed for the upcoming Trinidad energy conference. The conference will also feature his op-ed on the CDM mechanism, which I helped with.
“What if there was an international policy on how countries should deal with emissions? Robert C. Stowe, executive director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and Manager of the Harvard Project on international climate agreements said there must be partnering when it comes to solving the problem of climate change. He contends though, that the greatest challenge to collective action lies in designing an international policy. Substantiating his point and referring to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) he said though he was disappointed with the outcome, the Copenhagen Accord, which came out of the conference was: “an important step forward for international climate policy. Commenting further on UNFCCC he said the results “fell short of expectations at the Copenhagen Summit last December. Many were hoping for solid progress toward an agreement to succeed and go beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Instead, the Copenhagen Accord simply recognises climate change as a challenge and concluded that action is needed to limit global temperature increases.

A manager of the Harvard Project on climate agreements since 2007, Dr Stowe said the project’s goal is to identify public policy options for addressing global climate change. The project conducts research on policy architecture, key design elements and institutional dimensions of domestic climate policy and a post-2012 international climate policy regime. Referring to the Caribbean, Dr Stowe said emissions from the Caribbean are not really a big part of the climate change problem “There are opportunities in the Caribbean for expanding participation in so-called “offset programs”–the most important of which is the Clean Development Mechanism,” he said. Dr Stowe would be part of a panel discussion on DAY Two.”

http://www2.guardian.co.tt/business/2011/02/06/themes-energy-conference-2011

Bill Keller on why we write

“Writers write them for reasons that usually have a little to do with money and not as much to do with masochism as you might think. There is real satisfaction in a story deeply told, a case richly argued, a puzzle meticulously untangled. (Note the tense. When people say they love writing, they usually mean they love having written.)”


“Let’s Ban Books, or at Least Stop Writing Them”
Bill Keller
July 13, 2011

I disagree with Bill Keller’s parenthetical observation.  Writers often love the finished product, and undoubtedly strive to it, but many, including me, love the process of writing itself.  Stanley Fish, another New York Times columnist and professor of many things including English, once wrote how one author recalled during an interview his reason for writing.  I just love composing words into sentences, the writer said.  And there you have it: the process, rather than only the finished product, drives this man.  (Stanley Fish also recently wrote How to Write a Sentence.) 
There is a power in a sentence–and power, too, in crafting one.  How many writers pen sentences only to strike them and try, try again.  How many more are in the throes of writing rather than the relaxed state of completion.  So perhaps Bill Keller’s observation should be not that real satisfaction exists in a “story deeply told,” but rather in the telling.

Nancy Lublin’s Advice to Nonprofits

The Economist recently interviewed Nancy Lublin, who founded Dress for Success and runs dosomething.org, about nonprofits. I disagree with the way Nancy characterizes one piece of advice that she gave to her listeners. She suggests, toward the end of the interview, that nonprofits do a good job of breaking out their SG&A, the sales, general and administrative costs that they incur as part of their normal operations, whereas for-profits are opaque and report them as one lumped category.

First, if a for-profit’s financial statements to the SEC, the 10-K and the 10-Q, do not break out SG&A, that does not mean that the company does not break out these costs in internal memos to its employees.  Companies could, and I am sure that some do, explain some expenses internally at a greater length than they explain them to outsiders.

Second, the extent to which nonprofits must break out their administrative expenses on their 990 forms to the SEC is regulated by law.  The detail into which nonprofits go, therefore, is not necessarily the detail to which they would have liked to go if they had been given the choice.

Third, I doubt that many nonprofits distribute the 990s to their employees, teach them how to read those forms, or even that all employees of large nonprofits are aware that these forms exist.  These forms are not the most complex financial disclosure documents, but they do require a level of financial literacy to understand (plus one must know where to find these forms).  Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that nonprofit employees know how much their organization spent on, say, postage, as Nancy Lublin claims.

Overall, although greater financial disclosure does offer some benefits — such as keeping runaway spending in check — nonprofits are not the shining beacon of financial disclosure that Nancy, for a brief second, made them appear to be.

Constitutional Options for Bahrain

The efforts of Professor Chilbi Mallat to offer constitutional options to Middle Eastern regimes that teetered on the verge of regime change were recently published.  Professor Mallat gathered students from across the Tufts and Harvard communities to work on documents that explored the potential movements toward democracy that were available to Egypt and Bahrain by amendment to their respective constitutions.  I participated in the Bahrain effort, the results of which were recently published in the Virginia Journal of International Law.  The organization Right to Nonviolence published the background papers that are associated with the final paper (I helped prepare the backgrounder on the constitutional changes to the Executive Branch.)  Although the entry of Saudi forces into Bahrain several months ago aborted that country’s constitutional moment, the exercise offered an incredible window into the practice of advising on constitutional reform.

Journal’s entry description:  http://www.vjil.org/articles/constitutional-options-for-bahrain
Publication: http://www.vjil.org/assets/pdfs/vjilonline2/Gelbort_Mallat.pdf

Backgrounders:  http://www.righttononviolence.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=45