John Francis is an environmentalist who has walked all over North and parts of South America. This all began as a personal protest against motorized vehicles, spawned by a big oil spill in the San Francisco Bay in 1971. When he started walking he also stopped talking for 17 years. During that time he earned a PHD and has an organization called Planetwalk. I wasn't clear if he's still walking everywhere, in which case...did he walk to Monterey?
Paul Collier authored The Bottom Billion, which is a book about what is happening to the poorest people in the world. He cited the Marshall Plan of the 1940s, where the US financed the reconstruction of Europe, which turned out to be good for Europeans and Americans. The trick is finding the right alignment of interests and exploiting the opportunity. I've had his book sitting on my shelf, but am looking very forward to reading it.
Al Gore is Al Gore. He continues to evangelize awareness of the climate crisis. In addition to awareness, he also suggested a solution: Put a price on carbon. A CO2 tax which would be revenue-neutral to replace taxation on employment.
Nellie McKay is a quirky crooner, who sings really catchy songs in a June Cleaver sort of voice. The songs are political/activist in complexion and are tongue and cheek humorous. I will be buying her records.
Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who studies morality and emotion in culture. He authored "The Happiness Hypothesis" and "Flourishing". He cited liberals want change and justice even at the risk of chaos and conservatives speak for institutions and traditions, and want order even at some cost for those at the bottom. He ultimately suggested both liberals and conservatives have something to offer. Then he did an experiment among the TED audience... He looked for a political show of hands of liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The results were about 95%, 1%, .5% respectively, which suggested something about TEDsters.
Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Live Aid has long been an advocate of African aid and poverty reduction. I was typing notes on my iPhone and jotted something to this effect: 'Human cultural diversity is as important to the life of the intellect as biological diversity is to nature. I want to build a dictionary of man. I want you to help me'.
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What a fantastic day and fantastic event. It's all going to be available at ted.com; if any of these very brief highlights interest you in the least, I'd encourage you to watch it end to end, and register for TED 2009.
Technorati Tags: Bob Geldof, Al Gore, Jonathan Haidt, Live Aid, The Happiness Hypothesis, TED 2008, Flourishing, An Inconvenient Truth, planetwalk, John Francis
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