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It’s not quite a better mousetrap, but here’s a great story from yesterday’s New York Times on “Building a Better Mailbox.”

It’s a wonderful example of the dead ends and false starts endemic to innovation journeys. Capitalizing on the failure of the “Elephant Trunk” mailbox, the founders of Architectural Mailboxes (Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos) landed on their winning idea: the Oasis and the Oasis Jr.

Some clever personal marketing to Rhys Jones at The Home Depot and a “birthday gift” to Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com didn’t hurt either.

The New York Times has a nice timeline of the science and politics of climate change — from Fournier’s 1824 theorization about the way in which the earth’s atmosphere retains heat radiation to Callender’s 1938 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to Plass’s 1956 calculations that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels would lead to a 3.6 degree Celsius increase in surface temperatures.

In a recent New York Times column on “The Power Elite,” David Brooks argues:

As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower.

He then offers five contributing factors. Here I want to zero in on his fifth factor: transparency.

Fifth, society is too transparent. Since Watergate, we have tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that middle-aged people should be clothed. This isn’t Galston’s point, but I’d observe that the more government has become transparent, the less people are inclined to trust it.

Lately, I too have been contemplating the affordances and the advantages, as well as the limitations and the liabilities of transparency. While I agree that transparency can devolve into a panopticon (to borrow Foucault’s insight), it is not without its virtues. Thus, my only conclusion so far is that transparency must been seen as a complex and multifaceted concept. As such, singular characterizations of transparency as either on the side of angels or demons strike me as too simplistic.

Perhaps the explanation for why people are less inclined to trust the government is much simpler: having pulled back the curtain, they do not like what they see.

One trend I’ve been paying attention to lately is the growing tendency for organizations to provide an account of their sustainability. In fact, thousands of companies now voluntarily report on environmental, social and governance issues (ESG). Of course, some organizations prefer not to be so transparent, either on principle, or because they’d rather keep their dirty laundry private. But in those cases where organizations are unwilling to voluntarily offer their own sustainability accounts, detailed ratings and evaluations are increasingly available through ASSET4, Goldman Sachs SUSTAIN, KLD and others. And in August 2009, Bloomberg’s 250,000 customers gained access to ESG data on more than 3,000 public companies at no extra charge.

Synthesizing these trends has led me to postulate what might be termed the “inevitable sustainability accounts” thesis. Love them or hate them, whether by choice or compulsion, over the past 10 years or so sustainability accounts have become a virtual requirement for large, complex organizations.

With that general thesis in mind, I was intrigued by news of the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card . In much the same way KLD rates some 4,000+ global public companies across more than 200 sustainability indicators, the Sustainability Report Card graded the sustainability efforts of more than 300 public and private colleges and universities with the largest endowments, from Harvard University ($26 billion endowment) to West Los Angeles College ($0 endowment). In other words, my “inevitable sustainability accounts” thesis seems to not only cover the realm of public companies, but also the realm of another sector of large, complex organizations: higher eduction.

Grades were determined by assessing performance across 43 indicators in nine main categories, including:

1. Administration
2. Climate Change & Energy
3. Food & Recycling
4. Green Building
5. Student Involvement
6. Transportation
7. Endowment Transparency
8. Investment Priorities
9. Shareholder Engagement

Among the 332 schools evaluated this year, 8% of schools earned cumulative “A” level grades, 45% earned “B” level grades, 34% earned “C” level grades, and 13% earned “D” level grades.

Of local interest, Penn State received a B grade as announced on the PSIEE website. A detailed summary is available at GreenReportCard.org. As a point of comparison, Cornell University, my undergraduate Alma Mater, also received a B grade. However, while a B grade put Penn State in the top half of the Big 10 conference, a B grade left Cornell in the bottom third of the Ivy League conference.

Given these apparent systematic differences between the two conferences, an interesting exercise might be to think about possible explanations for “grade” variations across the larger sample. In short, can we “predict” the grades these colleges received? And if so, on what basis? Just off the top of my head: location (blue state v. red state, urban v. rural, single campus v. multi-campus), average SAT scores, admission selectivity rates, endowment size, state funding, research grants, governance structure (centralized, decentralized, federated, etc), athletic program revenue, responsiveness to ESG past issues (e.g., recycling, South African investments, sweat shop labor, etc), characteristics of the top management team (”TMT”; e.g., age, gender, educational and functional background, level of discretion, etc), values of the TMT (egoistic, altruistic, biospheric, etc.), participation in the UN Global Compact.

Although this might seem like a relatively undisciplined list, behind each factor are theoretical reasons why variations might play a contributing role in explaining a college’s sustainability grade. No doubt reasonable people could come up with even more possible explanations if they spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it.

What factors would you use to predict grades? Add a comment or send me an email with your ideas.

Today I found this visual comparison of U.S. federal government subsidies to fossil fuels versus renewable energy. The underlying data came from a study by the Environmental Law Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars which reviewed fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008. The study concluded that “the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.” A PDF of the graphic is available here.

The Global Subsidies Initiative recently published a report that looks specifically at The Politics of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, but on a global basis.

Today I stumbled across the Greendex, a study jointly produced by National Geographic and Globescan, an international polling firm. The study measured consumer progress toward environmentally sustainable consumption in 17 countries around the world.

Greendex Map of Sustainable Consumption

With my dissertation on the horizon, over the past few months I’ve been exploring a variety of possible research settings. One idea I have considered involves studying the Pennsylvania Electricity Market as an in vivo cultural-economic-political experiment (ala Michel Callon and colleagues). At the risk of simplifying a relatively complex situation, three major pieces of state legislation have recently collided: deregulation, renewable portfolio standards, and consumption management. At the same time, the EPA is imposing new emissions reporting requirements on utility companies. All of this has generated a number of controversies, many of them entangled with issues related to sustainability, accounting and temporality — all themes I am hoping to explore in my dissertation.

1. Deregulation started in 1996 with the passage of the Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act. By January 1, 2001 all Pennsylvanians – theoretically – had the freedom to select their electric generation suppliers (“EGSs”). However, at the same time, the Act permitted the electricity distribution companies (“EDCs”) to recover their “stranded costs,” meaning “investments in infrastructure made before the law was passed that may have become uneconomic and unrecoverable in a competitive environment” (source). In exchange for the right to recover these stranded costs, electricity rates were capped. These caps expired in phases, with the last of the caps set to expire on January 1, 2011. Thus, despite some 14 years of “competition,” there is little to no retail competition in most regions of the state. However, PPL’s rate caps expired Jan 1, 2010, with bills expected to rise 30%. Early evidence suggests PPL customers are switching en masse, with 16.9% of residential, 23.3% of commercial and 68.6% of industrial customers having switched by January 16 (source). As one result, there is an unfolding debate over whether or not deregulation works.

2. Although deregulation is an interesting story on its own, the situation is complicated by the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (“AEPS” or Act 213 of 2004). AEPS requires that an annually increasing percentage of electricity sold to retail customers in Pennsylvania by EDCs and EGSs be derived from alternative energy resources. The level of alternative energy required increases according to a fifteen year schedule, including minimum thresholds that must be met for the use of Tier I (8% by 2020), Tier II (10% by 2020), and solar photovolatic resources. Of note, EDCs were exempted from compliance with AEPS for the duration of their “cost recovery period” as specified under the 1996 Customer Choice Act. In other words, not only are utilities such as PPL faced with new competitors, but at the very same time they are also subject to renewable portfolio standards. As a result utilities must supply a minimum percentage of their electricity from specified sources, even while face price pressures and uncertain overall demand. And while alternative suppliers (EGSs) face the same constraints, the result is an entirely new set of market dynamics.

3. Act 129 of 2008 imposed new requirements on EDCs , with the overall goal of reducing energy consumption and demand. The Public Utility Commission (PUC) will implement the Act in phases. The first phase will deal with the PUC’s obligation to adopt an energy efficiency and conservation program by Jan. 15, 2009. Subsequent phases of the Commission’s Act 129 implementation process will address EDC and default service provider responsibilities; conservation service providers; smart meter technology; time-of-use rates; real-time pricing plans; default service procurement; market misconduct; and cost recovery. The Act also expanded the types of alternative energy sources that qualify as Tier I alternative energy sources under the AEPS Act to include specific categories of low impact hydropower and biomass energy.

Against this backdrop, other events are unfolding. For example, another piece of legislation – Clean Energy and Green Jobs legislation (HB 80 and SB 92) — seeks to extend the AEPS to 2024, while increasing the Tier I requirement from 8% to 15%, including 3% from solar power. Those in favor of such legislation recently published a study by Black & Veatch. The study concludes that the pending legislation “will lead to nearly 130,000 new jobs and save between $1.9 and $4.6 billion for Pennsylvania consumers.”

Update March 26, 2010: It looks as if some others at Penn State think the Pennsylvania Electricity Market is an interesting research setting too.

In Sunday’s New York Times economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman argued that although “America Is Not Yet Lost… the Senate is working on it.”

His commentary focused on the Senate’s tradition of relying on “unanimous consent.” In one telling vignette Krugman writes:

Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a “hold” on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.

In other words, the Senate is now “paralyzed by procedure.” As a result, “Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.”

Two more great resources for visualizing data — this time words, not numbers.

First, is Wordle, created by Jonathan Feinberg, a senior scientist at IBM Research. I especially recommend “Word Vader.”

Second, is Many Eyes, especially their word visualizations. A nice recent example is the 2010 State of the Union in 90 Words.

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a nice visualization of President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget.

Even though such visualizations have become somewhat common, seeing it reminded me of my days at Creative Labs, circa 1996-1998. It was there that my manager first introduced me to Edward Tufte’s work on data visualization, and to Marimekko Charts.

The Mekko Chart has long been used by strategy consultants. It allows data to be depicted along two dimensions simultaneously. For example, market segments are often arrayed along the x-axis, with the width of each column corresponding to the dollar size of a segment. Within each segment/column the market share of individual brands is then displayed with respect to the y-axis. These days companies such as Mekko Graphics and think-cell offer add-ons which make it easy to generate Mekko charts in PowerPoint, or with a bit of effort you can do it yourself. An example of a Mekko Chart is below. (Curiously, as of today there is no entry in Wikipedia related to Marimekko Charts.)

Although Mekko charts are an elegant solution for depicting a handful of market segments and competitors, their usability starts to breakdown when faced with significantly more data, such as the S&P 500. And visualizing the stock market was precisely the problem Martin Wattenberg had in mind when he created the technique that ended up being used in yesterday’s New York Times budget visualization.

Starting with Shneiderman’s treemap technique (which is essentially what drives a Mekko chart) Wattenberg developed an algorithm that 1) employs both vertical and horizontal partitions at each level of hierarchy, resulting in a series of more readable rectangles, and 2) groups these rectangles based on their similarity to one another, enhancing the reader’s ability to make sense of any resulting patterns across rectangles. (For more details see his 1999 paper on Visualizing the Stock Market.)

The result was the 1998 introduction of the SmartMoney Map of the Market as a way of visualizing the S&P 500 at a glance. (Note: Wattenberg credits Marc Frons and Joon Yu as collaborators, and indicates “that several others, including Jarke van Wijk, independently invented similar algorithms around the same time.”)

Back to the budget itself, a couple things standout. First, there is the total: $3.69 trillion. Second, for all the fighting about healthcare, what’s astounding are the four bigger budgetary items that we’re not talking about: #1) national defense, #2) social security, #3) medicare, and #4) income security. These 4 items account for $2.53 trillion of the budget. Worse, if you toggle the “hide mandatory spending” button, what becomes apparent is just how few options there are for cutting the budget. Whereas virtually all of the national defense budget is discretionary, less than a quarter of the income security budget, and virtually none of the social security and medicare budgets are discretionary. In short, healthcare spending is neither the of our budget woes, nor can it possibly be the cure. We could eliminate healthcare entirely, or double our spending on healthcare, and the consequences overall would be modest, if not meaningless. To reduce the healthcare debate to a debate over economics is just that, reductionist. The recourse to economics has to be understood as essentially a smokescreen, evidence of an unwillingness to seriously engage with the issue.

Furthermore, the real problems with the budget are clearly related to national defense and social security. These two programs account for 40% of spending. And these are two programs that no one in Washington — Democrat or Republican — seems to be talking about fixing. So while I agree that we need healthcare reform, even more urgently needed are national defense reform and social security reform. For starters, the budget suggests America can no longer afford to be warmakers and peacekeepers for the world. We need to let the world fight its own battles and make its own peace. I suspect most of the world would be happy with that outcome too. Likewise, it appears that the 20th century concept of retirement and the government’s role in it needs to be entirely reworked for the 21st century. Hitting 65 years of age can no longer been seen as the magical age at which bliss and nirvana are yours by birthright. When exactly did retirement at 65 become part of the American dream, as if it were a Constitutional right? Perhaps linking the retirement age with life expectancy is a first step towards reforming social security.

The third thing that stands out is one thing we are not spending money on. The total energy budget is only $10 billion, or approximately 0.2% of the total budget. Now granted these figures do not include the Department of Energy’s $17.7 billion budget, which is grouped together with the national defense budget. But even adding in the DOE brings total federal spending on energy to just 0.7% of the total budget. Considering the well-known linkage between energy and GDP combined with the growing likelihood of a carbon constrained economy, and it seems clear that energy is vital to any U.S. recovery.