Newsmaker: Spending Google's money on conscientious causes

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So how, exactly, does this fit in with Google.org's missions to improve human health and alleviate poverty?
Brilliant: Well, we've got three areas. We've announced global health, poverty mitigation, and climate change reduction or prevention. We have three other initiatives that we'll be announcing in January, so it's not the only thing we'll be doing, but it's certainly a critically important thing for us and for everyone else.

So is climate change the biggest problem we face? And what's the prognosis?
Brilliant: It is the biggest problem we face, and here is why. Microcredit organizations in Bangladesh have given loans to 5 million people, mostly women. It transformed the lives of the people they supported.

All that would be washed away--literally washed away--if the amount of global warming that is currently contemplated, and the amount of sea level rise currently contemplated, takes place.

The current estimates are for an increase in temperature of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius. Some estimates are (for an increase of) 4 to 6 degrees Celsius. The current IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report suggests a 1- to 3-meter increase in sea level.

For every 1 millimeter increase in sea rise, you lose 1.5 meters of seashore, which means that if there's 1-meter increase in sea level, you will lose a mile of seashore.

That means that in Bangladesh, 30 (million) to a 100 million Bangladeshis will become climate refugees. If these numbers are correct, it means that southern Florida, lower Manhattan, and much of the (San Francisco) Bay Area will not be immune from these changes.

Climate change will contribute to so much spread of disease.

Climate change will contribute to so much spread of disease. Mosquitoes usually die off for three months every year in the temperate world, but when temperatures increase, there won't be a seasonal die-off.

You know, in this race against mosquitoes, human beings have an advantage: mosquitoes die every year. They have to start from the zero. That's not the case anymore. They'll be able to continue to breed year-round.

All these cities that were set up by the British all throughout Africa were set up in hills at 6,000 feet, and that's because the mosquito couldn't live at 6,000 feet because it was too cold.

Malaria will now find itself extending its range in height, in season, in latitude, and when you think about the million-and-a-half kids who die every year from malaria, the best way that you can help that is by preventing climate change. The worst thing you can do to exacerbate it is by losing the battle against climate change.

What other movements or efforts do you personally support that aren't necessarily a part of Google.org?
Brilliant: My wife and I started the Seva Foundation almost 30 years ago. Seva now works in 15 countries and works to cure blindness. We have projects in India and Bangladesh and Nepal that give back sight to more than 2 million blind people.

I am really interested in early warning, in trying to find systems that detect disease before the disease becomes pandemic. That looks at these 39 new zoonotic diseases, diseases of animals that jump species--like bird flu and West Nile Virus, SARS, Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg, and AIDS.

We are entering into a new world of animal-to-human transmission. That's a particular passion of mine--to see if we can do something about that.

What's the biggest difference you see on the ground, in terms of how charity organizations and philanthropic organizations are now run, compared to when you started?
Brilliant: Well, I've been CEO of a couple of public companies. I started (early online community) The Well, and I've worked for the U.N. in smallpox and polio and tsunami programs. I've worked for private foundations, public foundations, and I see a difference in the culture in all of them.

These are people who, having seen how businesses can run well, devote some of their own fortune and the skills that they've learned at the helm of corporations to make the nonprofit work that they do more effective and more efficient.

In the 1960s, business was the enemy of social change, and the people who are working in foundations and working in NGOs and 501(c)3s-- they thought of our corporations as their adversary.

Corporations have changed. If you just think about it for a second: (eBay founder) Pierre Omidyar, what an amazing guy; Jeff Skoll, who came out of eBay; Marc Benioff, (founder of) Salesforce.com; Larry and Sergey; (Microsoft founder) Bill Gates.

These are people who, having seen how businesses can run well, devote some of their own fortune and the skills that they've learned at the helm of corporations to make the nonprofit work that they do more effective and more efficient.

That's the biggest change, and it has penetrated the way that the large campaigns work. The polio program is just so much more businesslike than the smallpox program was.

The guinea worm program that the Carter Center runs is run magnificently well...These are things that are being done for the greater good, for the social good, for philanthropic purposes, by taking the best of business and the best minds of business.

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