Newsmaker: Spending Google's money on conscientious causes

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Is this trend limited to the tech industry?
Brilliant: Look at (venture capitalist) John Doerr and the amazing work that he's done in pandemic flu and in climate change and education. You even look at what Wal-Mart has done by one person coming in as CEO and saying he wants to green the company. There's just been a lot of really positive things coming out of the leadership of the business community.

I hate to use this word "stewardship," but it seems like there is a greater moral stewardship in this community now than I've ever seen in my lifetime. It's so critical and so welcome at this time.

We've always had organizations and companies like Levi Strauss that were progressive and social-minded. Like Hewlett-Packard, when the "HP way" really meant so much to the people who worked there and to the community around it. I have a feeling that it's more widespread now. I don't have the numbers, but that's my sense.

Do you think this is happening because things have reached such a tipping point, they've gotten so bad, especially with the environment, that not to act is criminal at this point?
Brilliant: Yeah, I think so. Bertolt Brecht, the great poet of Nazi Germany, once wrote, "What kind of an age is it when to talk of the beauty of trees is almost a sin because of the current sins that it leaves unspoken?"

He was, of course, talking about the Nazi regime...I would say climate change, for many people, is as compelling and demonic, in a way. We made it ourselves, of course; we've got nobody to blame but ourselves. I think it's certainly a huge call to action with the people that I talk to and the good people that I know.

Why do you think Google is stepping up to serve as a role model? Is it just because the founders are passionate?
Brilliant: It's not just Larry and Sergey. (CEO) Eric Schmidt is a committed environmentalist. His wife is on the board of the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council).

It starts from the top. There is, at Google, a committed belief that we have to do more than just be profitable. We have to be socially responsible. We have to use our good fortune and the resources that we have to make the world a better place, and (that phrase is) not corny here.

What do you think about the Slow Food movement, which some people view as a creative answer to helping feed the world's poor?
Brilliant: Well, my wife is a devoted "slow foodie" and has been for a long time. I see a lot of good things in that, if you look at what it costs us, in terms of water, to eat one pound of hamburger.

One hamburger from a fast-food restaurant is actually the body parts of something on the order of a hundred cows...We do some nutty things as a civilization. We take pigs, and then we chop them up, and we feed them to chickens, and then we eat the chickens. Whatever is left over, we chop up and feed to the pigs.

There's no better way to incubate a virus than to take the body parts of a pig and feed it to a vegetarian bird. There are things we need to do differently. They are not necessarily related to climate change, but they are related to the kind of world that we want to give to our children and our grandchildren.

Are you a vegetarian?
Brilliant: I am a pescatarian.

So you eat fish, but not meat?
Brilliant: I eat seafood. I was a vegetarian for seven years, and actually, it's because of climate change (and the fossil fuels used to raise farm animals and distribute meat) that I've become a pescatarian. In fairness to our species, it's only recently that we realized we are all in this together.

I remember when Stewart Brand, who created The Whole Earth Catalog and was my partner at The Well, got the idea that we had never seen a picture of the whole Earth and (persuaded NASA to release the satellite image of Earth from space).

That became the flag of the generation and The Whole Earth Catalog that followed. This was a new phenomenon for us--to realize that we are on a little, little marble, and that what we do really affects the Earth.

Imagine somebody in the Middle Ages thinking that what they do and what they eat and what they buy and what they throw away will affect the whole blue marble. It's a pretty big leap. I think we've actually come to understand it just in time.

Do you think so?
Brilliant: I do think so. I am an optimist.

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