If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that we like a healthy dose of solutions to accompany any discussion of global problems. This is particularly true in the area of big, fuzzy problems like climate change that seem to dwarf any individual efforts we might undertake. But a focus on the problems -- when it really does serve to focus our work -- isn't always unproductive. I've been meaning to post the key points from a speech that Lord Anthony Giddens gave at the Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship last week. Giddens was a chief adviser to Tony Blair on the subject of climate change, and he had some very useful ideas to help social entrepreneurs focus on innovating around particular problems that arise in the course of trying to "do something" about climate change.

We must find a way to unravel three obstacles, said Giddens:

1. Cope with the free rider problem. Find a way to reward those who cut back -- and shame those who do not. Make energy consumption levels public and visible on cars, houses, buildings, for instance. Develop a branding/labeling system to make clear which energy consumption practices are helping and which are hurting.

2. Take the future seriously (hyperbolic discounting, in economic parlance). Show how the risks exist in the here and now, in the next five years, in your community. Specific vulnerability studies are a good start. What's a better way to advocate around them?

3. The law of increasing returns. Studies show that when people save some energy by means of tax incentives, better insulation, hybrid cars, better light bulbs, they end up driving more, getting a bigger TV, leaving the lights on longer. There must be a way to aggregate the absolute value of energy saved/spent and set some benchmarks. Otherwise, we're just on a merry-go-round of energy consumption that keeps changing -- but also keeps increasing.

You'll notice that all three of these have only a partial relationship to science and technology. They are mostly problems of human behavior, and as such, advocates can and should have a profound impact on these obstacles. As a physicist at the forum noted: "Molecules stay the same. I can come back and study them tomorrow. People change their behavior. We need it to change for the better."