World steps to fight global warming could have failed, but philanthropic establishments in the U. S. have swung into action, just about tripling their support for climate-related causes in 2008. That year’s figure of US$897 million represents a three-fold increase from the 2007 total of $240 million ( see ‘Climate concern’ ), according to a communication from the Foundation Center, an association that supports philanthropies, in NY. FOUNDATION CENTER The funding is going to a variety of activities, including attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and to prepare towns for hotter temperatures and higher sea levels. Foundation money is also supporting educational analysts studying the results of global warming and paths to reduce pollution. In 2008, as an example, the Rockefeller Foundation in N. Y gave a grant to Stanford College in California for studies on how farming could acclimatize to a changing climate. The ClimateWorks Foundation in San Francisco, California, is supporting research around the planet, including a grant to Wang Lan, a materials scientist at the China Building Materials Academy in Beijing, who is working to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from cement production. The overwhelming majority of the rise in 2008 came from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, which gave a total of $549 million. Hewlett’s donations included an one off contribution of $500 million to ClimateWorks, which intends to help states limit carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to less than 450 parts per million.

Lots of other foundations also bumped up their spending. All told, 267 foundations aside from Hewlett distributed 1,578 grants for global warming, representing a forty five percent increase in their giving compared to 2007, according to the Foundation Center report, which is titled global warming : The U.S. Foundation Reply . A generational change may account for part of the unexpected openhandedness. Baby boomers are showing more concern about global warming than prior generations did, says Rachel Leon, executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers organisation in NY, a trade group of environmentally centered foundations. These folk are now beginning to line up their own foundations with a strong focus on climate change.

The attempts of the foundations pale next to commercial investment in clean energy $173 bln in 2008 and $162 bln last year, according to market researchers Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. But foundations can fund projects irrespective of their potential pay-off, claims Ethan Zindler, the organization’s head of US research. “They consider it a social imperative, ” he is saying. ClimateWorks, for example, collaborates with smaller foundations around the globe on projects including the development of vehicle-fuel standards in India and appliance standards in China.

Other efforts attempt to help developing countries conform to change. Under a five-year, $70-million commitment in 2007, Rockefeller established the Asian Towns global warming Resilience Network, which concentrates on assisting smaller towns , for example Surat in India, make growth choices that help them survive a shifting climate. “we’re not actually an environmental foundation but a poverty-reduction foundation. But we see a connection between them, ” says Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, an associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation. Not one of the foundations contacted by Nature would say what it plans to give in 2010.

Because Hewlett won’t repeat its $500-million, one off donation, the total foundation support for climate-related causes is probably going to drop from its 2008 high, but Steven Lawrence, the director of analysis for the Foundation Center and the writer of the new report, expects funding this year to outshine the 2007 amount. “My expectancy is to see expansion in giving. “.