#2/24 About the new podcast, NGO trust, Kant and climate change

Dear readers,

I am very pleased about the positive feedback on the first issue, thank you again for signing up. If you don't just like to read feed but are also a passionate listener, there is something for you right at the beginning.

Today's second issue is already another premiere. On Monday, the podcast of the same name "Das Neue Geben" goes live, hosted and recorded as a duo with Janina Breitling – for those of you who have been paying attention, you already know her from the last issue – and selected guests. We will post the first episode on Monday morning on LinkedIn, so feel free to follow me there so you don't miss anything. We'll hear from each other then!

Best regards, Felix

A number that sticks in your mind: 41 %

This is how few people trust NGOs in Germany. In China, Kenya, India there are many more. So what is the point of all the rules on non-profit status, state supervision and the many seals of approval? This is just one of the questions raised by an Economist special on philanthropy. Less surprising: Major trends include collective philanthropy, digitalization and impact investing. Here process, too, Germany lags behind.

A person who inspires me: Kant can't help it at all. 

For Immanuel Kant's 300th birthday, many dig deep into their school education or drop by Wikipedia again. I actually spent more or less two years of my life with him at the end of my philosophy studies, which ended in the worried question of my professor Otfried Höffe: “You don't want to stay at university, do you? You are more like a ... manager.” This was not a compliment coming from him.

In recent years, however, I have been thinking a lot about Kant again, because I recognize his thinking in the “moral purity requirement” that I encounter constantly when I talk about how we must use markets to scale ideas for the common good: On the question of how much you can earn in the non-profit sector or what return you should achieve with impact investments, or also with the follow-up question to  bcause, whether we work profit-oriented. (...)

I am looking forward to the LinkedIn debate and the AI-battle between Kant and Mill, which I apparently have already kicked off with this.

An idea for further thought: Climate change cuts our incomes in half.

Our incomes will be worth less than half in our lifetime if we don't stop climate change. That is what the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says. For me, this is an even stronger statement than the “Cost of Doing Nothing”, which has been moving me for years: The Red Cross has calculated that in ten years it will be three to six times more expensive to stop climate change than it is today. But that still sounds like someone else should bear these costs. With PIK's “framing” it becomes clear: It also makes individual economic sense for all of us to fund measures against climate change - or at least to stop investing our money in a way that drives it forward.

More on the PIK numbers in this article in Nature.