Catching on to a bright idea. Photo: Chealion (flickr)

Reuters reports that despite the recession, American consumer spending on products that are considered "green" has in fact been going up.

U.S. supermarket sales of environmentally sustainable or "ethical" products — from energy-efficient light bulbs to organic produce — will rise about 8.7 percent in 2009 to nearly $38 billion

Reasons behind going green range from personal health to global warming, but Scott Bearse, of the financial consulting group Deloitte, thinks there may be more to it. He tells Reuters, "[t]he financial crisis reminded people of the unintended consequences of collective behavior."

Helping or hurting? NATO delivers aid in Afghanistan. Photo: Isafmedia (flickr)

How can you best fight global poverty? Academics, journalists, economists and sometimes even celebrities have been vigorously discussing this question for years, with big names like Jeffery Sachs, William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo, and Bono weighing in on the question of whether or not development aid actually helps the poor.

Writer and well-known humanitarian and development aid advocate Nicholas Kristof succinctly and candidly summarized the debate last week in an essay for the New York Times Book Review. (See my post "What a Marshall Plan Could Do For Africa" for more on the aid debate.)

Acknowledging that all sides have some cogent points, Kristof admits that "doing good is harder than it looks." But he's still an advocate of development aid:

The upshot is that we can now see that there are many aid programs that work very well. We don’t need to distract ourselves with theoretical questions about aid [...]. The new synthesis should embrace specific interventions that all sides agree have merit, while also borrowing from an important insight of the aid critics: trade is usually preferable to aid.

In other words, markets are irreplaceable in achieving certain goals, and humanitarian projects are important for others. Free trade won't automatically build schools, and building schools won't automatically create jobs.

The two can go hand in hand to create a better future.