An accessible discussion of ways to achieve a sustainable future

In a highly readable account, venture capitalist, entrepreneur, engineer, and philosopher Tom Rand looks to contemporary psychology, economics, business, and finance to explain our stasis in the face of one of the most fundamental problems of our time: why climate disruption might just be our very own pot of hot water and we, the frog, paralyzed in our inaction. But his account doesn’t just point fingers at the bad guys, it goes deeper — to our motivations, institutional lethargy, and deeply buried assumptions about market economics.

Waking the Frog is as much about solutions as it is an account of our present paralysis. Our ingenuity, technology, capital, and policy can work together to turn down the heat and simultaneously enable the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

Tom Rand acts as Lead Cleantech Advisor at the Toronto-based MaRS Institute, which supports the commercialization of Canadian research development. Before joining MaRS, Tom was a successful entrepreneur, founding Voice Courier Inc. in 1991, a telecommunications software company. It led its expansion to more than 100 employees in three countries. In 2005, he began VCi Green Funds, a private venture fund to provide angel and venture capital to companies developing emission reducing technologies.

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“Provocative … [Rand’s] intellectual argument is compelling, and he raises questions well-worth considering.” — Columbus Dispatch