Ron Dembo

Ron Dembo

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Dr. Dembo is one of the world's leading authorities in risk management. He was the founder and former CEO and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a startup to the largest enterprise risk management software company in the world, with offices in fifteen countries and over half of the world's top banks as clients. Prior to starting algorithmics, he led a distinguished academic career at yale university where he was cross appointed in Computer science and the Yale school of management. Dr. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization and holds a number of patents in computational finance. As founder and CEO of Zerofootprint.net, a new media not-for-profit working toward environmental sustainability, Dembo is applying his expertise in risk to design solutions to help solve the current environmental crisis we face. His most recent book, co-authored wth Daniel Stoffman, Upside Downside: simple rules of risk management for the smart investor was released in March 2006 by Random House.

Blog Entries by Ron Dembo

So, You Think You Don't Offset?

Posted August 8, 2007 | 03:29 PM (EST)

Every Thursday night, like every other householder in our neighborhood, I collect our waste paper, cans, bottles and plastic and put them out on the street outside our house. On Friday morning a local municipal truck comes by and collects it for recycling. I pay for this service through my...
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Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 4 - Why Offset With Trees When Fossil Fuels Are To Blame?

Posted July 19, 2007 | 04:57 PM (EST)

If climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels isn't offsetting with trees simply a distraction? Shouldn't we focus on renewable energy projects that can replace the use of fossil fuel?

It's true that burning fossil fuels accounts for the largest proportion of carbon emissions. Nevertheless, the loss...
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Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 3 - The Problem Of Permanence

Posted July 11, 2007 | 02:28 PM (EST)

Something that worries many people about offsetting emissions with trees is how can you guarantee that they will last long enough? Trees take time to absorb carbon, extracting it slowly from the atmosphere as they grow. But saplings are vulnerable to bad weather, neglect and damage by animals. Older woodlands...
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Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 2 -- The Additionality Issue In Offsetting

Posted June 29, 2007 | 01:09 PM (EST)

One of the biggest problems with offsetting is ensuring 'additionality' -- proving that the offsets that you are buying in order to counterbalance your carbon emissions would not have happened without yours and other similar contributions. Often the projects sound intrinsically worthwhile -- protecting threatened original forest, supporting conversion to...
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Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting -- Offsetting As A Sop To The Conscience

Posted June 14, 2007 | 05:56 PM (EST)

Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don't like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive and SUV, or live in...
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Countries Without Borders: How the War Against Climate Change Will be Won

Posted May 18, 2007 | 04:16 PM (EST)

The world has changed on us. It is no longer our national governments that are in control of the affairs of the world. They are not in a position to solve the problems we face. Our big problems today are global - global warming and the reduction of CO2, terrorism,...

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Not With a Buzz But a Whimper

Posted April 23, 2007 | 07:11 PM (EST)

The most familiar plea made by environmentalists warning us of the immanent disappearance of this or that species is a question: how will we explain the absence of the polar bear, or the manatee, or a certain species of eagle, to our children?

It is certainly a haunting prospect, imagining...

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Greenwashing Your Coffee

Posted April 19, 2007 | 11:29 AM (EST)

Today, Ron Dembo's daughter, Justine, is writing in his place. Justine is a medical student at the University of Toronto.

I recently realized that the coffee companies of Toronto (and, no doubt, of the Western hemisphere) waste a tremendous amount. I noticed that my fellow medical students buy at least two...

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Getting Real

Posted April 18, 2007 | 03:00 PM (EST)

On that day, the Goths had the city under siege. They had already demanded, and had been given, five thousand pounds of gold, thirty thousand pounds of silver, four thousand silken tunics, three thousand scarlet-dyed hides, and three thousand pounds of pepper. Statues were melted down to pay off the...
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Getting It Right Before It's Too Late

Posted March 29, 2007 | 04:46 PM (EST)

No one can have failed to notice the shift in public perception of climate change in the past few months: the scientific debate, dangerously prolonged, is truly over. But this is not in itself a victory for those who are struggling to avert planetary disaster (as I'm sure most readers...
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SUVs as Cliche

Posted March 26, 2007 | 07:23 PM (EST)



In my last entry I took a page from the Weather Makers, and cited Tim Flannery's observation that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliche even before it has been understood.

My example of...
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Kyoto as Cliche

Posted March 15, 2007 | 05:14 PM (EST)

Tim Flannery nailed it when he reflected that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliche even before it has been understood.

There are many ways to interpret this, as global warming means different things to different...
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RRSP Season is Coming Up -- Invest in a Few Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Posted February 23, 2007 | 06:06 PM (EST)

Australia made news around the world this week by announcing an imminent ban on a cherished piece of Victorian technology: the incandescent light bulb. Now other governments, including California's and Ontario's, are considering a similar initiative. And in Ontario, at least, the opposition isn't trying to halt the plan --...
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Making Some Green

Posted February 7, 2007 | 04:54 PM (EST)

Surely there is not a serious investor or executive out there who hasn't considered putting some money into the green revolution in the expectation of getting even more out. Retailers see an opportunity to widen margins and do some effective marketing. Political pressure and the dawning awareness of energy...
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Resilience and Civilization: Part II

Posted January 25, 2007 | 05:21 PM (EST)

Below is a conversation between Thomas Homer-Dixon and Ron Dembo. Dr. Dembo is a risk expert and founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit dedicated to reducing our ecological footprint. Dr. Homer-Dixon is Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor in the...
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Resilience and Civilization

Posted January 17, 2007 | 05:40 PM (EST)

Below is a conversation between Thomas Homer-Dixon and Ron Dembo. Dr. Dembo is a risk expert and founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit dedicated to reducing our ecological footprint. Dr. Homer-Dixon is Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor in the...
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Black is the New Green: Sources for Computer Power Consumption

Posted December 19, 2006 | 03:13 PM (EST)

We've got a heap of responses to "Black is the New Green," and they tend to fall into three themes. The first is to commend the idea of making computers more energy efficient through power-saving software. The second is to suggest that much of what we suggest is...

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Black is the New Green

Posted December 13, 2006 | 03:20 PM (EST)

Let's think for a moment about something we never notice - our screen savers. Around the world, right now, complex geometric shapes and patterns are bouncing around screens in empty offices and quiet suburban basements. Even when you're gone for lunch, your screen saver labors on.

If electricity were free, this...
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The Ins and Outs of Carbon Trading

Posted October 18, 2006 | 12:00 PM (EST)



The UK is looking at a personal carbon trading scheme that will give everyone a free equal allowance of carbon units, which can be exchanged for carbon use, say for petrol or electricity, or traded in a market that aims to drive carbon use down.

With carbon trading by governments and...
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Designing Away the Problems of Offsetting

Posted August 30, 2006 | 08:56 PM (EST)

It is impossible to write anything about offsetting these days without prompting a flurry of responses that point out its problems and pitfalls. Travel offsetting just encourages people to fly more, critics complain. Or energy emissions offsetting does nothing to discourage energy waste, while offsetting book production undermines paper...

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