The savviest nonprofits won't cross their fingers and hope the next generation finds them, they'll use new tools and new game-theory to reach supporters, quickly leaving behind the gross inefficiencies of expensive dinner-plate events.

CNN: Web the new frontier for activism

Sometime in the next five to ten years, solar fans predict, the cost curves of solar and fossil fuel generation will cross in most parts of the world, and solar will sell itself to consumers without a subsidy.

FORBES: Sunny Optimist

Steve Bazeley, chairman of Residents against Turbines, which campaigned unsuccessfully against the installation of a new generation at Carland Cross near Truro, dismisses wind turbines as "inefficient, unreliable and expensive".

BBC: Two hundred more wind turbines for South West?

Because its technology underlies the third-generation mobile-phone standard, Qualcomm has become a toll bridge that all equipment-makers must cross.

ECONOMIST: The arms race