Researchers say that over the last 800,000 years, atmospheric CO₂ levels fluctuated from 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods.  More recently, prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the average global CO₂ level was about 280 ppm.  Today's rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

You can see the progressive increase of CO₂ through the “Keeling Curve.”  It’s the record of an extensive survey of atmospheric carbon dioxide started in 1958 by the late Charles David Keeling – whose work was motivated by the suggestion that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels might be increasing due to the burning of fossil fuels with potential consequences for global climate.

The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.  According to NOAA, the evidence is conclusive that the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the growth of global CO₂ emissions.

But what does crossing the 400 ppm CO₂ threshold mean for us?  After all, this number means that for every million air molecules, 400 (or 0.04 percent) are carbon dioxide.

"These are not small changes in percent terms,” says Ralph Keeling, who took over the monitoring project at Scripps in 2005 after his father died.  “Two or 3 million years ago was the last time we had concentrations in this range, so we're moving into territory that's almost outside the scope of human existence on the planet at this point.”

“But what happens from here on still matters to climate and it's still under our control,” Keeling adds.  “It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

When you consider that CO₂ we emit now can remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, you realize that we all need to take action to reduce our personal and commercial carbon emissions – not only for ourselves but for many generations to come.

Click here to see what Verizon is doing now to cut its carbon intensity by 50 percent by 2020.  And, to learn about our recently announced $100 million commitment to renewable solar and clean fuel cell energy technologies checkout this post from our Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen.

It is no secret that today’s technology has helped us achieve unprecedented innovation; new ideas bring tangible rewards for business, consumers and the welfare of our economy. And today, so much innovation is based on the opportunities we see right at the intersection of hardware and powerful broadband networks.

So it was especially exciting to participate in this month’s Verizon FiOS and MIT Enterprise Forum meet-up, which brought together more than 250 entrepreneurs to discuss and present their ideas to a community of technologists and venture capitalists.

Walking into the event at the super-hip Hotel Yotel, I was immediately struck by how busy and energized the crowd was.  I overheard at least 9 “napkin pitches” from entrepreneurs ranging across a wide spectrum of industries, from healthcare, to the connected home, to hospitality and entertainment.

My highlight was KISI, a start-up that was launching a simple device to allow us to use our smartphones as keys to our house and apartments. Imagine that? Pretty soon the car keys, the house keys, along with currency for any and all transactions, will reside on our mobile devices. (Although I am not yet ready to give up my purse, it sounds like it could be much lighter in the future!)

Following brief welcome remarks from the hosts, attendees were treated to wise words from New York City’s Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Mr. Rahul Merchant, who encouraged everyone to “let your imaginations run wild.” This, as he oversees the successful deployment of high-speed Internet across every neighborhood of the City.

It was also a special treat to meet some of the many people I know on Twitter, including some awesome innovators who attended a Twitter event to coincide with the first Verizon FiOS/MIT meet-up, which took place in Massachusetts in April.

This is remindful of the importance of real life connections which no matter how exciting social platforms become, will never be replaced.

The redemption price for the Securities will be equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Securities, plus accrued and unpaid interest to the Redemption Date, and will be payable on the Redemption Date.  Interest will cease to accrue on and after the Redemption Date with respect to the Securities. 

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Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, with nearly 99 million retail connections nationwide. Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries, including all of the Fortune 500. A Dow 30 company with nearly $116 billion in 2012 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of 181,900. For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Luckily, there are entrepreneurs and corporations out there solving these issues right now, one of which is technology-focused Verizon. The company is engaging startups and developers in a growing number of tech hubs, including Boston and New York, with its recent Verizon Meetups.

The company hopes that by being more present in the community, it will encourage developers to build services and content solutions upon its fiber broadband FiOS network, which provides bundled television, telephone and Internet service to some 5 million customers as of Q1 2013.

At its New York event, which took place at the trendy Yotel Tuesday May 7^th, in collaboration with Mashable and the MIT Enterprise Forum – a group of entrepreneurs, developers, venture capitalists, and media elite joined forces to discuss the future of the connected home.

Presenters spoke of a future in which every home is wired to a mega-fast network, where buffer times and download speeds aren’t an issue, but instead where the only issue is just figuring out what types of innovative services to stack on top of a high-speed, fiber optic powered network.

On stage, four startups were invited to share their innovations front and center. 

iMediaShare co-founder Metodi Filipov shared his frustration with having to watch mobile videos from a small screen, passing that single phone around from person to person. This frustration was the inspiration for iMediaShare, which lets users play videos from their mobile screens directly on their TVs with the tap of a finger.

Simulmedia Sales Director Brett Joss discussed how his company is bringing Internet ad targeting to the television, letting advertisers target specific affinities, psychographics, and demographics, just as online ads already do. For example, an advertiser could target ads to 18-35 year-olds who live in urban areas, earn more than $150,000 annually, and have watched "Dance Moms" more than five times in the past six months. "We have a strong belief that in the next five to 10 years, TV is not going to the Web. Web-like business models are coming to TV," he says, pointing out that it will take quite a bit for the television to be displaced as the center of American living room life.

KISI co-founder Bernhard Mehl wowed the audience with his introduction to the startup's "digital doorman" app, which acts as a keyless home entry service managed right from a user's smartphone. The hardware that powers the service can be easily installed in most homes, including the buzzer systems in multi-family homes and apartments, which has the capability to open both a user's front door and apartment door. Mehl says that future implementations may include voice and face recognition, thus the need for fast broadband connections.

The startup demos were rounded out by GetGlue's Lead Product Manager Lara Warman, who introducing GetGlue as "the social TV and second-screen platform" which "owns the TV and movie check-in space." With GetGlue, users check in to the movies and TV shows they are watching, unlock special stickers, and discover content based on the shows they already love, she explained.

iMediaShare, Simulmedia, KISI, and GetGlue all represent the types of "ninja innovators" that Verizon FiOS would like to turn into its "ninja collaborators," Verizon FiOS Director of Product Development Maitreyi Krishnaswamy told the audience. She and her colleagues are hoping efforts like the Verizon Meetup will help fuel such innovation.

"What we're trying to do tonight is actually not about Verizon, but more about the partnerships that we know we need to develop and that we could do better as a company to foster and drive innovation," Verizon’s President of Consumer & Mass Business Bob Mudge told the audience. "If you think about Verizon for just a minute, our growth has been predicated upon scale. So we're learning product innovation ourselves as we scale FiOS, as we've scaled what we are as a wireless company, as we've created the largest global IP network. Once scale is obtained, innovation on top of that scale is even more important than ever."

We’re already living in a semi-connected media world. We can watch YouTube videos on our TVs and see tweets alongside our favorite shows or we can just skip the TV experience and see those shows online. Even more impressive, though, is that we can control nearly every device in our houses – from doorbells, to speakers, to our heating units – right from our smartphones, that is, if we’re hooked up. The problem, of course, is getting there. The technology exists, and it’s people like those in attendance at Verizon’s Meetup who are figuring out how to scale and innovate upon these solutions.

It remains to be seen just how innovative the Verizon FiOS crew can get with local developers and entrepreneurs, but community efforts such as these Meetups already seem to be a hit and a step towards building strong relationships in the startup community.

Editor's Note: This sponsored article was written by Erica Swallow, a New York City-based tech and lifestyle writer, technology entrepreneur, and MIT Sloan MBA candidate. Erica's articles on entrepreneurship and startups have appeared in Forbes, Mashable and The Huffington Post. Follow her at @ericaswallow.

WPRI-TV (Providence, RI) reporter Ted Nesi recently interviewed Donna Cupelo, Verizon’s vice president of affairs in New England, about the company’s participation in the Rhode Island tech community, its products and services for Ocean Stated consumers, and her views on how the state can continue its growth. Watch the interview here.

WASHINGTON – Verizon’s new head of public policy outlined the framework policymakers in Washington should consider in modernizing the nation’s outdated telecom rules and regulations.   Verizon believes that obsolete and unnecessary rules – some of which date back to the late 1800s, and were written for the railroads and to create the Interstate  Commerce Commission – work against innovation and investment in the Internet ecosystem.

Speaking at the Media Institute on Thursday (May 16), Craig Silliman, Verizon’s senior vice president of public policy and government relations, said in prepared remarks: “A highly innovative 21^st century communications marketplace requires a 21^st century policy framework to match the Internet ecosystem that broadband and mobile innovations have helped create.  We need a framework to address today’s issues: not local wireline voice competition, but privacy, cybersecurity, network management, spectrum policy and more, many of which have a global component.”

In his speech, Silliman outlined four principles that he believes policymakers should focus on: protecting consumers, encouraging innovation, incenting investment, and, with rapid changes in the industry, technology-agnostic rules that focus on the needs of consumers and ensure flexibility as new innovations and business models emerge.

“Technology changes too quickly to build legislative or regulatory frameworks on specific technologies,” said Silliman.  “The best approach is to protect consumers and to ensure that the rules aren’t obsolete as soon as the ink is dry.”

It has been almost 20 years since Congress overhauled telecom rules – the 1996 Telecommunications Act – when many of today’s technologies were closer to science fiction than fact. 

“The act could not have anticipated the policy challenges that we would face 20 years later, particularly given the extraordinary rate of innovation,” Silliman said.  “It has been only six years since the first smartphone was released, so 20 years is an eternity.  What guidance does the 1996 act provide in a world where everyone is carrying a broadband cloud-access device with them? Where video content can be accessed anytime, from anywhere?  Where these technologies are beginning to be applied to broader societal challenges like healthcare, energy management, education and more?  Not much. Nor should we expect it to.”

Silliman called for a proactive, flexible policy approach – one that would remain current and effective now and into the future. “The 1996 Telecom Act succeeded in what it was designed to achieve, but almost two decades later it is leaving the FCC to struggle to shoehorn Internet-era technologies into phone-era regulations,” Silliman said. “I am not suggesting that the answer is to abolish all regulation.  But I am suggesting that we need a 21^st century policy framework that is designed for 21^st century technologies and marketplaces, not 19^th century ones.”

Silliman added that broadband platforms provide extraordinary opportunities to transform healthcare, energy management, education and more.  “By eliminating antiquated rules, focusing on meeting consumer needs, and encouraging investment and innovation, we will create the right environment for delivering the amazing promise of broadband and wireless technologies,” he said.  “And in place of optimistic uncertainty, such policies will create a spirit of innovation and a sense of limitless opportunities.”

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, with nearly 99 million retail connections nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries, including all of the Fortune 500.  A Dow 30 company with nearly $116 billion in 2012 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of 181,900.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com. 

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Small Business Week in Philadelphia will feature a series of events allowing small business owners to gain insights to better run their business and opportunities to network. While most of the activities will take place in or near Philadelphia, there is a webinar next Thursday, May 16, that anyone with a broadband connection can join.

Highlights of Small Business Week in Philadelphia include:

• Tuesday, May 14:Small Business Week Educational Workshop – At the GPCC offices, DiBona Room, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., Delivering Exceptional Customer Service. The panel discussion will focus on the best techniques to connect with clients and deliver exceptional customer service. The workshop is free for chamber members and $35 for nonmembers.
• Thursday, May 16: Small Business Webinar presented by Verizon – Denise Hart, author and executive momentum coach, will host a free webinar, Defining Your Don’t Quit Attitude – For Business Owners, at 2 p.m.  The webinar, presented by the Verizon Small Business team, will be accessible anywhere there is broadband access. Anyone interested in participating can register online at www.verizon.com/webinar.
• Friday, May 17: Keynote Event featuring Wharton School Professor Jonah Berger – Jonah Berger,author of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” and one of the world’s foremost experts on what goes viral and why, will deliver the week’s keynote program, Create Contagious Content for Your Business. Berger, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studies social epidemics, or how products, ideas and behaviors catch on and become popular. He is an expert on how individual decision-making and social dynamics between people generate collective outcomes such as social contagion and trends. The event will be held at the WHYY Studios in downtown Philadelphia from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. The registration fee for the event is $45 for Chamber of Commerce members and $90 for nonmembers.  Attendees also will receive a free copy of Berger’s book, courtesy of Verizon.

[Verizon’s customers and friends can use code “VERIZONSBW” to purchase tickets to this event at the member fee of $45. Go to http://vz.to/11QCVyQ and follow the prompts to purchase ticket as a “Non-member”; register then enter the promo code.]

Also, as part of the Small Business Week celebration, Verizon will be holding street team events at various locations across the city of Philadelphia this Thursday (May 16), so if you are in the following areas please stop by for some great give away prizes:

On Thursday, May 16

8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. at the lobby of One Penn Center;

10 a.m. – 11 a.m. at a Verizon FiOS retail store (7110 Ridge Avenue); and

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. at the lobby of the Philly Enterprise Center at 4548 Market Street.

Tim Smith, Verizon area president of consumer and mass business markets for Pennsylvania and Delaware and a member of the chamber’s executive board, said: “Verizon serves many small businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania, and we’ve teamed with the chamber to provide a variety of resources to help them advance their business. We’re looking forward to celebrating this week with them.”

Every year since 1963, the president of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small-business owners. More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and they create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year.

For more information about the GPCC/Verizon Small Business Week, visit www.gpcc.com/smallbizwk.  Follow us on Twitter for more information: @VZSmallBiz or @PhillyChamber or search for #PHLSmallBizWk.

Let us know if you’ll join any of these events.

Stewart, fiber network field technician, had originally installed FiOS at the house so he responded to help the AV specialist who was installing the new system.   He detached all the devices and tested each one individually, systematically identifying which ones were causing interference or not working properly.   After spending hours testing and re-configuring the system to work properly, Stewart then took the time to explain to the AV specialist what the problems were and showed him what changes were made.   Thanks to his expertise and professionalism, team managers now request him to install FiOS for all the players who sign up with Verizon.

This story illustrates just one reason why Stewart was named the most recent “Service Hero” for Verizon’s FiOS franchise in the Tampa Bay area.  Stewart has worked for Verizon for 15 years, moving from a copper tech to his current role as a fiber network field technician.  He is a recognized subject matter expert and is often called upon to conduct peer-to-peer training.  His sense of urgency has saved numerous frustrated customers and, thanks to Stewart’s professional approach, turned them into promoters of Verizon’s products and services.

Stewart is also willing to take the extra steps necessary to build business relationships that benefit FiOS such as his arrangement with the owner of a local audio-video shop that installs media equipment for local Tampa Bay area residents.  When this individual has a service challenge with his customers and Verizon involving the technology, he reaches out directly to Stewart for resolution.  This relationship has led to a number of customers switching their provider to enjoy the superior picture quality offered by FiOS HD service and the fast, consistent Internet service offered by FiOS Quantum. 

Stewart recognizes that as the Verizon Credo states in part, “we have work because our customers value our high-quality communication services.”  He does not shrink from challenges, yet another of the many reasons he was selected to represent Verizon as a Service Hero.  As a Service Hero, Stewart will be featured in local newspaper and TV ads and his photo now appears on the window of Verizon’s building in downtown Tampa. 

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc., which owns 55 percent of the partnership, and Vodafone Group Plc, which owns 45 percent of the partnership.

About Verizon Wireless Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s largest 4G LTE network and largest, most reliable 3G network. The company serves 98.9 million retail customers, including 93.2 million retail postpaid customers.  Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with more than 73,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ) and Vodafone (LSE, NASDAQ: VOD).  For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com.  For the latest news and updates about Verizon Wireless, visit our News Center at http://news.verizonwireless.com or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/VZWNews.

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How times have changed! Now, rarely a day goes by where her homework assignments don’t call for use of the computer. Whether it’s researching authors or historical events, getting inspiration for science projects, or typing up an essay, a computer has become as important to today’s teenager as a backpack or pocket calculator.

Online reference material is almost unlimited, which can present its own problems. With so many sources to choose from, students have to learn how to be both curious and objective, searching for answers but constantly questioning their legitimacy. But helpful web sites abound. From Learnist and eduClipper to Khan Academy, there are an overwhelming number of online resources if you know where to look.  

And then there are the educational social networks. Web sites like Lore, Edmodo and My Big Campus are providing teachers with revolutionary ways to extend the learning experience beyond the classroom. Whether it’s confirmation of those homework assignments, reference tools for problem solving, or just a safe and secure environment for communicating and sharing ideas, these online platforms are growing in both sophistication and popularity.

Of course, such an immersive educational experience is only possible when there are efficient and effective home networks. For us and millions like us, that means Verizon FiOS. With so many connected devices, speed and flexibility is essential, and our FiOS Quantum service never misses a beat.

Technology as a driving force in education is here to stay, although sometimes I can’t help thinking that it’s the kids that are doing the teaching and the teachers that are striving to keep up! But whoever’s at the wheel, I know we all have to be on board. A great home network is no longer a luxury, it’s an educational necessity.