Climate change: the “killer application” for mass collaboration?

Don and I have been ruminating over the potential to develop the equivalent of the human genome project for climate change and would like your input on the issue.

An optimist could argue that we’re in the early days of something unprecedented. Thanks to the web 2.0 the entire world is beginning to collaborate around a single idea for the first time ever: changing the weather. Climate change is quickly becoming a nonpartisan issue and all citizens obviously have a stake in the outcome. So for the first time we have one global, multi-media, affordable, many-to-many communications system, and one issue on which there is growing consensus. Around the world there are hundreds, probably thousands of collaborations occurring where everyone from scientists to school children are mobilizing to do something about carbon emissions.

On January 31st in the United States, for example, millions of American students at over 1,300 academic institutions will take part in “Focus the Nation,” a one-day academic and civic-engagement discussion focused on climate change, its consequences and potential solutions. Organizers hope the event will create a groundswell of activism and help spur government policy-makers into action. The event will feature an interactive forum where citizens, students and political representatives can discuss issues, challenges and solutions. Participants will then vote on their top five priorities for action and the results will be forwarded to local and state representatives. Few other issues have garnered the attention of more than a million participants, and few, if any, have gone as far as Focus the Nation in convincing colleges, universities and secondary schools to lend an entire day of instruction to just one topic.

Before we get too excited, however, we should consider the pessimist’s case. One could argue, for example, that while there was there is only one human genome there are many, many solutions to climate change. It seems unlikely that someone, or some organization, will ever be in a position to coral the entire world around developing one “magic bullet” solution to climate change in the same way that organizations such as the National Institute of Health and Wellcome Trust helped to coordinate efforts to synthesize the genome.

Moreover, the worldwide effort to decode the human genome promised significant advances in health care and huge commercial windfalls for companies that learned how to exploit it. Apart from extremists, few people argued that the human genome project was a bad idea and there was little organized resistance. The efforts to stop climate change seem unlikely to produce similar windfalls, although there will undoubtedly be money to made in green energy, construction materials, and consumer products. Worse, halting the warming of the planet will require action — and in some cases, uncomfortable and perhaps unwelcome lifestyle changes — by billions of dispersed individuals and some very powerful economic interests that will resist change.

If we fail to stop climate change there could be devastating consequences. But for most people those consequences seem distant and it’s certainly true that the worst of it will be inherited by future generations. Given the short-termism that dominates our political systems, our economy, our capital markets, and day-to-day decision-making as individuals, I am not convinced that humankind will be sufficiently motivated by a sense of inter-generational justice to make the deep and difficult adjustments that are required to avert global ecological disruption.

So, I reluctantly put myself in the pessimist’s camp for now. While I think there will be many significant collaborations to stop climate change, I don’t see the equivalent of the human genome project emerging in this space. That being said, I am eager to see someone prove otherwise. It’s true that no issue has captivated the attention of a broad internal audience as much as climate change has in recent years. And, as noted by Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, “For far too long, climate change has been seen as a problem of the future, one that only a limited range of ministries and institutions should manage. This must change now. Climate change requires broader engagement.”

Will the “killer application” for mass collaboration turn out to be saving the planet? What do you think?