The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence has developed this on-line forum where citizens create, analyze, and select detailed proposals for what to do about climate change. Anyone can join the Climate CoLab community and participate.
Community members are invited to submit and comment on proposals outlining what they think should be done about climate change. In some contests, computerized simulation models project the environmental and economic outcomes of the proposed actions proposed. Experts review and evaluate the proposals, and both experts and community members select the most promising proposals. Our 2012/2013 CoLab contests divided the overall problem of climate change into many different sub-problems (like how to reduce emissions from electric power generation in the largest emitting countries or how city governments can adapt to climate change). For each key sub-problem, we engaged experts in the area to advise proposal authors. After the contests end, the winning proposals will be presented to people and organizations who could actually implement them. In later contests, community members will develop integrated proposals that bring together elements from many different sub-problems into overall solutions for entire countries, regions, or the whole world. By constructively engaging a broad range of scientists, policy makers, business people, investors, and concerned citizens, we hope the Climate CoLab will help to develop, and gain support for, climate change plans that are better than any that would have otherwise been developed.