To Get the Climate Recipe Right, We'll Need to Add More Sugar

In the face of the dire threat of climate change it is vitally important to objectively assess our current situation and have a clear understanding of what we need to do. Real progress has been made in developing critical climate related mitigation technologies. The cost of solar and wind power generation has dropped dramatically, related storage and battery development is showing great promise and advances in materials science offer remarkable new ways to build low carbon cities and products. Zero emissions cars, trucks and buses and a growing range of micro-mobility vehicles are creating viable paths to a low carbon transportation future.

On the policy front, the Paris Climate Agreement was an historic breakthrough, the culmination of decades of work at the local, regional and national levels to create a framework for cutting climate pollution and directing investment to low and no carbon alternatives. The agreement, already ratified by 185 of 197 countries present in Paris, requires signatories to put forward their best efforts through “nationally determined contributions”, strengthen their efforts going forward, and to report regularly on their emissions and implementation efforts.

Yet, despite this significant progress on both the technology and policy fronts, the scale and speed of these carbon reduction innovation and policy initiatives hasn’t matched the scope and seriousness of the threat.

It’s time to think (way) outside the box.

We need a next-gen approach that leverages every tool we have. And we need to combine and coordinate them in new ways that can dramatically increase our impact. Particularly important are the new data based technologies — AI, big data, blockchain/DLT, and sensor/IoT — that are impacting our daily lives in myriad ways.

Big global companies are using these technologies to influence individual preferences and choices without informed consent or awareness, raising widespread concerns of their unchecked power. Yet it is important to remember that the practices of big technology firms need to be separately analyzed from the technologies themselves. For example, big-data based solutions that enable sophisticated understandings of preferences and attitudes don’t have to belong solely to corporate advertisers seeking private gain. Building in transparency creates buy-in and more lasting changes in behavior. Combined with transparent, democratic processes and a “human in the loop” approach, these technologies can act as super powers for good, to paraphrase Andrew Ng, one of the world’s leading AI researchers.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This now famous quote, popularizing the first Earth Day in 1970, is truer today than ever. If we aren’t able to change our consumption and lifestyle habits, we risk locking in catastrophic changes in the Earth’s natural systems. Helping people make good individual environmental choices is a crucial, complementary part of the larger effort to reverse climate impacts. To unlock the power of individuals to reduce their carbon footprint we need to create sophisticated incentive systems that will change individual and societal behaviors.

New hybrid innovation strategies that combine data-driven technologies and “nudges”

We need to build a new wave of climate action technologies based on a combination of these powerful new data-based solutions and insights from behavioral science. That’s why we support the building of digital platforms to reward good environmental choices, like choosing to ride a bike or take transit instead of driving a car. Billions of individual actions created the carbon pollution that got us to where we are today. We’ll need billions of individual clean responses to get us where we need to be. To achieve this scale of impact we’ll need to use calibrated behavioral “nudges” and leverage data based technologies to build systems of incentives and rewards that create good, earth-friendly habits. And when people get in the habit of making good environmental choices, they will become stronger advocates for expanding the enabling infrastructure and policy environments for sustainable transport.

The progress we have made in building a movement to combat climate change and its impacts is impressive and should be lauded. Let’s take the next step and be unafraid to use the world’s most powerful innovations to build an ecosystem for the common good.

It’s time to move fast, and fix things.