Global Plan
Global Plan contest: Overview
Question What combination of actions can be taken in the world as a whole to address climate change?
Submit proposals https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300701
Deadline July 31, 2014, at 11:59:59 PM U.S. Eastern Time
Rules All entrants must agree to the 2014 Contest Rules
Prizes Judges Choice and Popular Choice winners will be featured at the Climate CoLab conference in the fall of 2014, where a $10,000 Grand Prize will be awarded to the top 2014 proposal (for more see the web site of the 2013 conference). The winners will also have an opportunity to participate in a meeting with experts who will provide advice about their proposals.
Guidelines from Advisors and Fellows
The following 2 minute video provides an overview of the four main elements needed to complete a proposal for this contest:
Opportunity/challenge
There are major opportunities to address climate change at the sectoral (e.g. transport, buildings, industry, electricity), national (e.g. China, U.S., India, EU), and state/local levels, as demonstrated by other Climate CoLab contests. But ultimately, the combination of all actions taken across the planet will dictate how much progress humankind makes in the face of climate change.
This contest invites Climate CoLab members to create an integrated vision for what actions the world as a whole can take.
Under the current state of the world’s governance system, there isn’t any one organization or even a defined group of organizations that could take such a vision and readily enact it. Instead, successful action will require work by many people across multiple organizations around the globe.
Articulating a vision for the world as a whole has great potential value, since it can demonstrate that there is a plausible path forward. And such a vision can serve as a roadmap for the many disparate organizations and actors whose efforts must be enlisted.
Integrated proposals
To create such overall visions for the world, the proposals in this contest are integrated proposals that can include any number of sub-proposals from other contests. People who contribute to the winning integrated proposals and to the sub-proposals they contain can all receive Climate CoLab Points. This contest is the first pilot test for using this novel approach to large-scale collective problem-solving. For more details about the approach, see:
This contest is a pilot of integrated proposal functionality that the Climate CoLab hopes to deploy more extensively in future rounds of activity. If you have feedback on the approach, please let us know by sending email to admin@climatecolab.org.
Key issues and Elements of proposals
Any comprehensive combination of actions to address climate change across the world as a whole must necessarily involve:
- multiple sectors of the economy, especially segments of the energy and agricultural industries;
- activity at multiple geographic levels (international, national, regional, and local),
- interventions in the technical, biological, and geological systems that directly affect the earth’s carbon cycle as well as interventions in the economic and political systems, and behavioral patterns, that shape the relevant physical systems.
Authors should also:
- Cover a broad range of actions and show how they fit together into a coherent whole. Authors are invited to include any number of proposals from other Climate CoLab contests as part of their global proposal. The template allows for searching for and selection of proposals that authors wish to incorporate. An important element of any integrated global proposal is an explanation of how the multiple sub-proposals can be brought together into an integrated plan.
- Include a simulation model run. The model run is required. It has as its inputs combinations of future policies and energy technologies, and as its outputs a global emission pathway through 2100 and the resulting environmental and economic impacts. To do this, proposal authors will be able to create their own model runs using a partial version of EnROADS, a fast running simulator developed by Climate Interactive, or select from 30 model runs done as part of the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum’s EMF27 exercise.
- Describe how actions that directly impact climate change could come into being. In particular, proposal authors are encouraged to include specific political, economic, or cultural actions that would make the envisioned policies and energy technologies come into being.
When there is not enough space in the integrated proposal itself to include all this information, proposal authors can include sub-proposals that describe, for instance, more details about actions by investors, companies, or other organizations.
References
What the scientific community says about the potential threats of climate change and how the world can avoid it or adapt to it
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change: Working Group III Contribution to AR4,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Working Group II Contribution to AR5.
More on the EMF27 model runs
Climate CoLab. 2014. EMF27 model runs.
Kriegler, Elmar, et al. 2014. The role of technology for achieving climate policy objectives: overview of the EMF 27 study on global technology and climate policy strategies. Climatic Change, Volume 123 (3-4): 353-367.
More on EnROADS
Climate CoLab. 2014. EnROADS by Climate Interactive.
Climate Interactive. 2013. EnROADS home page.
Tom Fiddaman, Lori S. Siegel, Stephanie McCauley, Travis Franck, Elizabeth Sawin, Andrew P. Jones, John Sterman. 2013. En-ROADS Simulator Reference Guide (version 44).