Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Address Global Climate Change

Abstract

Global climate change, caused by human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions, is perhaps the most pressing and important problem currently facing humanity. It is also unique by virtue of being a truly systemic problem of vast complexity: it affects every one of us, and is directly affected by every one of our actions. Like nothing else, the climate crisis calls upon us to engage in effective collective decision making on a global scale. At the same time, the spectacular emergence of the Internet and associated information technology has created unprecedented opportunities for new kinds of interactions, via email, instant messaging, news groups, chat rooms, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and the like. As the well-known examples of Wikipedia and Linux illustrate, it is now possible to combine the work of thousands of knowledgeable and interested individuals in ways that were completely impossible a few years ago. But these technologies have not yet been used to deal effectively with our global problems. Our societal conversations about controversial topics like global climate change are often strident and unproductive. And we have no clear way to converge on well-supported decisions concerning what actions, both grand- and ground-level, humanity should take to solve these problems. In this paper we argue that it is now possible to harness computer technology to facilitate “collective intelligence”—the synergistic and cumulative channeling of