Towards a climate agreement strong enough to protect communities, ecosystems and future generations
You will find us everywhere around the world – ordinary people
wanting, working, hoping for success in the fight against climate change, investing with enough political will and global cooperation, that will help to
forge a climate of agreement strong enough to protect communities,
ecosystems and future generations from avoidable climate change.
It is not time to rest yet. If we want to see success by 2020, and if 
we
define success as a global agreement sufficient to protect people and
other species everywhere well into the future, then there is still a
huge and critical role for us. We are the ones who can focus attention
on the likely long-term consequences of the negotiations. We can
monitor whether the collective effort being proposed is enough to
achieve the goals that have been put forth. Until the day when formal
institutions pick up the role of monitoring and communicating how close
the negotiations are to achieving their goals – to bring CO2 levels
back towards 350ppm and limit temperature increase to 1.5° to 2.0°C –
no one is better placed for the job than we are.
The Climate Interactive program partners, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Ventana Systems, are releasing a unique new
tool that allows people around the world to do precisely this sort of
monitoring and communication.
Called the Climate Scoreboard, it is an embeddable widget that
people can include in blogs, websites, press releases, newsletters, and
more. It shows, in a simple visual form, the expected temperature in
2100 if current proposals in the global climate negotiations were fully
implemented, and shows how close those proposals bring us to achieving
climate goals. It is based on analysis using a computer simulation of
climate change, but designed to be simple to understand and easy to
share.
The Scoreboard uses the same technology you might use every day to
check the weather forecast for your city. In that case, forecasters at
the weather station update their predictions for the coming days, and
the icon on your computer desktop changes to show the new forecast. In
the case of the Climate Scoreboard, when negotiating positions change,
a team in Copenhagen will immediately update the analysis of the
long-term consequences. In real time, around the world, wherever the
Scoreboard is posted, the ‘score’ will update – showing both the
progress that has been realized and the effort still required to
achieve the 1.5°-2.0° goal.
Right now the Climate Scoreboard shows that proposals on the table
in the run-up to Copenhagen would be strong enough to prevent some
temperature increase compared to a scenario with no action. But current
proposals don’t yet achieve the emissions reductions needed to achieve
the 1.5° - 2.0°C goal.
That’s why sharing the Scoreboard is an essential way to contribute
to progress since the Copenhagen summit and in the months that will
follow. Without something like the Scoreboard it is simply too easy for
the negotiations to remain focused on the political challenge of
dividing up the climate change effort, without really asking if the
proposed effort is large enough in the first place.
Citizens around the world could, with determination and creativity,
use the Climate Scoreboard to offer a reality check for the
negotiations. Imagine if delegates in Copenhagen saw the image of the
Scoreboard posted every day when they entered the conference center.
Imagine if Presidents, Prime Ministers, and legislators received copies
of it in emails and letters. Imagine if reporters used the Climate
Scoreboard to show their readers how far the negotiations have come and
how far they have yet to go.
What’s needed now is a very quick and very wide dispersal of the
Scoreboard, so that gap between the effort that has been pledged so far
and the effort that is actually needed can be made clear across all
sectors of society and in countries around the world. The first step
towards shrinking that gap is to name it and make it visible. The
Climate Scoreboard can help you and your networks contribute to this
essential task.
The Climate Scoreboard widget and video as well as the science and analysis behind the Scoreboard can also be found at http://climateinteractive.org/scoreboard.
Elizabeth Sawin is Co-Director of Climate Interactive. She lives
with her husband and two daughters in Hartland Vermont, as part of a
cohousing community and organic farm. She can be reached at www.climateinteractive.org