Climate CoLab "Global Plan" contest enters judging phase

The MIT Climate CoLab "Global Plan" contest's first phase, proposal preparation, is over and the second phase, where the judges select the semi-finalists, has begun.

Here are the published aims of the contest:

"This contest seeks an overall plan for the world as a whole. A key aspect of the contest is that authors are invited to create integrated proposals, which can incorporate proposals from both prior and currently active Climate CoLab contests. Proposals in this contest will be evaluated in large part on how well they bring together proposals from other contests to articulate a broad, coherent vision of what the world as a whole should do. Authors can also access the EnROADS simulator developed by Climate Interactive or model runs from Stanford’s Energy Modeling Forum that project the future environmental and economic outcomes of proposed actions."

Here's my own submission, Green Keynesianism and Climate Free Trade Areas

It's been an interesting experience entering the contest. Disappointing too, at times, especially in the last few days, when "throwaway" proposals proliferated. About twenty-five additional proposals, almost all of them very weak intellectually, were posted to the site just in the last couple of weeks.

Most of the new proposals, and a large portion of the old, require what I call "magical thinking", in that they will never be adopted because they are politically or economically unworkable, or both. Some even contravened the Laws of Thermodynamics.

As critical thinking exercises go, most third-year Unity students can do better than this.

But there were some interesting submissions, a handful.

I don't envy the judges their task, sorting the wheat from the chaff.

CAT turns 40

An excellent Guardian article today:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/01/turning-a-slate-quarry-green-40-years-of-centre-for-alternative-technology

Remembering our 2010 Spring Break field trip there:

http://ucsustainability2.blogspot.com/

Chris Huhne figures it out

Finally, a moderately serious politician is starting to put two and two together.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/27/energy-efficient-putin-planet-europe-greens-russia

CoLab releases video instructions

Island Energy job

Community Energy Associate

Posted By Nancy Carter on 6/20/2014 12:00:00 AM   |  Last Edited By Nancy Carter on 6/20/2014 3:09:07 PM

Summary: The Island Institute, a nonprofit community development organization located in Rockland, Maine, seeks a Community Energy Associate to provide technical, community outreach and administrative support to the Community Energy team. The CE team assists the Institute’s community partners in Maine's year-round island and remote coastal communities to better understand and confront their unique energy challenges. This is a one-year position renewable based on secured funding.

The Island Institute’s Community Energy program undertakes projects that address island and remote coastal communities' priorities related to their energy challenges and opportunities, including energy efficiency, the evaluation of ocean renewable energy and community-owned renewable energy projects, and formal and informal energy education.  This work is motivated by the economic and climate implications of island energy use and seeks to result in concrete, measurable impacts in our partner communities.

Working closely with other Community Energy program staff, the Community Energy Associate will implement projects that seek to:

• Increase home and business owner access to energy efficiency retrofits and related incentives;
• Provide technical analysis and translation to local stakeholders evaluating the potential for community-owned renewable energy projects;
• Engage with coastal stakeholders on the potential impacts and benefits of offshore wind development in Maine;
• Build local capacity to work on energy issues through intergenerational energy education programs.
  
• For the complete job posting, including required and preferred qualifications, please visit: www.islandinstitute.org/careers.php
  

Your help needed

MIT's Climate CoLab contests approach the judging phase, to begin July 14th. My proposal is the only one so far within its category to complete all the judges' requirements and so likely to place highly, but no-one so far has voted for it.

There have been few votes cast thus far in any case, so this isn't necessarily any indication that no-one likes my proposal, but I'll need all the help I can get if I'm to win or even to place.

I'm asking readers of Sustainability Thought and Deed to register and log in to the MIT Climate CoLab overall contest, navigate to the specific Global Plan contest, read my proposal, and consider voting for it.

If you don't want to vote for it, that's fine. Tell me why, in a comment.

Within the Climate CoLab context, the more comments a proposal receives, the better.

Lower court decision with major ramifications

If this goes unchallenged, or perhaps even if it is, it sets a precedent, one that even the five conservative Supreme Court judges may think twice before undoing. Normally the use of cost benefit analysis, required for all executive branch actions since Reagan, and quite wide form of analysis since Bill Clinton issued Executive. Order No. 12,866, pushes public policy  towards moderate or conservative decisions, but in this case the courts interpretation leaves a major barn door open through which to drive many climate mitigation cases, including perhaps some international ones.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3454764/court-blocks-arch-mine-coal-expansion/