This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
The pace at which glaciers have actually melted is faster than the pace of our economies addressing climate change. After decades of ineffective response to increasingly urgent cries of alarm about this "absolutely unprecedented emergency" (Blue Planet Laureates), and the need to avoid "irreversible catastrophic effects" (James Hansen), climate realists like myself are worried that we actually have run out of time.
The world population is seven billion and growing. Getting CO2 emissions to peak immediately (rather than grow at two per cent a year), and start a rapid reduction in each succeeding year in order to hold a 2°C increase (the threshold scientists say could avoid the worst effects of climate change), is feeling increasingly implausible without a miracle.
Yet although the door for action in the traditional plodding way may have shut, a window for miracles has appeared. Over the last two decades access to the internet has permeated and impacted our business models. We are witnessing the rise of a new organisational paradigm I call Peers Inc. Zipcar, which I co-founded, taught me the lesson when we applied technology to make renting cars for as little as an hour at a time as easy and convenient as owning your own. The internet has taken the pain out of dealing with many small pieces; transaction costs are close to zero. A totally new approach to organising resources is now possible.
You will recognise the movement's fingerprint in well-known institutions and movements such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, Wikipedia, massive online open courses, smartphones apps, 3D printing, open data and free and open-source software. In each, three components are the building blocks of success: the harnessing of excess capacity; a platform for participation that organises and empowers; and a diverse group of participating peers.
Airbnb's extraordinary growth -- in just four years the company offered up the same number of beds for rent as the InterContinental Hotels Group, the largest hotel chain in the world, mustered in 65 years -- was due in part to coupling the excess capacity found in idle housing assets with a beautiful and compelling platform that gave homeowners the look, feel and technical skills of professionals. A similar potential for exponential growth, using the same principles, can be found in small-scale solar power. More than 600,000 homes and businesses in the US have installed on-site solar since 2000. Growth has been 50 per cent year on year in each of the last three years, with almost 200,000 installations in 2014. What happened? Instead of homeowners spending months to figure out the financing, best hardware configurations, contractors and relevant tax benefits, Sun City, Sungevity, Solar Mosaic and others have been perfecting web platforms that make signing up alluring and simple. Just as Airbnb gives the power of the corporation to its "hosts", so too do these one-stop-shop solar companies empower the small property owner. And, like Airbnb, the resulting collaboration enjoys the improved economics of the excess capacity to be found in free rooftops and the guaranteed purchase of most of the power generated by the owner.
Before there was Waze -- a good example of a Peers Inc-inspired app-based crowdsourced navigation system -- companies used to muscle traffic data out of roadside sensors, traffic counts and well-positioned speed cameras. Waze transformed this heavy lift by leveraging the sensors and GPS within each individual driver's smartphones to deliver better speed and routing results, and in real time. So too can big data services -- generally making use of data that already existed but was simply unvalued and unexamined -- rapidly transform the energy efficiency of most buildings. A 2010 McKinsey study estimated that 23 per cent of energy demand in 2020 could be reduced through the application of big data to energy efficiency. Again, a deep collaboration is involved. Platform algorithms examine the mountains of data from both individuals and communities of individuals, recognise patterns and design beautiful and useful ways for us to quickly interact with this now empowering data. Energy-management systems such as OPower (targeting utilities), SkyFoundry (companies) and Nest (individuals) are all striving to make it simple and convenient to take our data and turn it in to immediate personal, hyperlocal energy reductions. Big data also offers us the power of exponential learning, if the platforms make use of the thousands and millions of transactions that pass through their servers.
Such collaborations also permit us to find just the right expertise we need at just the right time. Yelp reviewers tell me about my local hardware store. Trending Twitter hashtags give me eyewitness updates of unfolding local crises. Brilliant experts in diverse fields solve the "unsolvable" problems of Nasa and Pfizer using InnoCentive. Platforms let us identify and make use of people's deep nuanced experience. Recently, 350.org developed an extensive and multilayered campaign around divestment from fossil fuels. You might think that this is organising such as it ever was, but actually it is something new: 350's campaign almost always requires specific customisation and localisation of the programme. It relies on the participating peers to add their own individuation of the campaign under way. Thus we see students provoking Harvard University, The Guardian overlaying a black, oily pop-up over its website's home page, and people in 60 countries at 450 different events calling attention to themselves on Global Divestment Day.
The movement's organisational structure relies on a solid, synergistic, complementary collaboration between the big Inc (governments, organisations, and institutions) and the small peers (individuals and local companies in every nook and cranny of the world). It is this collaboration that can produce the miracles. Together. None can succeed alone.
This is what gives me hope, what fills me with optimism. With the right structure -- excess capacity, platforms, peers – we can scale transformations at exponential speed. We can learn at an exponential pace and we can count on solutions being adapted for each unique situation around the world. We can break out of those depressing and implausible trend lines and chart a whole new path.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
