Transcript for Coalition of the Willing

Coalition of the Willing

Beyond Copenhagen

In December 2009

leaders of state from about the world met in Copenhagen, Denmark,

to negotiate a historical accord to save the planet from catastrophic warming.

The outcome of the summit is a victory for major polluters and the status quo.

What happened?

How is it that,

presented with clear evidence of a looming catastrophe,

the international community settled for such a tepid response?

We know that industry strives for profit and governments strive for growth.

A full-scale war on global warming calls for industry to drastically reduce its carbon footprint.

The short-term result would be rising production costs and reduced profit.

Not the best outcome, especially in times of recession.

But the major stumbling block is the enemy involved.

A war on global warming needs to be a war on consumerism

the status quo in our developed societies.

So really: a war on the mainstream constituency of the capitalist state.

Reality check: no government will declare war on its own citizens.

Don't hold your breath for a "shock and awe" campaign on global warming.

Governments today just aren't up to the task.

Fortunately, the war on global warming isn't in the hands of government alone.

It is time for a new approach -

an approach that mobilizes the creative energies of the global population

and turns the way we see the problem on its head.

We need to find a way of waking people from their consumerist daze

and showing them how empowering a war-effort could be.

People could contribute so much more

than just turning off the lights.

Back to the 60s

To appreciate the way ahead, we need to look back to the 1960s.

When we think of the 60s, we think of the birth of a new individualism.

The 60s revolutionaries kicked against the social values that they'd inherited from the decade before.

Throwing themselves into the unknown,

they conducted radical experiments with new forms of life.

They liberated their desires through sexual expression and free-love,

threw open the doors of perception through drugs and radical philosophy,

and made music and art to celebrate the spiritual transformation

of a whole generation.

The 60s countercultural revolutionaries

shrugged-off the straight-jacket of mass-market culture

and embraced a new era of individual expression.

However, our perspective on the 60s tends to be overly focused on individualism.

This is on account of the way that capitalism adapted itself through the 1970s and 80s.

The 60s caught capitalism completely off guard.

How were companies to sell products to a generation that had rejected consumerism?

The answer was to tune into the movement

and to sell to the 'individual'in everyone.

The strategy worked.

The marketing machine captured the spirit of 60s individualism and made it its own.

Today this leaves us doubly compromised.

On the one hand, we've become used to defining ourselves by the things we buy.

Leaving ideology behind,

we now derive a sense of personal identity and empowerment

from the goods we purchase and consume.

We've become revolutionary exponents of 'over-the-counter' culture,

fired by the rallying cry:

Go on, break the rules,

define who you are!

With our sneakers!

On the other hand, we've inherited an incomplete picture of history.

Blinded by individualistic short-sightedness,

we've failed to see what the 60s revolution was really all about.

Swarm politics

The 60s was only superficially a decade of individualism.

If the countercultural revolution transformed society,

it was because individuals, knowingly or unknowingly,

acted en masse as a swarm

The countercultural revolution was a rhizomatic meshwork of loosely-coordinated,

loosely-affiliated struggles.

Their goals weren't always complimentary,

but the struggles were aligned

and together they staged a mass offensive to shatter the status quo.

The real lesson of the 60s is that a swarm offensive can transform cultures

and change history in extraordinary ways.

It's easy to see how we might bring this insight up to date.

Thanks to the internet, the world is networked like never before.

We can use the internet to kick-start our own revolution

harnessing the energy of the human swarm,

and focusing it on THE problem of our time.

Let's take our lead from Web 2.0 and the strategies of open source culture.

It's time to recover the true spirit of the 60s counterculture,

with an internet-based swarm offensive aimed at triggering a 21st century culture shift.

Open source culture

The term "open source" refers to a software development strategy

in which the source code is made available to a community.

This way everyone can make changes and improvements to the software.

An example of the success of this strategy

is the globally established computer operating system LINUX,

which was created, and is still constantly updated,

by contributions from all over the world.

Wikipedia is another famous example of open source culture.

It has over 75 000 contributors

working on more than 10 000 000 articles

in over 250 languages.

The open source approach to collaboration

enables people from all over the planet

to engage and create together.

Imagine what we could achieve with an open source approach to the war on global warming.

We need the infrastructure to get this started.

We need a network of high-profile online destinations

that people from all over the world can access

to share their knowledge and generate the tools,

innovations and social networks that we need to combat climate change.

The network

Imagine a web 2.0 network comprised of three sites working as a linked system.

The first part of the system is a Green Knowledge Trust.

This is a green Wikipedia with a practical focus.

The war effort needs more than just facts.

We need an online repository of practical knowledge,

a "how to" guide for ordinary people

tasked with setting-up functional, low-carbon societies.

The Green Knowledge Trust is a place where people

share high-quality knowledge on low carbon living.

It would be information central for the war on global warming.

The second part of the system is an Open Innovation Centre.

Imagine an online research site devoted to environmental problems

that is open to input from anyone.

Organizations post problems on the site and ask for solutions.

Anyone is free to submit ideas and form groups.

Together they could work-up genuine concepts.

As the projects take shape, they'd attract the attention

of experts from about the world, who'd contribute

their unique skills to the projects.

A swarm can be smarter than any one of us working alone.

An Open Innovation Centre would enable us

to tap into our collective genius.

To coordinate these sites we need a Catalyst System.

The Catalyst System would be a social-networking site

designed to crystallize the global movement for change.

You are familiar with MySpace and Facebook.

Now imagine a social-networking site

designed to put you in touch with real-world projects,

locally, nationally and all over the planet.

There is GPS technology giving you a graphic representation

of where projects are located in your region.

You can zero-in to find out more about the people involved.

Impressed by an idea you got from the Open Innovation Centre?

Want to try putting it to work?

Use the classified feature to find grants and sponsors,

then link up with like minded people

and not-for-profits campaigning for change.

The challenge

The 60s countercultural revolution

revealed how swarm activity can transform the fabric of society.

By inspiring and enabling new forms of creative collaboration

between activists, experts and ordinary citizens,

a network like the one that we've described

could spark a swarm offensive for the internet age.

This could transform the nature of the war on global warming

and trigger a new era of global collaborative culture.

Get ready to change the world.

There are millions of others waiting to play their part.

All that they need is the infrastructure to make it happen.

We have the tools that we need to construct this infrastructure.

We have the talent and intelligence to make it a system people will want to use.

Lord knows we have the motivation to get busy.

So get started, before it's too late.

Log on, converge, and

SWARM