Public voting is now on to choose the winners of the MIT Climate CoLab contests, an online award that seeks to promote the best ideas to tackle the many issues related to climate change. Have a look at the very diverse range of proposals and pick your favourite. But hurry, all votes must be in by 31 July 2016!
Climate CoLab is a crowdsourcing platform developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence, that seeks to encourage citizens the world over to come up with and put forward innovative ideas to combat climate change. The platform boasts some 60,000 registered members, including some 200 experts in climate change and related topics. You can read more about the platform and how you can join in here.
Climate CoLab recently opened public voting as part of its yearly contest programme, encouraging ideas to help for example with greenhouse gas emissions reduction, behaviour change for sustainability, adaptation, low-energy cities, renewable energy.
Get Out the Vote
Teams have come up with some nifty ways to address our environmental challenges. For example, there’s a proposal for a system that would allow people to create fuel in their own home using atmospheric CO2. Another particularly forward-thinking idea is to create a digital currency that would be awarded to people who voluntarily offset carbon. On the biodiversity front, one team is looking at using artificial reefs in response to coral bleaching. There’s the app that’s designed to help people in India properly segregate and dispose of waste or the dashborard system that allows authorities to track and monitor a city’s emissions. In short, there is a lot of food for thought among the proposals – check them all out and cast your vote. Simply go to the proposal page click ‘VOTE for Proposal’. But hurry, voting closes on 31 July 2016!
The proposal with the highest number of website votes will bag the Popular Choice Award, while an expert jury will select a Judge’s Choice Award. The same proposal could win both awards. The winners will get the chance to present their proposal to MIT and enter the ClimateCoLab Winners Program which can secure them a 10,000 USD Grand Prize as well as loads of promotional and networking opportunities.
You can read about some previous years winners here and watch a short presentation by one of the MIT researchers behind the project below:
