The past year has seen a surge in both government and citizen's attention to climate change. Scientists largely agree that climate change is happening and that it's human induced. And as the weather becomes weirder, public awareness is growing. The Stern Review urges economic action now to prevent costly adaptation later, the financial community is investing more in clean tech, and people want to see action on climate change. It is no longer an option not to act, the question is, what now?

This increased excitement is in danger of falling flat if real changes in our emissions levels aren't achieved. In the past, energy policy has focused on providing as much of it as possible, and environmental policy has focused on regulating out problems. These approaches will entirely miss the opportunity to turn awareness into action. Citizens are now treated by policy as consumers and wasters, and industries that produce commodities are treated (only reluctantly) as polluters, an approach that is disempowering for both. In trying to regulate, we must not make the mistake of squashing use-centered creativity at the individual or organisational level when we intend only to curb certain kinds of behaviour.We need to re-imagine the power of the user and producer.

Several shifts in our societies and economies show that the time is right for this desperately needed new approach to climate change and environmental solutions more broadly. 

1. Tthe myth of disengagement. In a country like the UK where just 21% of citizens feel they can meaninfully participate in local decision-making, people are frustrated and are turning away from traditional routes for enacting social change.  But at the same time, the rise in blogging, social networking and single issue activism shows that people are far from apathetic.
2. The newest online tools rely more heavily on the properties of networks that allow individuals to see the benefit of their actions and who else is doing something similar. This will have powerful implications for collective efficacy at local, national and international levels. As we struggle to make everyday choices that also benefit the public or our children, we will need new kinds of feedback. New web tools are showing the power of reciprocity (I will if you will) with sites like Pledge Bank. I'm interested in seeing this power unleashed on solutions for climate change.
3. As experiments like wikipedia and distributed computing turn out useful sources of collective intelligence, more experiments are underway. Nature recently reported their efforts to create a massive wiki for professional scientists, an up-to-the-minute source for the latest science.  We need to pool knowledge from many sources so that we can make the tough political and social choices that are urgently required. But even more than information.
   
4. The lessons from the GM debates, when people deeply mistrusted government and expert information, should be incorporated even further into policy-making. Public engagement is used not only to accept or reject pre-determined courses of action, but as a force for better solutions.
5. We are re-thinking what "innovation" means in light of international competitiveness and global change. In the past, innovation policy has focused heavily on supply side initiatives, such as how much R&D is funded and what science needs to be produced. The demand side has been neglected, although it is well known that users in a meaningful interaction with producers will create market-leading services and products. Innovative places combine those lead markets with a mobile population who move between academia, industry and services. (See NESTA's The Innovation Gap) The creative industries, growing faster than the rest of the UK economy, are made up of organisations that are less than 5 people.
   

And now back to the burning question, "what now"? Policy needs to be reconceived for a new kind of citizen and new ways of organising. Citizens may have a voice, but consumers have a megaphone. So how do we amplify citizen's choices to match the cacophony of their market preferences? How can conceiving of citizens as active producers be connected to changing our energy infrastructures? How do we harness individual action for public value?

There is no techno-fix, as James Lovelock would have us believe, in solutions like nuclear. We should balance the current focus on supply side policies with a renewed effort to support demand side innovation. Huge potential lies in combining the many options expert scientists and technologists have been developing over many years with the mass social consensus that awareness is bringing about. Though people do not want to change their own behaviour if their neighbour does not, it is clear that collective solutions can be realised when realistic options are generated by passionate individuals or organisations.

We need to give citizens the megaphone.

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