HOW New Internet Technology Could Do Much More for Climate

Many people have told us that more and better use of new internet technology could have massive benefits in preventing climate extinction, at much lower costs than some of the giant Christmas tree climate proposals we have seen.

That is absolutely true, and it is a matter of life or death, but it is not happening because of institutional problems.

When I worked at NSF, I got to see how those kinds of problems can work, first hand. For example… to really prevent climate extinction, I have argued for a 5 point approach, where point one is reduced net CO2 from making electricity. I have seen how RD&D money can be wasted in that area, and also how it can be massively transformative. 

SOME funding agents would look for those projects which can help, which have the lowest level of risk. Some would focus on the big targets for how AI could make the maximum contribution, regardless of risk. Our big problem today is the diversion of funding to less relevant, lower risk projects where the AI people don’t have to learn much new, as if they were auditioning for jobs as janitors, but the core needs of climate change are not addressed as well as they could be, by orders of magnitude.

This kind of problem came to me very vividly in 1993 or 1994, when I was a reviewer for the interagency defense conversion research program:

SR-1994-Defense-Conversion-Transition-and-the-Industrial-Base-Report-of-the-1993-AUSA-ADPA-Joint-Panels.pdf. The people who built that program created a list of review criteria to use in deciding which offer to fund. In that program, I once saw a choice between two offers:

(A(A)  A near certain min, delivering $1 million worth of net new benefits

(B(B )  A 50% serious but risk program, worth billions if it succeeded

The review criteria we were given strongly favored A. Most workers would strongly prefer A, which would give them secure income and a secure future. Many bottom up efforts reflect those preferences for A. (This reminds me of Schumpeter's prediction about how hard it would be for the US to maintain the spirit of honorable competition in general, so essential to growth in productivity.)

I have seen many massive consortia funding stuff like AI for good, to help with climate change and such, and most of the people end up in type A consortia. I did see one great group in Canada, with leadership from Michael Barnard, which focuses on what we really need to solve the real, important climate problems, but big public funding and attention is mainly on other activities which become like Christmas Tree programs.

There are a few big flagship programs in special places, like Dubai, where one on one personal connections do focus on big goals, but without the kind of general competition we need to mobilize the whole range of the best technology we need.

What WOULD work?

After I ran the NSF electric power area for a few years (mainly 2010-2014), I summarized what we really learned, what would really work, in a paper jointly funded by power people in France, Chile and Brazil: www.werbos.com/E/GridIOT.pdf .

Above all, project selection was open and competitive, and the criteria were well focused on the goals. Maximum serious potential benefit to what really matters was operationalized. I even remember part of instructing review panels: “Do not focus on what the worst case risk to the project is. [Worse case risk to earth climate is a very different kind of risk, since we only have one earth.] For each project, ask how big the loss might be if we don’t fund it, if it would have succeeded.”

The strange thing is, I learned at NSF that the projects which SOUND like low risk are usually MORE likely to fail, to end up as a waste of money. That is because they take approaches others have already tried, and do not invoke the kinds of new directions necessary to a big change.

So which do you want to buy: one big antiquated flagship, 1000 janitors, or 100 tough pioneers of whom 50 (or even just 10) produce something which totally changes the game? With climate, we KNOW where real game changers ARE doable, but we need a radical change in funding cultures to actually make it happen.

Until about 2013, when Lamar Smith began his remaking of NSF, NSF was maybe 25% efficient in doing this kind of stuff, which made it the number one wonder of the world for what it did. Proposals to totally avoid risk in NSF itself would have led to 0% productivity, through uniform type B funding or flagships by friends/graft. Where it will go now, post Smith, is hard to predict, but the world needs something like the classic NSF to do better on worst case climate risk. That included many elements which need to be reinvented, starting with Vannevar Bush’s initial manifesto and updated with new computer systems.

And, of course, never ever to forget the larger goals.