Politics
 

Open national and local carbon accounts

From Sustainable Community Action

Updates & related news 2009

December 19

  • Failure at such a grand level means we have to act locally, Lord Hunt, visiting professor at Delft University and a former director general of the UK Meteorological Office, 19 December [1] "Experience also shows that local actions can only be truly effective if measurements of climate and environment are widely publicised as well as information about targets, and projections of emissions. Such transparency is needed about what is happening, what is planned and how every individual can be involved..." topic

December 14

  • Bonn Center for Local Climate Action and Reporting - carbonn - aims at facilitating the access of local governments to climate benchmarking instruments on a global scale. 14 December [2]

December 13

December 9

Comment re Copenhagen, draft for posting to Project Dirt, WiserUK, Transition Towns Forum, UKGovWeb

Open national and local carbon accounts

With news coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit there's more awareness of the necessary political dialogue between countries. What there's much less awareness of, including amonst the activist community, is the need for political dialogue, not just between countries but also, within countries.

As with Copenhagen, this dialogue needs to be underpinned by data, and specifically data by place. If we're serious about carbon reduction, and if in the UK we're serious about getting anywhere near within our carbon budgets we need sufficient data, by place, that enough of us can have sufficient confidence in. Black box stuff won't do. Transparency is essential.

More about open national and local carbon accounts on the Sustainable Community Action wiki http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Open_national_and_local_carbon_accounts

  • Climate change, Climate Sceptics and Open Data, Open Knowledge Foundation Blog, December 5 [3]
  • "To be validated, knowledge must also be subject to the scrutiny of an extended community of citizens who have legitimate stakes in the significance of what is being claimed", Mike Hulme of UEA and Jerome Ravetz of Oxford Univeristy, 1 December [4]

November 22

  • "Transparency. Climate data needs to be publicly available and well documented. This includes metadata that explains how the data were treated and manipulated, what assumptions were made in assembling the data sets, and what data was omitted and why. This would seem to be an obvious and simple requirement, but the need for such transparency has only been voiced recently as the policy relevance of climate data has increased." Judy Curry, climate researcher, Nov 22 [5] topic

June 12

Open national and local carbon accounts/Request and campaign

June 10

Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the World Wide Web, asked to help government drive the opening up of access to UK Government data in the web over the coming month, June 10 [6] topic

May 7

Government outline next steps in their Power of Information programme. Minister announces plans for an overhaul of Crown Copyright rules that will make it easier for citizens to re-use Government information. May 7 [7] “They say information is power, but only distributed information is truly empowering. That's why the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) [External website] has looked again at the restrictions of Crown Copyright, and now a licence will automatically be granted to anyone wanting to use the information rather than having to apply beforehand." Tom Watson MP topic

April 7

With national and local carbon budgets likely to be announced or hinted at in the near future, perhaps a campaign to get Participatory carbon budgeting would be a more effective way to realise the aims of this plan?

March 31

Thanks to all who contributed to our wide ranging discussion at the we20 Nesta challenge event. After considering a range of options to take the plan forward it seems best to focus on one key aspect, which is something like making a clear, simple and compelling case for

Everyone who can help being able to help ... for which we need the data

which will enable us to gather support toward a positive outcome in time for the Copenhagen (UNFCCC) conference in November.

March12

Engage society in the transition, International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, March 2009 [8]

2008

"People power can beat climate change", Lord David Puttnam, October 28 [9] topic, topic, forum

References

  1. ↑ The Observer, 19 December 2009
  2. ↑ United Nations Environment Programme, 14 December 2009
  3. ↑ Open Knowledge Foundation Blog, December 5th, 2009
  4. ↑ news.bbc.co.uk, 1 December 2009
  5. ↑ Climate Audit, Nov 22, 2009
  6. ↑ Number10.gov.uk, June 10, 2009
  7. ↑ Cabinet Office, May 7, 2009
  8. ↑ University of Copenhagen, March 12 2009
  9. ↑ BBC News, October 28

This is a proposal (at first) within a UK context where suitable data appears to exist.

Contents

[edit] What's the problem?

Although a range of CO2 emissions data appears to exist, the information on the whole tends to be held by government or quasi government institutions. This can lead to, or be perceived to lead to problems with reuse of information for the benefit of society and communities. The data is barely visible. Few people probably are aware of its existence in spite of widespread concern about climate change. Government at all levels, but especially local government, can be risk-averse in putting out information which they perceive to be influential on their image.

[edit] What's the proposal?

  • A website with information and data available on ordinary web pages (not spreadsheet docs, or PDFs) by location. The website will enable people to see the whole picture from the personal, through local and national to international data in a clear and consistent way.
  • Website to include open forum for discussing contentious issues such as the fair and equitable allocation of emissions, and to enable the enrichment of this discussion with the wisdom of crowds
  • To seek to provide whatever may increase the options of ensuring all the data is available for reuse
  • To provide a framework within which citizens could make sense of the myriad of personal carbon footprint calculators on offer. The proposal is not about any sort of compulsion for all citizens to track their emissions, but just to provide a meaningful framework for those that wish to take responsibility for their carbon footprint.
  • To preserve trust in the independence and impartiality of the site, and to prevent manipulation by government or any sectional or vested interests, it should be run by a civil society group or network

[edit] How would this help?

  • The data would be more visible
  • Greater transparency and accountability
  • If reuse was facilitated, anyone would be free to use the data in creative and innovative ways to the benefit of both local communities and wider society.
  • It would encourage local communities to take more responsibility for their own carbon emissions
  • it would facilitate Participatory carbon budgeting
  • it would enable citizens to have more confidence in using personal carbon foot print calculators and to be able to relate their personal results to local community data
  • it would enable communities and wider society to discuss potentially contentious issues such as the carbon footprint of commuting
  • some local councils thanks to initiatives such as the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change have laudable and challenging CO2 reduction targets. Linking target information with readily available baseline information would enable councils to get more credit for their own initiatives.

[edit] Fundamental Open Rights

Arguments made on behalf of Open Data [1] include:

  • "Data belong to the human race". Typical examples are genomes, data on organisms, medical science, environmental data.
  • Public money was used to fund the work and so it should be universally available.
  • It was created by or at a government institution (this is common in US National Laboratories and government agencies)
  • Facts cannot legally be copyrighted.
  • Sponsors of research do not get full value unless the resulting data are freely available
  • Restrictions on data re-use create an anticommons
  • Data are required for the smooth process of running communal human activities (map data, public institutions)
  • In scientific research, the rate of discovery is accelerated by better access to data.

[edit] Data from non-governmental sources

International

  • List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions W
  • List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita W

[edit] Tweak 1 - Focusing on the positive

In addition to the above the project could, depending on available data, focus on more positive aspects of transition to low carbon communities. This might include for example declines in emissions since 2005, local and renewable energy sources, etc.

[edit] Village cinema

Vulcan CO2 flyover on Google Earth. About 3 mins. Added: 19 February 2009
'Revolutionary' CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas sources. About 5 mins. Added: April 02, 2008

[edit] Related topics

[edit] Related Wikipedia content

  • Open Data W

[edit] UK Government statistics

[edit] External links


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References

  1. ↑ Open Data W
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