• The Climate Clock will be a work of public art incorporating Silicon Valley’s measurement and data management technologies to help people understand climate change while encouraging them to continue reducing their carbon footprint on planet Earth.
• Today, when you recycle your cans and newspapers, or take a cloth bag to the store, no one tells you how many pounds of CO2 were not released into the atmosphere because of your actions. There is no feedback loop, no positive reinforcement for your good deeds.
• Feedback is a powerful motivator for change. What is the feedback loop for climate change? How will we know if our actions are making a difference? Do our actions in Silicon Valley make a difference if people in developing countries are building coal-fired plants to support their rising standard of living?
• In designing the Climate Clock, artists and technologists will also want to consider the impact of the art work itself on the environment. If it consumes electricity, can the power be generated from a renewable source like wind or photovoltaics? Can the work be made from recycled materials? What kinds of construction technologies will the artwork need to survive and function in the open for 100 years? The Climate Clock should not only meet current criteria for sustainable design, such as the LEED standards, but also serve as a model for innovative practices.

Core ideas

• This is an information visualisation problem
• This is a data collection problem
• This is a social-behavior feed-back monitoring loop issue.
• There IS a city element so some monumental elements make San Jose happy.

Ways to change minds

• Show the resources in context. What have we spent? What do we have left? Don't just show delta. Book about more meaningful statistics: The Tiger That Isn't
• Google earth, building a global consciousness. The translation from global to local is challenging.
• About our inability to understand and respond to gradual change: Al Gore's "Frog in water" - We’re like the frog in water slowly heated up to boiling that doesn’t know to jump out
• Offer perspective. How long has there been humans on earth? How long will we have left at our current course? In total earth time we would be close to midnight.
• Information Esthetics, a blog of occasional insight: http://www.infosthetics.com/

Related/inspirational projects

• Long now clock - The idea was to build a monument scale, multi-millennial, all mechanical clock as an icon to long term thinking
• World without us wikipedia - This documentary explores what might happen if the United States were to leave the international arena, rescind its global reach and become an isolationist nation for the first time since the early 1900s