Nuin-Tara and I have been researching, thinking, and writing about this project for many months now.  (It's actually been years that we've been talking about doing a project together, but only now has the timing worked out for both of us: me starting my own film production company in 2012, and Nuin-Tara having a break from her busy career in public policy.)  And now things are starting to really come together.  

Today was a big step forward for Our Place on Earth.  Nuin-Tara,  the lead for the TRAC2 toolkit for our project, has been busy formulating our project goals and her toolkit ideas into an exciting project proposal for MIT's Climate CoLab, and today she submitted Our Place on Earth's proposal for consideration.  

If you are unfamiliar with the Climate CoLab, it is effectively a forum for "crowd-sourcing" solutions to climate change.  When we first discovered the CoLab, we were really excited to get involved because it gave us the opportunity to really hone our project to its essentials in the early stages, but looking ahead, it will also allow us direct feedback from CoLab members all over the world, as well as leaders and educators in various fields who help give guidance to CoLab projects.

From the perspective of our project, the across-the-board sharing of information the CoLab fosters is essential; Our Place on Earth is moving forward with the belief that the answers to climate change exist all over the world––from people and communities from all walks of life––and not just the top-down policies that we are used to thinking about.  

But speaking of top-down policy, there is some great news for the CoLab from D.C.: 

The CoLab and has recently been recognised by the Obama administration "as an effort to leverage data to help the American people understand and prepare for climate change."  

Statements like this from the US administration are wonderful news for the participants of the CoLab, and Our Place on Earth as well.  When the US government recognises the value of collective-knowledge sharing projects like the CoLab, it is a good sign that our project––and other projects like ours working on knowledge exchange, information sharing, and community based responses to climate change––can gain serious attention at the highest levels, but it also gives credence to the effectiveness of this type of work.  

One of the driving themes of our project is that we all have valuable knowledge to share––and that by putting our minds together, by sharing our stories and experiences, we'll come up with much more effective answers than we can alone. 

You can keep following our CoLab project here, as well as sign up to become a CoLab community member and contributor, and offer your own thoughts to our project and the other valuable CoLab projects out there.  

-Tom  


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