Welcome to the

cooler economy

Earth's atmosphere viewed by astronauts on International Space Station on July 31, 2011.

Time. Temperature. Capital.

Our species is running out of time. Everyday we grow the capital and wealth while the climate temperature increases. Each of us must now begin by becoming innovators and engage in cooling our personal lifestyles contributing to growing the capital and wealth creation in a cooler economy. This is the quickest timely path forward for humanity.

Time

Temperature

Capital

Cooling our home planet is orders of magnitude easier today than on the unpredictable tomorrow after the next climate tipping point.

Temperature should no longer increase if we are to mitigate the catastrophic future for generations to come.

A cooler economy ends the curse of the Midas Touch, wherein everything capital touches, it heats the climate.

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      "The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us... Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs."

– Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change

Making the

Inconceivable

possible

Climate Conscious Planetary Economy:

A Zero Degree Cooler Economy and Global Cultural Shift

Climate change offers humanity a rare opportunity in the lifetimes of current and future generations to innovate our way into ensuring human survival by capitalizing on the unprecedented opportunity for flourishing latent human potential that can only evolve during climate changes.

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Since the current onset of climate change follows the unprecedented growth of human potential from the advent of agriculture, industrial and information revolutions the humanity is more prepared than ever to realize its next level of evolutionary potential by engaging in addressing the climate change, as long as we are able to avoid the collapse of the civilization.

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Humanity's transition to the cooler economy that embodies ecological feedback at evolutionary scale creates novel opportunities for timely innovations to continue life on earth.

Overview

This initiative is led by Principal Investigators Syed Shariq, PhD and Thomas George, PhD at the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory at Stanford, along with Neeraj Sonalker, PhD at Center for Design Research at Stanford. 

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Zero Degree Project nurtures innovators who are sensitive about themselves and the world, inviting them to innovate, develop, practice, share and evolve their Zero Degree Prototypes, through their participation in the prototyping collective. 

In the cooler economy, the Zero Degree Indices that we will co-create through value conscious economic prototyping activities will substitute for the current financial indicators such as GDP, S&P 500, DOW Jones etc.

These new indices will resonate with the value that society is yearning for and would readily support through their investment of capital and time.

This value creation will serve as the foundation of Universal Basic Assets.

 Stanford 

 University 

Collaboratory for Frontline Philanthropic Climate Impact Investors

Syed Shariq, PhD

Neeraj Sonalker, PhD

Thomas George, PhD

Melissa Vo

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Kozmetzy Global Collabortory &

Center for Design Research

Stanford University

 University of Hawaii 

 at 

 Hilo 

Ground 

Zero

Initiative

Ming Wei Koh, PhD

Shawon Rahman, PhD

Gregory Paul

Scott Laaback

Carly Wyman

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Center for Getting

Things Started &

University of Hawaii at Hilo

“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone.”

- Buckminster Fuller

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“Can we say that this is a community, or do we merely dwell together to make money from each other?”

- T.S. Eliot