Last week Anthony wrote about the application of the mass collaboration concept to climate change. He noted that despite the evident potential for Web 2.0 tools to be used to disseminate information and galvanize public opinion, unlike the human genome project or efforts to develop specific drugs, “it seems unlikely that someone, or some organization, will ever be in a position to coral the entire world around developing one “magic bullet” solution to climate change in the same way that organizations such as the National Institute of Health and Wellcome Trust helped to coordinate efforts to synthesize the genome.”

At the heart of the issue is the fact that climate change isn’t a “magic bullet” issue (let’s ignore nuclear for the time being…). Rather, it’s the aggregation of billions of actions, billions of daily decisions, and a short vs. long-term trade off of economic and social well being. Because of those factors, I fall firmly among the pessimists, doubting that we can collaborate to tackle such a dispersed problem.

But perhaps there’s a precedent that proves pessimists like me wrong.

Earth Hour 2007 might just be it. The brainchild of joint efforts between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Sydney Morning Herald, Earth Day 2007 saw Sydney, Australia plunged into darkness in a what could be considered a collaborative effort to combat climate change. Evidently, Web 2.0 plays little role in this project, outside of acting as a medium to facilitate information flows and discussion, but this may be the closest we see to the “magic bullet” that gets everyone pushing in the same direction.The joint effort, held last year on March 31st, had two goals: a) to launch a year-long campaign to reduce Sydney’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent; and b) to find a way to bring the fight against climate change into every home. And judging by last year’s efforts, it might just be a means to making an, albeit small, impact. The results: “2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.”This year, on March 29th, several other cities will join the effort: Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane are all signed up. So based on the initial results, that could mean the equivalent of taking 288,000 cars off the road for an hour.Which is great but … does this mass collaboration actually shield people from making the long-term changes to their consumption patterns that is necessary to create a real, sustainable change. Or is the first step in having people make those very decisions, one hour at a time?