Climate governance by numerical data: The kaleidoscopic political space of a decarbonization dashboard

Abstract

ClimateOS is a software whose promise is to provide climate policymakers with reliable and actionable transition plans towards decarbonization, thanks to its algorithms’ ability to handle large amounts of numerical climate data. What data to feed ClimateOS’ algorithms? This is a question that greatly concerns its developers and one that I analyse in this article for its socio-political implications. Specifically, I unpack how developers relate to the accuracy and reliability of numerical data. I suggest that their multifaceted approach to numerical climate data allows ClimateOS to open a political space where the various transition plans the software offers can be tinkered with. This article brings critical geographers and material semiotics scholars in conversation. The former argue that data-driven (decarbonization) governance practices depoliticize climate issues, characterizing such initiatives as the effects and expressions of global political economic processes. The latter show how different environmental accounting practices, at different times, produce different performances of nature; and how different ways of relating to numbers enact alternative modes of treating numbers accountably. In this article, I show how ClimateOS opens a political space that engenders social relations and co-produces articulations of a decarbonized future. Because of its multifaceted approach to numerical data, I characterize this political space as kaleidoscopic, where different and often incompatible political values and logics are enacted simultaneously.