climate court

Encourage climate consciousness through humor and judgement by picking apart people’s everyday habits and opinions, from relatable to ridiculous, with a snarky live jury and judge!

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Climate Court

“The number one thing we can do is the exact thing that we're not doing: talk about it.” — Dr. Katharine Hayhoe (climate scientist & Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy)

Climate Court turns that conversation into an interactive courtroom drama where everyday choices stand trial. Confess your climate “crimes,” let a jury of peers decide your fate, and receive a verdict that’s as witty as it is thought-provoking.

By using humor, judgement, and a snarky judge to tie it together, Climate Court tackles the Clean Code Track at LA Hacks, and brings climate consciousness into conversations that people can have, even beyond the platform.

💡 Inspiration

We all bargain with ourselves when it comes to the climate:

  • "I'll go get lunch at the Ackerman Student Union today, even though I have some vegetables that might go bad soon...”
  • “I’ll take the car to the gym - leg day starts after I park!”

Despite efforts to be sustainable, we often compromise these efforts when it comes to our own priorities. Those private negotiations inspired Climate Court — an anonymous space that swaps inner guilt for public judgment. By mixing humor with accountability we lower the barrier to honest climate talk and turn ignorance of these guilty pleasures into constructive reflection.

🔍 What It Does

Stage What happens Tech
1 Confess Users anonymously confess their climate crime (or climate compassion!) & optional context. React, Next.js
2 Deliberate Community votes Yay/Nay in real time. Firebase Realtime DB
3 Verdict A Gemini-powered judge slams the gavel and delivers a sarcastic yet funny ruling. Google Gemini 2.0 Flash
4 Reflect Submitter sees final tallies and other users' climate crimes to spark additonal thought. React, Next.js

🛠 How We Built It

Frontend

  • Next.js (App Router, Turbopack)
  • Tailwind CSS + daisyUI
  • Framer Motion for gavel & crowd animations
  • React Context for global vote state

Backend & Realtime

  • Firebase Realtime Database (live vote counts)
  • Firestore (climate-crime archive)
  • Cloud Functions (vote tally + Gemini calls)

AI

  • Gemini 2.0 Flash via Google AI Studio

DevOps

  • GitHub Actions (CI + preview deploys)
  • Vercel for hosting

🧩 Challenges

Challenge Solution
Humor vs. education Iterated prompts until the judge was sassy but still informative.
Anonymous yet accountable UX Designing server-side vote tracking and single vote per prompt per session
Wildly different confession lengths Dynamic prompt templates and Gemini creative generation
Animation timing Custom React hook that triggers 3× gavel strike when isVoting flips

🏆 Accomplisments We’re Proud Of

  • Judge with personality — users receive unique and witty verdicts from Judge Bob
  • Live courtroom feel — crowd sprites that yay/nay in sync with votes
  • Zero-friction access — anonymous and instant participation

📚 What We Learned

  • Prompt engineering for consistent character voices
  • Psychology of humor in climate communication
  • Fine-grained Firebase security rules
  • Tailwind × Framer Motion choreography for animations

🚀 What’s Next

  • More Lively Courtroom... OBJECTION! - A feature we really wanted to implement given the time, allow the users to debate each other by extending voting time through objections
  • Impact meter – show estimated CO₂ for each crime, calculated by Gemini's estimates of quantitative environmental impacts
  • Multiple judge personas – from lenient “Optimist Oak” to ruthless “Justice Carbon”, users can get a perspective from a wide range of personalities

🔧 Local Development

# Install deps
npm install

# Run dev server
npm run dev
# → http://localhost:3000

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