Climate Negotiation Reflective Blog Post

By Eryn Hasty

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt shocked.  I could not believe how much effort it was going to take from every single country in order to lower us to lower the global temperature increase by 2100. 

As the rounds progressed my feelings grew stronger, and honestly more frustrated.  I was part of India, who initially was one of the lowest contributing country to CO2 emissions.  On the other hand, most of our country is in poverty so we needed money if we wanted to work towards lowering our emissions rates even more.  I became frustrated because there were many countries who had much higher rate, but also many more resources who became very stubborn as the process developed.  The other nations needed them to lower their rates, but they did not give in much.  It took so much negotiating. 

My group evolved our negotiations and ideas across the debate from asking for less money for India.  This change was prompted because we realized that there were much needier countries who were also asking for something, and we needed to team up with them in order to get money from larger developed countries as well as have them lower their emission rates.  We teamed up with the other developing countries and split the money contributed by the other countries in order to work towards lowering our emissions more.

Emissions can absolutely be cut, but I do not know how effectively and efficiently they can e cut in order to get out temperature increase well under the 2 degrees Celsius we were aiming for.  Negotiations become very tricky, and for us to lower by that much all of the countries would need to be a lot more generous with their promises to cut emissions and prevent deforestation/promote afforestation.

The biggest barrier we faced personally is our lack of money and difficulty getting the larger countries to provide to our efforts.  We already had low emission rates which was beneficial, but we also had no money and majority of our country is in poverty.  Because of this we were asking for money to help relieve the costs of our environmental efforts and benefit our citizens. 

In my opinion, in order for us to catalyze change we must do everything we can to lower our emissions rate.  To the best of our ability the citizens and government can switch to solar power and electric power that does not emit harmful CO2 into our environment.  We can also create more green space instead of these concrete jungles we keep spreading.  We could also work towards aiding developing countries, so they have the opportunity to change their ways as well.  If we do everything we can then that is better than doing nothing.

Climate Simulation Reflection- Marianne Lamarche

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt… a mix of emotions. It was tough knowing that, as the Other Developed Nations, we were in a much more privileged position than many of the other groups. However, we couldn’t sacrifice everything we had for other nations when ours was still producing too many emissions as well. It was hard to find the right thing to do, both morally and strategically.

How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions?  Across rounds and discussions, I realized how much more severe the situation was than I thought. It was stressful to see how difficult it was to lower the temperature change to 2 degrees Celsius despite best efforts by almost all countries in the world.

How did your group change their ideas? Our group became more giving to other nations and willing to compromise throughout the rounds. We changed our financial donations from $1 Billion yearly to $50 Billion yearly, and we also increased our % reduction of carbon emissions from .5% to 2%.

What prompted that change? As the simulation progressed, we realized how much the developing nations really needed our help. Overall as a United Nations, we weren’t going to achieve our carbon reduction goals if we didn’t contribute more money to the global fund or increase our percent of carbon reduction. Thus, we adapted our solution to what we thought would best benefit other countries, ourselves, and the future of humanity as a whole.

In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? I do have faith that we can reduce some of the damage we are causing to the environment by cutting emissions. Continuing with Business As Usual policies is just unsustainable, so I think we have no option but to cut emissions. However, I am unsure of how cooperative countries and their economies will be, so I fear we will not follow through will resolutions (as evidenced by the recent Climate Summit).

What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals? The costs involve how generally expensive materials like solar panels and alternative equipment are, as well as the expenses related to afforestation. The major barrier was economic disparity between all the countries; those that most urgently needed to combat emissions also had the least money, so they had to beg the richer nations for assistance, which was often unsuccessful (especially when it came to aid from the US). Unfortunately, this is a very real problem in today’s climate negotiations.

How can we catalyze change in the US? I think catalyzing change in the US will take a combination of large-scale actions by the government and large companies, but is also highly dependent on our individual actions. We all need to participate in, and spread knowledge about, these 7 tactics I read online that instantly reduce our carbon footprint: eating less (or no) meat, unplugging our devices, driving less, not buying “fast fashion,” planting gardens, eating local/organic, and line-drying our clothes.

Climate Simulation- Piper Krase

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt that although each country theoretically had a lot of power to make a change and implement goals for the future, there was very little wiggle room and it was frustrating because making change depended on the cooperation of so many other countries as well.
How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? At first, I was not very clear on what exactly we were negotiating because we were filling out sheets individually as a country. As we entered them into the simulator and it calculated the degree of difference after each country’s contributions, I was able to better understand. Although it was difficult making a change and getting countries to agree on certain policies, it was very interesting because the simulation showed just how hard this is in reality (obviously multiplied by 1000). As the rounds went on I better understood what we were negotiating and how to go about making a substantial overall change.
How did your group change their ideas? My group was China, and our ideas did not really change at all throughout the rounds. We knew that we were a world superpower and would have to contribute, and also a large contributor of fossil fuels so that needed to be addressed. What changed throughout the rounds was our commitment to making a change. We increased our money contribution and decreased our peak date because we knew that these would have substantial impacts on the overall degree decrease because of China’s stance in the world.

What prompted that change? The change was prompted when we realized that China is a country that has the potential to have such a big impact, and we can afford and really really should, make the changes and commit to the betterment of our environment. Also, after negotiating with the United States and them agreeing to match our contribution and peak date also prompted us to make a change because we didn’t feel like we were the only ones making that much of an effort.
In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? I think that emissions can be cut, as shown, because we decreased it down to 2.4º degrees, but it is really difficult because it takes the commitment and compromisation of all these different nations who all have different desires and needs.
What were the major costs and barriers to the implementation of participant proposals? As China, with such a large population, and much of it runs on industries/factories it was difficult to promise a huge rate of decrease because this is such a large part of our economy. Also, afforestation was not as feasible in China as it was in other countries because we have large cities and lots of farmland so it just wouldn’t really make sense.
How can we catalyze change in the US? It is important to raise awareness of the severity of the issues that can occur, extremely soon, because it cannot take a few or a small group of people but it takes a nation to convince and impact the administrations who have the ability to legislate change.

Climate Change Model UN

Nina Boone

    When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt like many countries were very stingy with their money and willingness to change the peak year of their country.

·      How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? At first I didn’t really understand exactly what we were deciding upon but once other groups began discussing options with us I was able to grasp the idea that as China it was inevitable that we would produce a lot of CO2 emissions and minimizing them was important but the development of our country and its people was also very important.

·      How did your group change their ideas? At first we were giving $10 billion and had our peak year very late in 2040 but we changed these to $13 billion and 2030.

·      What prompted that change? The US table came to talk to us and convinced us to do this and said they would match us. This lowered emissions and gave money to India so they could also do the same.

·      In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? Realistically I don’t think we could get it to the point we got it to in class which was and increase of 2.3 degrees Celsius. Many countries are way more stingy with their resources and policies than we were.

·      What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals? Being China, our main barriers were that afforestation and spending a lot of money meant less farm land and resources for our people who are already struggling. This made us not make as much change as other countries.

·      How can we catalyze change in the US? We need to go to our administration to catalyze change because large amounts of CO2 emissions cannot simply be fixed in a singular household.

World Climate Negotiation

Over the past two class sessions, you participated in a World Climate negotiation role-playing exercise that explores the science and geopolitics of international agreements on climate change. The role-playing is grounded by a computer simulation of the dynamics of the climate system, C-ROADS, that has influenced the actual global negotiations. World Climate has been played by more than 30,000 people, from middle-school students to UN officials in dozens of countries worldwide. By participating in World Climate, you have hopefully gained insights into the causes of climate change and can now see the possibility of success in addressing the climate challenge.

·      When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt frustrated that no one was willing to contribute money. I represented the other developing nations, and it quickly became clear that other countries did not want to contribute to our forestation efforts, despite the fact that our countries are most important in stopping CO2 emissions.

·      How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? My feelings improved as the negotiating rounds went further. Countries contributed more and more money to our fund after realizing that our fund was worth contributing to. We received more and more money, so I felt validated that our cause was worthy. I also felt good because I knew we would now have the funds to make an actual impact in reducing carbon emissions.

·      How did your group change their ideas?Although we changed our reasoning about why we needed at least 200 billion, our ideas about the amount of money never changed. We came up with more evidence and reasoning to convince other countries to contribute, but we realized from the beginning that this effort would cost a lot of money regardless. We also agreed to allocate money to different resources.

·      What prompted that change? As we realized we were not getting enough money, we came up with more reasons why we needed it. In addition, as we came up with these reasons, we realized that in fact we deserved a lot more money than we initially anticipated, but we still had to compromise with an amount of money lower than what we originally wanted. We also allocated a different amount to different resources to maximize our co2 emission decrease by contributing to green energy. In order to assuage countries’ worries about corruption, we also allowed them to control where their funds went.

·      In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut?I believe that emissions can be cut, but it would take full commitment to decreasing emissions at the expense of every country’s economy. In addition, we will probably not be able to cut emissions down to an acceptable level until some negative changes have already happened, and we can almost defintiely not reach our goal of temperature raising less than 2 degrees. However, we still must try our best otherwise our entire planet will be gone. In addition, this is difficult because countries are greedy and will never fund the amount needed to the project. I think our only hope is investment into management technology.

·      What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals?Green energy is much more expensive, and this means that our economy will slow if we actually implement it. In addition, everyone has different ideas about which proposals will actually work, meaning that individual projects did not receive enough funding because every country wanted to fund different initiatives. Countries were also worried about corruption, we disincentivized their contribution.

·      How can we catalyze change in the US? We must stop emissions through agriculture and industry by demanding big companies make a change. Although limiting individual consumption is important, we can make the most impact by reducing larger corporation emissions and consumption. This only comes through consumers demanding change or the government making large consumption and production illegal. We also have to dedicate a significant amount of funds to make real change. This again requires the support of the citizens and the demanding of the citizens to make this change.

Pictures of our first negotiations

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Resources:

Clarke Central High School Outreach

Piper Krase

  • For my outreach experience, I went to Clarke Central High School to help a class of students learn how to count the colonies of bacteria, from the soil samples, that grew on the agar plates. The students divided into around 4 groups and a few students from our class were in charge. I worked with Kenleigh to teach our group how to accurately count the colonies and to insert the data into the spreadsheet. We were essentially the teachers for that short class period, as we were supposed to control the group and teach them something too. Honestly, maybe because it was the last period on a Friday, lacked focus and it was hard to get them to be engaged in what we were doing.
  • Before we got to the school I was nervous because I didn’t feel like I fully understood the information, and the functionality fo the spreadsheet, enough to teach them and get them to understand it too. When we initially took the plates out of the plastic container, they were all jumbled and messed up. This threw me off a little because I was expecting them to at least be in order, maybe that would help me feel like I could at least explain a little. Dr. Brickman came over and helped us organize them into the groups which eased my stress because I finally felt like I had a grip on the information and would be able to explain it better. It was frustrating how we were unable to get our group’s full attention. It felt like they were completely uninterested and we barely had any control over them. It also felt like their teacher wasn’t compelled to keep them on task either because she walked by multiple times when the kids in our group were in the corner goofing-off, and never said anything to them.
  • In the end, I did have a good experience with this outreach opportunity. It was actually really nice to go back to a high school for a second, it was like a reality check. It sort of hit me that we were now those “college students” that younger kids looked up to and aspired to be like. Even in such an informal situation like volunteering in a classroom, it was nice to feel like the kids viewed us as educated. I definitely was able to apply my skills of working with other people (and kids especially) because we want them to listen to us but have to acknowledge and work with the things that could’ve been preventing or limiting that. I really liked doing out of the classroom work too, it was nice to apply our learning and share with the high schoolers why, what they’re learning, is significant and important. I realized I do have to be more assertive, like when getting the kids’ attention, instead of just accepting that they were distracted and entering the data ourselves.
  • For other outreach opportunities, I think it would be very beneficial if I felt very prepared before going out. If I were to do something like this again, I would use my own time to review the material and really make sure I understand what I am trying to teach them. This experience, although short, taught me about myself because it put us back into a real situation– outside of the classroom. I really enjoyed this outreach opportunity and will apply what I’ve learned from it both in and out of the classroom in the future.

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Clarke Central High School Outreach

On August 27th from 2:30 to 3:25 pm, I went to Clarke Central High School from my outreach project. We helped the high school students count their bacteria colonies. To do this we broke up into about four groups and had about six high schools each. We laid all of the dishes out to the high schoolers could see them and then gave out the ones with the most colonies to count. Each dish was counted twice by two different students to ensure it was counted correctly.

I expect this to go fairly quickly because there was six of them to count the plates. Unfortunately, because it was the last class of the day on a Friday, I think they were a little preoccupied and it was difficult to efficiently get them to do what they were supposed to. They were all very nice and respectful they just were not the most focused when it came to finishing everything at the end of the class. I think this activity may go a little more efficient if it was one of the early class periods. 

I think this outreach project showed me a lot. Being on the other side of the instructor student relationship showed me just how difficult it can be to get a group of high schoolers to cooperate. My group only had about six high schoolers and it was tough to make sure they were all doing something useful or answer all of their questions. Having one girl enter the data on the computer and then having the other students count and re-count all of the trays was difficult. And coupling that with some students packing up before the class ended made the last couple of minutes difficult. I think doing the counting ahead of time and walking through all of the steps definitely made it easier so we could go quicker than we would have been able to if it was also our first time counting the trays. 

After having done this outreach project I am pretty confident that I should not be a teacher. I am very impressed that teachers can manage to effectively work and teach in situation like that. I am also happy I got to do this outreach project because I think it forced me into a leadership position which I find very helpful to growing as a person. I learned during just this class period that it was more effective to give individual directions to students then to give group directions because it diminished an almost bystander effect that developed which slowed things down.  

Clarke Central High School Outreach

On September 27th, we went to Clarke Central High School in the afternoon to help the local high school students in the AP Environmental Science class learn how to accurately count the colonies of bacteria in the soil samples. Along with my classmates, I taught them how to calculate and enter the CFU data into the spreadsheets. For this project, our biology class conducted our own research before we taught the high schoolers. When we first collected our data in our class, my group was confused as to what it was we were doing exactly. We were confused and wrote the second plate set as our second dilution. Everything made more sense when I taught it to the high schoolers. It was as if I was also teaching it to myself. I recognized our mistake and was able to fix our data with the help of the high school students, so it took much less time.

At first, I was a little nervous about teaching the students because I was still a bit confused with this topic. I felt more confident as I started to explain what we were doing to the students. I became more relaxed once I took the plates out and watched the high schoolers’ faces as they caught a whiff of the stench. A couple of high schoolers that we taught were clearly not interested in following our orders as we were only a few years older than them. This was a bit discouraging, but the other high schools seemed to be really excited that we were there. If I were to do this again, I would definitely ensure that I had all of my data finished. Students were asking me questions, while I was busy entering my data for our class and I failed to give them my full attention. I would also make sure I knew some outside information so I would be better equipped to answer some of their questions that were loosely related to the project. In the future, I would come more prepared with possibly a presentation, so the students could better understand the issue.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience teaching the environmental class at Clark Central High School. I thought this assignment was effective and warned many students of our generation about the harmfulness of antibiotic resistance. Through this experience, I learned that I understand the material much more after going through it slowly a second time on my own. I will definitely do this for our case studies in the future.

Clarke Central High School Outreach

Last Friday, I went to Clarke Central High School during the morning to participate in an Antibiotic Resistance lab with students from the AP Environmental Science class. I served as the research facilitator/instructor for a group of three awesome students (pictured above), showing them how we had gathered data in class so that they could replicate the experiment. We counted bacterial colonies, calculated data for the spreadsheet, smelled unpleasant fumes, discussed the findings, and got to know each other a little bit. My emotional reaction shifted from uncertainty at first that I was qualified/knowledgeable enough to lead them in this experiment to pride that I had successfully completed just that. I left feeling happy and satisfied with our results and the connection I had established with my students in such a short amount of time. 

The most notable part of the experience for me was how much better I felt I understood the content of our experiment after conducting it a second time. Getting the opportunity to “teach” it to others helped me to realize which parts I was still confused about, therefore getting the clarifications I needed and being able to put it all into a concise, clear explanation for my students. I loved using my presentation, teaching, and interpersonal skills to try to make this a pleasant and unique experience for them. 

Now that I’ve learned how useful it is for me to teach the material I’m studying, I will be able to incorporate this learning technique for my future studies in this class. I can work with classmates to reteach concepts in our own words. In addition, I appreciated this experience of working in the high school as I am interested in education as a career; I left on Friday feeling good about my path. Thank you to everyone involved who made this great outreach project possible!

Clarke Central High School Outreach

On September 27th from 2:30 pm to 3:25 pm, I was at Clarke Central High School to lead/assist a group of students in counting CFUs from their soil samples and calculating and entering their data into an online spreadsheet. We had already practiced counting CFUs in class, which made me feel more confident about leading high schoolers to count CFUs. I had a group of 6 students, so I had three students count one set of samples and three students count the other set. I had them record the data and compare numbers. After, we used the given formulas to calculate the other desired numbers. I believe the activity was intellectually stimulating for the students because it required them to learn something new and apply that new knowledge to calculate CFUs. The activity was relevant to the audience because they were also a biology class learning about bacteria. It was also creative because the students were able to actually interact with the bacteria itself and see it first hand. One discovery I made during the activity was about the students. While in the classroom, I got to experience what every other high school teacher gets to experience during the last class period of the afternoon, which is the struggle of getting high school students to try and accomplish something in the last hour of the school week. It was difficult to keep my group of students motivated, but I found that leading by example and trying to keep things lighthearted and fun was the best way to get them to work. Although the class wasn’t entirely cooperative, it was still enjoyable teaching them something new and watching them learn and have fun in the activity we had been learning about and practicing. Another discovery I made was that partaking in this outreach helped me strengthen my own skills in for calculating CFUs and other information and it also strengthened my abilities of patience and working with teenagers. If I were to repeat this activity again, I don’t think there is anything in particular on my end that I would change. I think most of the problems that occurred were because the class period was at the end of the day on Friday. If I were to repeat this activity, I would select a time that isn’t at the end of the day. I think this activity was pretty effective in showing bacterial antibiotic resistant strains. The activity itself along with the knowledge of antibiotic resistance helps show students how important it is that we address this issue.