1. When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt like I was the good guy in a struggle for the fate of humanity. Being a representative of Europe, I was tasked with delivering the most liberal approach to combating climate change and, therefore, I had to be a climate-hard-liner as well as one willing to do more than his fair share.
2. As time went on during the negotiations, I felt more and more that we, as the EU, had to take the lead on this issue, so after initially committing $100 billion to the fund, we raised it to $150 billion simply to show the world that we are serious about tackling climate change and that they should step up and join our efforts, especially the developing countries, who needed more money than we expected.
3. We changed our ideas by listening to the developing countries, but only for the need for greater monetary investment. We more so changed the positions of other countries towards more commitment to fighting the climate crisis with more money.
4. We changed other countries’ positions not so much by negotiations, but by example. After they saw our amount of money committed to the fund increase, every other country felt much more inclined to commit more, especially the US and China, who then raised their commitments to about $15 billion.
5. Of course emissions can be cut! It’s more of a question of whether emissions can be cut enough to stop the significant increase in temperatures we’ve been seeing across the globe. Deep down, I believe that we can cut emissions enough, simply because as time progresses, companies will have an economic push via market preferences from consumers to be more eco-friendly as consumers become more environmentally cautious.
6. The major costs and barriers result from the cost of the imposition of regulations, the cost of transitioning to more green energy sources, and protecting rain-forests. All those cost a lot of money and require significant commitment of those who may be at least somewhat skeptical of the science.
7. We can effect change in the US via education. If more people simply were more aware of the danger of climate change, then they would be more willing to support efforts to prevent it. The biggest reason people are skeptical of the climate scientists is largely due to a lack of understanding of what the science means to us all, so education, not aggressive arguing/debating will be our only path forward.

-Joshua Baker

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt like our groups’ decisions, while they were generous, did not have a large enough effect on reducing carbon emissions because of other countries’ (America) lack of monetary assistance to developing countries that would allow them to partake in green activities.

We became more generous after negotiating with other countries because we learned that other countries were goal-oriented in reducing carbon emissions. Furthermore, we shifted to being more obliged to donate to developing countries when we were assured our donations would not go to waste.

My group changed its ideas when we got developing countries to agree to increase their committed percentage of an anual reduction of carbon emissions.

That change was prompted when we gave them money that would be used to protect their rainforests from deforestation and to transform their industries into green industries.

I think that emissions can be cut after a lot of effort and awareness, so yes, it is possible to cut emissions.

Some major costs would be the effects of lowering our GDP and other costs to implement regulations such as subsidizing.

We can catalyze change in the US by inspiring change through our example and by showing factual results from our successful efforts.

This past Tuesday we played the role of China in our Climate role playing negotiations. When we played our role as a table, I felt like we were in high demand for negotiations. As a country, we had the highest carbon dioxide emissions compared to all the other countries. as we went on, we were more willing to negotiation, with more lenient feelings, since we knew we had the highest CO2 emissions. While we decided to cut emissions earlier, other countries also became more lenient and cooperated so we could indeed cut them. In the end I think emissions can be cut with a full cooperation efforts between the countries. One of our biggest barriers was the high demand for negotiation with us, and the developing countries asking for so much. U.S. needs to make a greater effort to negotiate with other countries and turn more financial focus towards CO2 emissions.

Emily Larking

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt like change was possible but it seemed like the politics were prioritized over the Earth. I think nations will need to shift their priorities in order to make an actual difference on climate change.

 How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? We learned that deforestation and reforestation had minimal impact on future climate change. The negotiations shifted to be more focus on when the changes will occur and the annual reduction rate.

How did your group change their ideas? What prompted that change? Our team (China) collaborated a lot with the United States and India, which prompted our team to change our ideas. We adjusted and adapted based on the other countries needs or what they were willing to do.

 In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? I do think emissions can be cut but it will take putting aside certain political interests to work for a common goal. It will take a lot of discussion and compromise.

 What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals? It cost a lot of money to reduce emissions. The developing countries needed the most money and also had the most people who didn’t have a steady food supply. Many countries have other pressing internal issues they need to address and dedicate money to as well.

How can we catalyze change in the US? Education is an important part to spark change in the United States. The younger generations are the future and the ones who will be implementing policies to enact change ahead of us so in order to ensure change occurs, we need to make sure they know how pressing of an issue climate change is.

For the climate situation, the class tried to work together to bring projected warming down to 2 degrees. My group represented China, which is projected to be the largest source of carbon emissions. The main thing I noticed in the simulation was how difficult this goal is to achieve. Even with super drastic measures by everyone, we weren’t really able to get down to 2 degrees. I worry that since the super drastic measures we were taking wouldn’t be possible in the real world, we are pretty doomed on this account.

Working as China, I noticed was that the easiest way to negotiate was to agree to match everything the US did. That way, we weren’t at a disadvantage to them, but we could still help the environment. Another big topic of discussion was about money. Developing countries wanted a lot of money, so many people didn’t trust them. This led us to negotiate giving most of our funds to India, who we trusted more. As we saw little improvement, we changed to a more accelerated timeline.

In the end, I’m sad to admit I don’t think it’s possible to reduce to 2 degrees. I think the cooperation involved is currently impossible. The most important aspect is world cooperation, where currently we live in a global system that is not conducive to cooperation. This is especially true in the US, where many people do not even see climate change as an important issue. I think education is the most important way the US can move towards having a united front in climate change.

When I played my role in this exercise, I felt like I had an important and that I could be able to add an impact to the climate change.

However, this changed as we started to negotiate. At first negotiations seemed to be an easy give and take. We receive money, and the countries providing the fund can monitor our progress and use of the fund. After negotiating with other developed nations and the European Union, we believed we had enough funding to plan out how we were to divide and use the given funding. But as time progressed, US came back to us, asking for our regions to raise our annual reduction rate. This frustrated me, as well as other group mates, because it did not seem fair to target us. After all, our high emissions rate was only due to the fact that half of the world’s land was within our jurisdiction. Despite this, US (and India) kept pressing that we still lower our emissions rate.

Our group changed how we approached our spending. After looking into the many countries in our jurisdiction, we realised that we could not just focus on the Amazon and needed to also look into spending the funding for Africa, as well as many other countries and regions. We also changed our projected years and looked into possibly limiting our carbon emissions. We were prompted to change these factors because other countries were pressuring us to contribute more.

Looking back, the total emissions for other developing countries may be able to be cut. Although the other developing nations can cut their emissions, I do not think the emissions can be cut as much as the other countries want it to be.

One major barrier as I mentioned before was the how large of an area our group covered. Because of the large area of information to resolve, it was hard to know how our carbon emissions could be reduced etc. It was also hard to pinpoint causes of the high carbon emissions and to address the needs of each country. Another major barrier is the condition of the country/ the region. Because the conditions of some countries are not ideal, the country’s main focus would be using the money to improve their situation. I think if we could also incorporate ways to improve conditions in a more environmental-friendly option, this could already cut some carbon emissions.

We can catalyze this change in the US through education and demonstration. I think if the restaurants started slowly integrating more eco-friendly options, then people will also spend a few extra dollars for more eco-friendly options.

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt that I had a direct influence on the cooperation of nations that set aside some economic well being to do what was best for the world. As China, I felt that we had a responsibility as one of the world’s largest populations and economies to make changes that would be beneficial to the environment. After our initial proposal, which I felt good about, calls from other nations and nation blocs to cooperate allowed us to give more to the cause than we would have been willing to on our own. By making our goal to cap emissions 10 years sooner than our initial plan and increasing our rate of decreasing emissions, we joined other nations in making bigger changes sooner. While our plan looks admirable on paper, carrying it out in reality may prove difficult, especially in China. Since China is both developed in many areas and developing in others, the developing areas may begin increasing CO2 emissions as modern conveniences become more available to them. This puts more pressure on the developed areas to begin enacting environmentally friendly changes sooner, and developing technology that would allow the developing areas to enact sustainable growth policies. The cost would be large, but due to the size of the economy, it would not be impossible to commit the necessary funds to protect the environment. Catalyzing change in the United States may prove difficult due to the difficulty of motivated individuals to have much of an effect on the environment. However, companies and governments must lead the changes with technologies and policies that protect the environment and decrease CO2 emissions.

When I played my role in the policy exercise as a representative of India, I felt like we needed help since we were still a somewhat developing country and at first we were not getting the help we needed. I think the other groups didn’t understand that we needed help because we weren’t under the “Developing Countries” category.

When we started negotiating with other countries, I think they started to realize that even though we are not under that category, we still need help. We have so many people in our country and this contributes to our country’s carbon emissions and the other countries started to realize that our emissions were from our high population not necessarily each individual using an extreme amount.

After negotiations, our group was able to get money from China and the US, which was great considering the US was only going to give $17 at first. I think these other countries and ourselves realized after we played with the numbers on the chart that deforestation and afforestation aren’t going to do much and that its actually the rates that will affect the temperature. I think after these richer countries saw that they came to the conclusion that they need to help the more developing countries so that we have the resources to make this possible.

In the end, I think that we can cut emissions, but I don’t think it will be feasible in the next couple decades to cut it to the goal we had of only 2 degrees. Cutting emissions this dramatically would impact people’s every day lives and change their lifestyle.

Mentioned before, I think one of the major cost barriers was that at first the US was not giving any many, when India and the developing countries requested $230 billion combined and initially, there was a little over $100 billion. Eventually, the US contributed but not nearly as much as they should have.

I think we can catalyze change in the US by reducing our emissions now gradually and then we will adapt to it, and hopefully this will steadily decrease emissions over the years.