- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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