I was part of the United States group for the simulation, and I mostly felt overwhelmed during the simulation. Negotiating was difficult, as countries did not seem to be on the same page, and occasionally wanted to bash each other. The US did not have similar interests with EU, for example, because the EU was very focused on donating to developing nations while the Americans were not. This led to the EU and the US getting slightly heated in negotiation. Our position on donation definitely shifted after other countries’ anger at the amount we donated (or lack thereof), and we when saw in the program that donation had a decent effect on the temperature raise. We decided to use this to our advantage and exchange our raising of a donation for China’s promising to begin cutting emissions earlier. We did not entirely trust developing nations to use their money for good, but we saw that we needed to at least a little to cause change.
Major barriers of implementation were trying to confound to our countries’ goals and political settings; Americans do not care about climate change very much, and a constantly changing government makes long term goals difficult. Catalyzing change in the US needs to be done by showing people what will happen in the world if emissions continue to rise, and by limiting the role of fossil fuel companies in government and the news cycle so that they will no longer lie to the American people. Emissions can most certainly be cut, but it will be difficult and require extreme change from every UN nation.