During these past two classes, we have been simulating a World Climate negotiation to what actually went into making decisions about the global climate. My group was tasked to represent India in these negotiations, and other groups represented the United States, China, the EU, Developing Nations, and Developed Nations. The goal was to collectively create a plan of what each global area should do to reduce global warming to 2 degrees by the year 2100. The problem was that each country/region had its own domestic problems to solve as well, and this made it hard to come to a collective decision. For India, our CO2 emissions were the lowest out of all the regions at the current date and would be second-lowest in the year 2100. Reducing our emissions was the least of our concerns; the main goal was to pull our people out of poverty. This goal would be impossible to do so if we immediately reduced emissions, so we decided to peak our emissions in the year 2040, and then reduce our emissions by 1% each year starting a few years after. We asked for a modest $30 billion to use towards transitioning out of fossil fuels, and we even pledged to slow deforestation and promote afforestation. We felt as if we were doing our part in this climate crisis while also looking out for our domestic interests.
Once everyone plugged in their initial plans to the simulator, we all found out that we had barely made a dent in helping the environment. As a whole, each plan was flawed (except for the EU’s plan, we love the EU). One area asked for an unreasonable amount of money while others did not give enough. Negotiations actually got really heated because no one could seem to agree on a middle ground. It was very difficult to compromise on the needs of others without giving up some of your own resources. At the end of the day though, we all had to cut our emissions more. After the negotiations, many regions pledged money (the EU ended up pledging even more, we love the EU) to solve the domestic and climate problems of India and the developing nations. Collectively, we found that promoting afforestation and reducing deforestation did close to nothing when it came to CO2 emissions. For us, we agreed to cut our emissions a considerable amount more, and many other nations and areas followed suit. By the end of class, we still ended up over 2 degrees of warming.
This begs the question then; can anything be done to cut emissions any lower? In the simulation, there were only 6 groups in the negotiations, and no sound consensus was found. Juxtapose that to a real negotiation where there would likely be way more than 6 committees. There are just so many barriers to consider that go deeper domestically than just climate in real life, and that makes it very difficult to make a decision. One barrier is the cost of transitioning to a new power source such as solar or wind power; not every country has the resources to do so. Another barrier is technological, for not all countries have the sophisticated tech to connect this new power to grids across the country. The removal or reduction of fossil fuels will cause the huge companies of that industry to fail, reducing major tax revenue. These barriers affect countries globally and make it difficult to come to a consensus.
Creating change in the USA won’t be easy either. Fossil fuel energy is implemented in almost every aspect of our lives, a reduction in such energy would require us to change the way we live almost completely. That being said, in order to enact change, we must slowly decrease our reliance on fossil fuels without making an inconvenience for the American people. Mass transit and efficient homes could be a start.