Participating in this exercise, I felt that I gained a better understanding of the urgency of the climate change issue. My group as a whole began to see more of the importance as time went on and became more and more open to the stances and ideas of the other groups. We also went from an “us-versus-them” mindset to that of a group working towards a goal.
We, the United States, started with a very isolationist and protective stance. On Day 2, we realized that this approach was not going to get us very far and some of the other groups were taking the place as frontrunner which we should have held. Watching the other teams seemingly make all this progress without us and in gaining more information about the issue, we became more open.
I do think that emissions need to be cut in order to slow global warming. This is a key critical issue for us and for the future generations of earth. There are many obstacles in the way, though, chiefly being the hefty financial burden needing to be undertaken by developed countries to help foot the bill and the partisan disagreements between nations over how to best handle solving the problem. If the nations of the world could be more generous financially and open minded, tackling climate change would not be hard at all.
In the United States, we most importantly needed to bring the issue into education. Educated citizens have a strong correlation with supporting the fight against global warming, and this only grows as you filter down by age. A massive effort must be undertaken by America as a whole to raise awareness and work towards change.