When I played my role in the policy exercise, I had mixed emotions. I felt like, as the USA, we had more bargaining power than any other group so we should be able to have the greatest effect on reducing world emissions. I was kind of frustrated at how long it took for everyone to negotiate and also at how little each adjustment affected the climate. My group became much more willing to donate money and to decrease carbon emissions as the simulation progressed. We realized, through negotiations with China, that our two nations needed to come together and commit to an earlier peak year. We were able to get China to work with us by matching their donations. I believe that emissions can be cut but it might be a “too little, too late” scenario regarding climate damage. The major barrier to the implementation of proposals was that we did not want to take an economic hit to make a small improvement to the climate. We were less likely to give more money if it only had a small impact. To catalyze change in the US, we need to raise public awareness of the issues with our climate to get more public support for climate-friendly bills and to make people more likely to reduce our own emissions.
