When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt overwhelmed as so many countries were constantly trying to make agreements. Our country was China and we were the largest producers of CO2 emissions in the air and other countries couldn’t understand that we decreased our emissions a substantial amount, but it was still the highest because we started out with the most. It seemed as though everything we sacrificed had a little effect on bettering the world climate change situation.
After filling out the first chart, I was still somewhat unsure what our common goal was. I did not realize what we were negotiating until we began to speak with other tables/countries who had plans in mind. When everyone saw their country individually, most countries were thinking in somewhat selfish terms. It wasn’t until we were all working to lower the Carbon in the air did countries start to sacrifice more money and resources.
My table was China. We knew we were a large contributor to this problem and decided to give lots of money. Originally, our group was going to give 10 billion dollars and start our peak year in 2040. By the end of the discussions, we changed this to 13 billion and had our peak year in 2030. We did not decide to do this until the U.S. group told us they would match us if we gave a few more billions of dollars. We thought this was a good idea because the U.S. originally only gave $17.76. This was effective in that the emissions lowered and other countries benefited from China and the U.S. giving 13 billion each.
In reality, I think that the emissions can be cut, but not to a great extent. Every country, for the most part, looks out for themselves rather than the world as a whole. It was easy in our class for us to throw around money because we weren’t actually in charge of an entire country. In real life, diplomats are much stingier as they have to ensure the prosperity of all of their citizens.
China’s main problem was that we could not put a large percentage for afforestation because our country needs farmland that can not be taken over by trees. There are many starving inhabitants of China, so we could not match the afforestation levels of other countries.
Individually, each U.S. citizen can not make a lot of change in reducing the emissions of CO2, but, together, we can make a difference. If we spread awareness of the issue, consumers will boycott many large businesses that produce too much CO2. We can consult the government to make strict legislation over these big businesses.