I’ve always loved simulation activities. So when I heard we were going to be doing a climate simulation, I got very excited. I’ve always thought that interactive forms of learning are more interesting than just listening to a lecture.
For the simulation, my table was assigned to the role of “Other Developed Nations”. This included developed nations other than the US that were not part of the EU, such as Canada and Japan. Initially, we only pledged a few billion dollars – we were expecting other developed nations to do their part. Unfortunately, they weren’t having it. In the first round, the US only gave 17 dollars. Not 17 billion, just 17. In addition, many developing nations were unable to pledge as much money as the developed world, and even needed money to be given to them by others. It became quite obvious that something had to change.
So we decided we were going to help, by increasing our pledge from 2 billion dollars to 20 billion. This would allow us to contribute more to developing nations (who, may I add, were very calm and had a very well-thought-out explanation of where the funds would go). In addition, we increased our efforts with regard to preventing deforestation, encouraging afforestation, and decreasing emissions. As we convinced other developed nations to join us in doing the same, the estimate of how high global temperature would get by 2100 kept getting smaller and smaller. We were succeeding.
From this activity, I learned two things: the first is that selfishness is a big barrier, but that everyone is subject to it. It’s easy to see someone acting in their own best interest and dismiss them as selfish. But when you start acting in your own self-interest, you ignore the people calling you selfish. This isn’t to say that acting in one’s own self-interest is a good or bad thing, but sometimes everybody needs to realize that you can both act in your own self-interest and submit to compromise. Second is that while individuals can’t directly influence the decisions of major bodies like the UN, individuals can do their part by taking awareness of their actions while governments and corporations battle it out over emissions and climate change. Eventually, these contributions will add up, and hopefully, corporations will eventually be regulated, whether by governments or by themselves.