When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt that although each country theoretically had a lot of power to make a change and implement goals for the future, there was very little wiggle room and it was frustrating because making change depended on the cooperation of so many other countries as well.
How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? At first, I was not very clear on what exactly we were negotiating because we were filling out sheets individually as a country. As we entered them into the simulator and it calculated the degree of difference after each country’s contributions, I was able to better understand. Although it was difficult making a change and getting countries to agree on certain policies, it was very interesting because the simulation showed just how hard this is in reality (obviously multiplied by 1000). As the rounds went on I better understood what we were negotiating and how to go about making a substantial overall change.
How did your group change their ideas? My group was China, and our ideas did not really change at all throughout the rounds. We knew that we were a world superpower and would have to contribute, and also a large contributor of fossil fuels so that needed to be addressed. What changed throughout the rounds was our commitment to making a change. We increased our money contribution and decreased our peak date because we knew that these would have substantial impacts on the overall degree decrease because of China’s stance in the world.
What prompted that change? The change was prompted when we realized that China is a country that has the potential to have such a big impact, and we can afford and really really should, make the changes and commit to the betterment of our environment. Also, after negotiating with the United States and them agreeing to match our contribution and peak date also prompted us to make a change because we didn’t feel like we were the only ones making that much of an effort.
In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? I think that emissions can be cut, as shown, because we decreased it down to 2.4º degrees, but it is really difficult because it takes the commitment and compromisation of all these different nations who all have different desires and needs.
What were the major costs and barriers to the implementation of participant proposals? As China, with such a large population, and much of it runs on industries/factories it was difficult to promise a huge rate of decrease because this is such a large part of our economy. Also, afforestation was not as feasible in China as it was in other countries because we have large cities and lots of farmland so it just wouldn’t really make sense.
How can we catalyze change in the US? It is important to raise awareness of the severity of the issues that can occur, extremely soon, because it cannot take a few or a small group of people but it takes a nation to convince and impact the administrations who have the ability to legislate change.