Acting as an important executive for the United States made me feel powerful and important and like I could make a major difference. However, after actually trying to negotiate with other world powers and address climate change, I felt confused and disappointed. I realized that the impact of my decisions was actually not as significant as I had hoped it would be.
I felt pretty confident about our ability to address climate change at the start of the exercise. I knew that the US contributed a great deal to global CO2 emissions and that we also have tremendous global power when it comes to negotiations, so I thought for sure that we could address the problem with a little effort. However, actually attempting to reduce emissions proved a lot harder than I expected, especially when other countries were unwilling to cooperate.
My group didn’t really change our ideas very much over the course of the exercise. We kept our deforestation and afforestation rates consistent throughout the entire exercise and we only added to our fund contribution in an effort to appease China. We did move our peak and reduction years forward, but once again that was in conjunction with China and India.
The most significant factor that led us to change our initial policies was the limited impact that our reductions had on climate change. In addition, the willingness of China and India to cooperate with us made things easier. We had a lot more trouble reaching agreements with the Other Developing Countries and Other Developed Countries.
I do think that emissions can be cut, but not by a significant enough margin to eliminate the effects of climate change. Based on the results of the exercise I think it is borderline impossible to truly minimize climate change before it is too late. Even with almost unanimous support and cooperation we were unable to reach the target of 2 ̊C.
Economic concerns and global competition seemed to be the biggest barriers to me. Reducing emissions and funding afforestation programs while reducing deforestation is an extremely expensive endeavor that will severely damage the economy, and most countries are unwilling to jeopardize their economic welfare. This doesn’t even take into account the money that other countries asked for in order to address climate change. Other groups were quick to jump on China and the US for not offering to donate very much money, but I don’t think they really understand how much it will cost to implement domestic changes that are significant enough to make a difference.
We can catalyze change in the US by ensuring that more people are educated about climate change and know how to address it. Doing little things personally isn’t going to make any difference whatsoever, massive industrial companies are the ones driving the emissions, so instead we should focus on bringing the problem to the attention of the government and high ranking officials in major companies. Only then can we hope to mitigate the damages of climate change.