During this exercise I was part of the European Union group.
When I played my role in the policy exercise, I did not feel necessarily restricted by the group (nations’) background. Although during the exercise the EU made many large contributions, they were all based somewhat on reality. For example, some European countries had up to 4.5% reductions. Policy making in terms of negotiations was more challenging, and we did not always end up with what we wanted out of the deal, despite still handing over our resources.
As negotiations progressed, I felt that despite people’s initial hesitance towards contributing to the cause, when they realized just how much progress still had to be made, countries that did were not interested before suddenly increased their contribution, in hopes that we could actually achieve our goal. Even though we (the EU group) already donated a lot of money into the cause, we put even more in later in the rounds.
The EU group already started with a lot invested into the program, and the only change we had was donating even more money to the cause, as well as having more of our group monitoring those that needed our money.
We realized we all had to put in more money, when it turns out other groups needed more money than we would have expected.
In the end, I think the only way emissions can be cut is if we, as people of earth and not of nations, realized that no one would be happy if the earth catches on fire. We would all have to set aside differences and put our efforts into saving the world we live in, most importantly making it a higher priority than it is for many nations right now.
Many countries that still were developing could not bear the price of cutting emissions early, since they would not be able to progress. Even the best they could do to delay and cut emissions would be paid for at a high cost. Ultimately, it was the act of cutting emissions that was the most important to reaching our goal.
The best way to catalyze change really is to spread the information outward, as well as give genuine examples of how change would affect us. Without even knowing how it affects us, people may not be interested in saving our environment.