Climate Interactive

Eric Roston of Bloomberg Green Explores En-ROADS Scenarios – How to Recreate His Experiments & More

By

On March 23, 2021, Eric Roston of Bloomberg Green published a newsletter piece exploring the impact of different climate solutions using the En-ROADS simulator from Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative – “What if the Perfect Climate Fix Can’t Arrive in Time?” For those with a Bloomberg subscription, the full article is here. Below you will find a video with detailed explanations of the settings used in the article and the model dynamics at play. 

1200x630 2

The meaning and math behind the “7.5%” number quoted in the newsletter is here: our modeling suggests that immediate discovery and commercialization of a new, zero-carbon electricity source could avoid the emission of 68 gigatons of CO2 by 2050 (notice the gap in Net Cumulative CO2 Emissions in 2050). A scenario that achieves net-zero emissions by 2050 such as this will avoid 908 gigatons of CO2 by 2050 (the best graph to view the value is here – observe the gap in 2050, when 3617 – 2709 = 908). And then 68/908 = 7.5%.

For additional information, please explore these resources: 

World Climate Simulation Grows in Popularity Worldwide

By

World Climate, our UN climate negotiation role-playing exercise, has reached over 50,000 people since we started keeping record in 2015! These participants have attended more than 1,100 events in at least 85 countries. Remarkably, these events have been led by over 500 facilitators who range from university professors and youth activists to business leaders and industry experts. Participants include students in high school and MBA programs as well as government agencies and civil society groups.

Our top five facilitators have run over 170 World Climate events all over the world. All five of these facilitators have not only facilitated the event dozens of times but put a lot of time and effort into developing the materials and adapting it for a wide variety of settings.

Every year more and more facilitators run World Climate for the first time. In 2018 alone, 189 facilitators ran 261 World Climate events with 11,763 participants. 84% of these facilitators ran World Climate for the first time.

We make our materials and the simulation model available to anyone who wants to run the World Climate game, from a small town in Ghana or the rural United States to the biggest cities of Singapore and Paris—and everywhere in between. The top five countries where World Climate events have been played are the United States, South Korea, France, Argentina, and Germany.

World Climate continues to grow as does the community of facilitators. We are proud of our community of facilitators and excited to see World Climate all over the world!

If you have run the World Climate Simulation but haven’t registered your event, please do so. And if you are interested in running World Climate, we encourage you to join us for one of our monthly webinars to learn more.

 

 

From MIT Sloan: This Tool Is Pushing People To take Action On Climate Change

By

Originally posted on the MIT Sloan School of Management Newsroom on October 11, 2018 by Meredith Somers, re-posted with permission.

Research led by Professor Juliette Rooney-Varga of the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative, Professor John Sterman of MIT Sloan. Other authors include Eduardo Fracassi, Travis Franck, Florian Kapmeier, Victoria Kurker, Ellie Johnston, Drew Jones, and Ken Rath.

“New research suggests the best way to understand climate risks is interactive learning.”

The global temperature is rising and an international agreement is needed to avoid irreversible damage to the planet.

You’ve got two hours to find a solution.

That’s the mission in the role-play simulation World Climate, and according to new research from MIT Sloan professor John Sterman, it might also be the key to understanding and encouraging environmental change.

In World Climate, participants take on the role of delegates to the UN climate change summits, and negotiate face-to-face with other participants to reach a climate change agreement. Sterman said the negotiators seek to limit global warming to no more than the 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — limit affirmed at the Paris climate summit, while also taking their economic and political situations into account. Participants get immediate feedback on their proposed agreements by using the Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support (C-ROADS) simulator.

C-ROADS is a peer-reviewed climate simulation model that has been used by senior officials and policymakers in the UN and various governments. Sterman said users enter their own scenarios for fossil fuel emissions and land use (deforestation, for example)t hat the likely impacts of their proposals on the global climate — including warming, sea level rise, and ocean acidification — would be.

Typically, first-round proposals lead to warming well above 2 degrees Celsius, Sterman said, leading to severe harm to the prosperity, health, and welfare of people in every nation. Participants realize that it’s in their own interest to undertake more ambitious cuts in emissions, and usually negotiate a stronger agreement in the second round.

The researchers found “statistically significant gains” in three areas:

  • knowledge of climate change causes, dynamics, and impacts.
  • affective engagement, including greater feelings of urgency and hope.
  • a desire to learn and do more about climate change.

“The results indicate that World Climate offers a climate change communication tool that enables people to learn and feel for themselves, which together have the potential to motivate action informed by science,” Sterman and his co-authors write.

The study surveyed more than 2,000 World Climate participants from eight nations on four continents, ranging in age from 11 to more than 75 years old, with a variety of cultural and educational backgrounds. Participants completed a survey asking about their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes about climate change before and after the workshop.

The interactive simulation differs from the “information deficit model,” that is, the idea that telling people information about the causes and effects of climate change will change their behavior.

The deficit model approach is not ideal, the researchers write, in part because it limits the amount of information that can be shared and understood about a complex topic.

“Research shows that showing people research doesn’t work,” Sterman said.

The “just the facts” approach induces resistance and lacks emotional intensity, Sterman said,and people’s beliefs are also conditioned by social forces.

“Individuals who share ties with members of social groups that dismiss climate change are also likely to dismiss it, while the belief that other similar people take action increases behaviors to combat climate change,” the study authors write.

But the ideological divide shrank in the context of the simulation.

The researchers found that “gains [in climate knowledge, the feeling of urgency, and the desire to take action] were just as strong among American participants who oppose government regulation of free markets — a political ideology that has been linked to climate change denial in the U.S. — suggesting the simulation’s potential to reach across political divides.”

Sterman, who’s also director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, said he and his fellow researchers weren’t expecting such a large impact on people who don’t support government action on climate change, since previous research suggests the more information provided about climate change, the more polarized the sides become.

But in the World Climate simulation, Sterman said, people aren’t told what to do.

“Instead, participants debate amongst themselves as they negotiate, deciding what, if any, emissions reductions they will offer for the nations they represent in the role play,” he said. “Then we use the C-ROADS model to simulate the impact of their decisions. We believe it’s that shift — from experts telling people about the science to an interactive experience in which participants learn for themselves — that accounts for the impact of World Climate on those who don’t trust government and oppose regulation of the market.”

Increasing urgency

Another lesson learned from the simulation that can be applied to climate action is messaging.

According to the study, “fearful messages” were historically seen as counterproductive to encouraging climate change action, as they could reduce risk perception and action. More hopeful “solutions-oriented” approaches were seen as the better option.

The simulation showed that gains in urgency, which included fear around climate change, were linked to an increase in knowledge, intent, and a desire to learn more.

This feeling of fear is important for people to understand the severity of climate change, Sterman said, though it’s also essential to help people move past fear, to use the urgency of the problem to motivate action.

“If we conclude that it’s too late, that there’s nothing we can do and then do nothing, then we will create that outcome,” he said. “World Climate not only boosts people’s knowledge of climate change and increases the urgency they feel, but also generates gains in hope. Hope isn’t a belief that it’s all going to be OK. The problem is grave and there’s no time to waste. Hope is the belief that it is not too late, that it is still possible to make a difference, and that what each one of us does, individually and collectively, matters.”

How to Run the World Climate Simulation with Younger Children

By

The World Climate role-play simulation can work for kids as young as 7-8 years old.

We’ve done it – and found that they love the drama of negotiating, the visual delight of graph lines changing in C-ROADS, and the solutions-oriented approach to learning about climate change.

Here are some suggestions about how to adapt the game to fit participants aged 7-13 or so:

  1. Explain climate change and the United Nations, as briefly as possible. In the set-up for the game, before I arrived in role, I helped the kids understand the basics of climate change and the UN, particularly its membership and goals. This built up to me announcing: “In a few minutes, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is going to walk through that door!”
  2. Emphasize individual people. When explaining the roles they would play, I assigned kids to play specific people. For example, in the “Developed Countries” group, I pointed out Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel. In “Developing A”, I emphasized Narenda Modi of India and Xi Jinping of China (all for 2018-era leadership).
  3. No PowerPoint. The only image I displayed was the three-region version of C-ROADS.
  4. Keep the time frame short. 30-60 minutes, including debrief. Round one with each team caucusing and then giving a speech. Round two after negotiating (“Walk over there and tell them what you think they should do!” – note, it can get loud). Maybe round three and four by calling out to teams and asking if they have changed their pledges. It’s best to have a fairly small group to be able to manage them all – we had 15.
  5. Believe in their ability to understand graphs. Many kids seemed to connect their team’s action to the graphs. For example, they saw that Developing A’s emissions in green started low, increased fast, and then fell. They loved watching lines change as a result of their pledges.
  6. Focus the game on the timing of action. Pledges were simply the year of peaking emissions – e.g., 2050, 2070, 2030, 2018. I automatically added a two-year delay and subsequent reduction of ~3% per year.
  7. Anchor timing to events in their lives. Pointing to the x-axis of the graph in C-ROADS, I asked them, “when will you take action? A. now, B. when you are in high school (2025), C. when you are your parents’ age (~2045) or D. when you are your grandparents’ age (~2075)?”
  8. Use candy as a proxy for money. Kids understand fairness, so drawing out inequity gets their attention. Don’t leave out this feature. I (quite visibly) gave ten M&Ms to the Developed group, leaving them to decide whether to eat or share them. Their decision affected the negotiation significantly.
  9. Secretly tell Developing B countries to delay. Tell the least wealthy country representatives to delay action until ~2040s – they didn’t cause the problem, others should act first, and likely haven’t received any candies to support their pledges. Otherwise all the kids take action now and there is no negotiation. They can improve their position later.
  10. Provide concrete actions to help them imagine practical steps and increase the gravity of their pledges. I said, “If you make a pledge, you will need to convince all the people in your countries to take these four actions (and others)”: (and wrote these four on a chalkboard)
    • Turn off the lights
      • When leaving your house or a room
    • Walk or bike
      • When you can, as opposed to driving
    • Eat vegetables
      • As an alternative to meat (less methane – they love hearing about how cows burp and fart greenhouse gases)
    • Write to your leaders
      • About what government or business should do
  11. Debrief points
    1. Review their personal experiences with the four actions. What has worked, what hasn’t, whether they have ever convinced another person to act.
    2. Summarize these four key take-aways:
      1. Winning requires global cooperation.
      2. We will need to take personal action and also push our leaders.
      3. We must begin action now, not in the future.
      4. We can do it.
    3. Hear from each kid about what they would write in their letters to their leaders. Possibly record on a chalkboard.’

World Climate at the University of Ghana, Legon

By

Guest blog post by Dr. Jemima Yakah Amoah

This World Climate Simulation was facilitated by Dr. Mrs. Jemima Yakah Amoah, Lecturer, Agricultural Extension Department, University of Ghana. Email: jemimayakah@gmail.com.

Introduction

On Monday 16th of April, 2018, the Climate Change and Adaptation in Agricultural Development class held the first World Climate Simulation at the University of Ghana, Legon. About 80 students participated in the role-playing simulation exercise at the Agricultural Extension department. The participants played the role of negotiators representing countries and six regional blocs (United States, EU, Other Developed Countries, China, India, Other Developing Countries) and three interest groups (the Press/Media/Journalists, Climate Activists, and Fossil Fuel Lobby) to create an agreement that limits climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the model UNFCCC Conference of Parties international climate change negotiations.

Objectives

The objectives of the exercise were to expose students to:

  1. the practical application of knowledge obtained in the class in a climate policy simulation model to reduce global warming from a 4.5°C scenario in 2100 to below 2°C.
  2. the sources of greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation options and implications for agricultural development.
  3. formulating strategies and proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per regional bloc.
  4. available peer-reviewed, science-based evidence to model the implications of their proposals for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, global mean surface temperature, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts at the global scale.
  5. climate action to reduce emissions across all scales.

Methods

The Simulation was facilitated by Dr. Mrs. Jemima Yakah Amoah of the Agricultural Extension Department, who played the role of UNFCCC Secretary General. Participants who role-played as delegates were given briefing statements to prepare ahead of time, and representatives were selected by the students to give plenary statements on behalf of the regional blocs and interest groups. The C-ROADS software developed by Climate Interactive was used to analyze the data and model the outcomes of the delegates’ proposals.

Results

At the end of the simulation, the C-ROADS software showed that the proposals, pledges and negotiations resulted in a reduction of global warming from a 4.5°C scenario to 1.7°C.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The simulation exercise provided participants an experiential learning opportunity to explore the risks of climate change impacts, climate change mitigation options and the challenges of negotiating international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  We recommend that the World Climate Simulation exercise be used as a learning tool to facilitate student understanding of climate change impacts, mitigation strategies and negotiation skills. It is also recommended that the simulation exercise be used to engender climate action among youth.

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Travis Franck of Climate Interactive and to Joshua Amponsem and Desmond Alugnoa of Green Africa Youth Organization / Ghana Youth Climate Coalition who assisted the facilitation team.

Click to see more photos of the event.

World Climate Prepares Climate Change Ambassadors at Strathmore, Kenya

By

By Olive Mumbo, Strathmore University student & SDSN Youth Campus Coordinator

     

The World Climate Simulation Exercise

November 10, 2017 –  Through the conjoined efforts of the Strathmore Business School, Climate Interactive and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network – Youth, thirty-three students participated in the second World Climate Simulation organized by the University’s Centre for Sustainability in Leadership. The event’s goal was to give the participants a much closer feel of the ongoing  23rd Conference of the Parties (COP 23) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) then taking place at the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, Germany.

The participants role-played different delegations present at the UN Climate Summit and were expected to make decisions  taking into account their social, economic, environmental and political status as a state. The simulation exercise was grounded on current climate science which through the use of the interactive C-ROADS computer simulator, participants would find out how their proposed policies would impact the global climate system in real-time.

The delegations represented were United States, European Union, Developed Countries, India, China, Developing Countries as well as observer interest groups of Climate Activists and Fossil Fuel Lobbyists. Each delegation had to come up with a policy strategy and commitments which included the year in which they would peak their greenhouse gas emissions, start reducing the emissions, the annual reduction rate, and their commitment to preventing deforestation and promoting afforestation. They also had to discuss their contributions and/or requests from the Green Climate Fund and its institutionalisation. The whole goal of the negotiations was to keep the global temperature increase of our planet at well below 20C while enabling the developing countries, through financing, to cope with the impacts of climate change and adopt low-carbon development pathways. Indeed, the negotiations process was not only gruesomely long but also, a show of the reality of the complexity and vested interests surrounding the UN climate negotiations. After three rounds of negotiations, the role play resulted in a 2.10C of warming with financial contributions exceeding the GCF target of $100Billion/year.

WC Ambassador, Sheila Mbiru guides a delegation through their roles and expectations

 

Contextualising the Simulation Outcome to Kenya’s Situation

During the debrief session, participants discussed at length the current impacts of climate change in Kenya which are also compounded by local environmental issues such as illegal encroachments, deforestation, livestock overgrazing, and poor waste management. Importantly, the students discussed what they would do within their community. They came up with practical projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions including planting trees, recycling plastics and changing consumption patterns.

Overall, the participants agreed with the ideology that the three pillars of sustainable development – economic growth, environmental stewardship, social inclusion – cut across all sectors of development, from cities to agriculture, infrastructure, energy development and use, water, and transportation. The question facing countries, cities, corporations, and development organizations today is not whether to embrace sustainable development, but how.

The outcome of the simulation was that the thirty-three participants were branded as Kenya’s Climate Change Ambassadors under the SDSN Youth network. The World Climate facilitator, Grace Mwaura, from Climate Interactive offered to train Strathmore students and faculty interested in becoming World Climate facilitators. This is expected to be done in conjunction with the Center for Sustainability in Leadership at the Strathmore Business School and organized by Joyce Riungu.

As for the SDSN Youth, they aim to create partnerships with youth organizations in Kenya which have SDGs initiative in their mandate. Not limited to SDG 13 which aims to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The World Climate Simulation is intended to be incorporated into the Strathmore community in the preceding years through continuous training of facilitators and simulation exercises.