Copenhagen Climate Exercise in Albuquerque

By Stephanie McCauley
June 23, 2009

Today we have a guest blogger, long time colleague, the system dynamicist and systems thinker Kris Wile of Systems Thinking Collaborative.

Chris Soderquist, of Pontifex Consulting, and I delivered another Climate Change Exercise (now World Climate) in Albuquerque today. Sponsored by Sandia Labs. The participants included scientists from Sandia Labs and math and science teachers from middle schools around the country.

The most surprising thing occurred during the second round of negotiations. Usually this is the time when delegates from Developing A circle around the Developed countries’ table to talk. Instead, all the participants formed a standing semi-circle around the C-ROADS sim and demanded to experiment with proposals. Different voting blocs committed to increasingly larger and more immediate reductions until they realized what it would take to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere. They broke back into their groups to finalize those commitments.

One participant commented about how critical the ability to experiment with the sim was to understand the implications of proposals. Several wondered how the real climate negotiations could ever be effective without this ability. Another insight was how after playing in their roles participants could understand why different countries were generating the types of proposals they were.

After the workshop, participants talked about how they might use this and related material in the classrooms. An action-oriented group, we left delighted about the most recent inductees to Climate Interactive. Thanks to Aldo Zagonel and Amy Tapia from Sandia Labs for organizing the event!