Cultivate Climate Leadership: Lead a Mock-UN Game

By Andrew P. Jones
May 26, 2015

Committed leaders are using the World Climate game to inform and inspire climate action. Use our online and in-person trainings this summer to have fun and bring a powerful experience to your class, friends, and community around climate change.

World Climate This December, world leaders will gather in Paris for a major UN climate summit.

Will they get the job done? So far, it looks like they will move in the right direction, but they won’t move far enough. There’s still an opportunity to address climate change and create a better future, however. It takes everybody though.

This fall we need to engage global citizens of all types from living rooms to board rooms. People who care about justice, clean energy, health, and just being decent humans. There are many ways to engage people on climate change. Our approach is to host events to run the international climate negotiations game, World Climate.** **This game has been developed by a small team from Climate Interactive, MIT, and UMass Lowell, but has been played by thousands worldwide. **Will you join us in the World Climate Project?**

World Climate can give everyone a taste of what it’s like to be a real UN climate negotiator. In fact, it relies on the same accessible computer simulation that the real negotiators at the UN talks in Paris will use to find out the impact of their pledges on the climate. The game puts participants in the shoes of world leaders and challenges them to create a deal to successfully meet the climate challenge in a 2-3 hour event. They grapple with climate change science, engage in the drama and tensions of global politics, test their ambitions against an award-winning climate-modeling tool, and then reflect on how the experience challenges their assumptions.

Watch three minutes of the drama from a World Climate event at MIT (and note — your game doesn’t need to be as well-catered as this one!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afO3lDX37tQ?rel=0

My colleagues and I have led World Climate for everyone from heads of state and corporate leaders to middle school students, high school students, and community groups.

And, after posting all the materials needed to lead the game, we’ve watched it spread. A twenty-something in France sparked over one hundred games in thirty countries. World Climate has been played in Argentina, Abu Dhabi, across an entire school district in Austria, and even Texas. It’s been run in Spanish, German, French, and Chinese. Serious climate scientists, the Dalai Lama, Fortune 500 buisness leaders, and Chinese Government officials have all played it too. It’s even been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Now, with the Paris climate talks impending and new World Climate materials being released, we are asking you to join a global community of people using this powerful tool to educate, mobilize, and build climate leadership.

Our shared mission is about people passionately and playfully advocating for and creating a better world, often with raised voices and waving arms, and with the power of computer simulations that put the best available science into the hands of the facilitator.

Now it’s your turn. Can you step up to lead World Climate with your friends and colleagues and host two events before Paris?

We need hosts, facilitators, teachers, conveners, cookie-bakers, scientists, and artists. We need you. You can do it.

**We know this game works. **Many people have said participating in World Climate was transformative to deepening their commitment to addressing climate change. And with support from the National Science Foundation in the US, we’re researching the impact further. Preliminary results have found that 76% of students reported they were more likely to take action to address climate change after participating in World Climate. More people need to experience this.

**There are several ways you can get involved in this effort: **

Learn more about upcoming trainings, events being held, and more.