How climate experts at COP29 feel playing a natural disaster simulation game

Activists and experts pushing world leaders to save a overheating planet have learned that it’s not that easy, even in a simulated world.

The Associated Press brought the board game Daybreak to the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. Experts from three countries have been asked to play this game that includes players who cooperate to stop climate change caused by the emission of polluting gases when fuels such as petrol, natural gas and coal are burned. The goal of the game is to prevent the world from overheating or being flooded with extreme weather events.

Threefold activists, analysts and journalists take turns to be the United States, China, Europe and the rest of the world, to deal with climate disasters, trying to reduce gas emissions through projects such as the restoration of wetlands and the fight against fuel interests, all according to the cards worked. .

Yellow red trouble cards are the ones that set players back the most. And every round comes with a new card, such as, “Storms: Every player adds 1 Community in Crisis” for a temperature increase of 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit), or “Sea Level Rise: Every player loses 1 Infrastructure Sustainability. “

That is tempered by green cards representing local projects, such as fertilizer efficiency, which eliminates one game token for methane-emitting livestock, or global public transport, which eliminates a token for polluting vehicle emissions.

In each game, the temperature exceeded the limit set by the world in the 2015 Paris Agreement: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, around the mid-1800s. Technically, the game does not lose until a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is reached. However, 1.5 degrees is fixed as a limit in climate circles, so players’ shoulders slump in defeat when their fictional world passes through it.

After just one play, which lasted about 20 minutes in the second game, the global temperature rose to 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit).

“How does that happen? It’s happening very quickly,” said Borami Seo, head of food and agriculture at Solutions for Our Climate in South Korea. He deliberately chose Europe, arguably the world leader in climate policy and financial aid, to be in a position to help the rest of the world.

He couldn’t.

“I thought this game should have given us hope. I can’t find hope,” said Seo in a voice between curiosity and frustration.f

The first two games were canceled because the players had to go somewhere else during the weather negotiations.

But the third game went 47 minutes and three rounds. Jake Schmidt, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, played a role in “most of the world” and the storm hit at a time when the global temperature rose to 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit). For every tenth of a degree above 1.2 degrees Celsius, players had to add a “communities in crisis” game token.

Schmidt had more cities in trouble than the 12 allowed by the game: “All my communities are gone.”

The game and the world are lost.

“I feel bad,” Schmidt said. “We quickly got toast. That was only three rounds and my communities were toast. And we were already on 1.8. I think they need a slow approach, start from scratch.”

The game starts at 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. The real world is now 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, according to the United Nations.

“Eliminating emissions was really difficult,” Schmidt said, adding that it seemed realistic. But it made him despair about climate change, he said. It reminded him how difficult the problem is.

That’s the point, says game developer Matt Leacock, who created the board game Pandemic – long before the real thing hit the world.

“I wouldn’t want many people to win this game for the first time. I don’t think that’s a productive message,” Leacock said. “I want more people to lose, but to blame themselves and learn from their experience and really want to play and be like, ‘I see we made a mistake. I have an idea of ​​what we can do better. Let’s try and see if we can pull it off.’”

There is a political message in this game that the world needs to be saved, said Leacock. Winning, or stopping the world from rising temperatures, is possible but difficult and requires immediate action, he said. That’s what experts say is necessary in real life.

Leacock, who has researched the science and politics of climate change negotiations and consulted for the World Resources Institute, said it was in the midst of a real-life pandemic a few years ago that he decided to turn what many called an existential crisis into a board. play – where people work together instead of against each other.

He wanted a game that would “make a difference.”

In the first game, Courtney Howard of the Global Climate and Health Alliance took that seriously and felt the weight of the world as temperatures rise and disasters increase.

“You feel the anxiety increase as you move away from your goal and the crisis points increase,” Howard said. “So I think we have to expect an increase in anxiety. And what will that do to people’s behavior on the domestic and international level?”

An emergency room doctor in Canada, Howard was playing the part of the United States and doing whatever he could to help Nathan Cogswell of the World Resources Institute, who was playing “most of the world” and was in trouble.

Howard was then given a “refund” card that allowed him to give Cogswell anything he had on hand. He wouldn’t admit it, saying, “I feel very guilty about my historical filth.” The US contributes more emissions than any other country in the world.

Like many developing countries, Cogswell jumped at Howard’s request, who then added a political and medical perspective to what was happening on the board.

“I feel like this real glow of excitement,” Howard said. “Did you know that giving actually increases well-being more than receiving? And that’s how I feel now.”

But it didn’t help. The players couldn’t save the world – this time.

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– Seth Borenstein, Associated Press science writer