BP9_CilmateChallenge

I chose to research the Climate Change game. As I played it i was picturing my students at the middle and end of the year learning about climate changes and human impact, both positive and negative, on the environment. At the beginning of the game, you are walked through how to play and set "policies".

The policies you make impact the several things: economy, power, food, water, and carbon emissions.  With all the talk about helping the environment it is hard for students to see how much work goes into fixing the problems. Most just take the stand that it needs to be fixed, so fix it. They don't understand the cost is in terms of money and how we live.

As with all things in the world, the only thing to expect is the unexpected. The game throws the unexpected cost to you. This one was a flood. The President decides to build better flood preventions or not, based on opinion and money it would cost. The money needs to be budgeted so as to provide for the unexpected.

  

 At the end of each turn, which is a decade, there is a news article about how your policies are doing. In this one i chose to implement an energy tax and the people did not like it. My ratings in the polls dropped below 50% and my opponent began to blast me. Just further, show the problem with trying to regulate energy consumption and carbon emissions.

 

 As the president of a European Country, you also must attend and set global policy to reduce carbon emissions. Every 3 turns or 30 years you meet with the other nations. The approval of you policies and actions will be judged by the them. If you met your goals then they are more likely to set a carbon reduction. If you did not meet your goal then you can offer to help fund other nations as a way to get their approval to set a cap. It doesn't always work.

In the end, your environment, wealth and popularity are the three main scores. As you can see here, I saved the environment, but had almost no money and no one liked me. This last section shows students the impact of the decisions they made. I made great choices for the environment but bankrupted my country and will never be re-elected.

I highly recommend this to any one teaching about the environment. It is, in my opinion, more for high school students, but the color codes of red is bad and green is good are easy for anyone to understand.