BBC – Climate Challenge

With scientists around the world gathering data in support of climate change accelerated by human factors, the BBC created a game to introduce some of the dilemmas this may present to governments around the world.  The goals of the interactive atmosphere is to give players awareness of what causes climate change, describe policy options available to governments, and give a sense of the challenges facing international climate change negotiators.

In this interactive game, you play as the president of the European United Nations, and you represent part of the Intergovernmental panel for climate change.  The game consists of ten turns, with each turn representing a decade.  In each turn, you choose up to six policies to enact during the decade, which impact the economic standing of the European nations, as well as energy, food, and water factors.  Some policies also have a positive or negative environmental impact, to reduce or cause more emissions linked to climate change.  Linked with these policies are popularity meters, based on how the public likes or dislikes the proposed policies – as the President of the European United Nations your job is to establish a strong policy on climate change while keeping the countries happy with your decisions and healthy so that they will continue to elect you to the intergovernmental panel for climate change.

The policies that you choose from in the game are based on actual governmental policy documents (except for those near the end of the game in more futuristic conditions).  The scale of the decisions and their impact was scaled back to a single turn for simplicity, and even with this simplistic model the game presents the player with good background knowledge on where policy makers may be having the most trouble meeting climate change requirements and ensuring cooperation with politicians from other governments.

When I played the Climate Challenge, I tried to meet every goal set for the climate reduction plan every 30 years (3 turns).  While I was effective in keeping my popularity up for the majority of the game and successfully meeting environmental and emission standards, sometimes my concern for the well being of the people in the European Nations wasn’t as high as it should have been. My results page showed scores of Environmental policy: 89% effectiveness; Wealth: 13% effectiveness; Popularity: 20% effectiveness.

The content of the game does a remarkable job of highlighting different consequences for potential actions, placing the player in the role of a politician fighting to recognize climate change and enact policies corresponding to their impact on reducing human impacts on climate change.  It is easy to get lost in the game, learning as you make policy decisions and seeing the potential impacts on the status of nations having to enforce these policies.

The link to the game is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/

A link to the background and description of the game is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/aboutgame.shtml

4 thoughts on “BBC – Climate Challenge

  1. Loved this game! It was very realistic and highly frustrating as I either ended up with a environmentally strong country with no money or a wealthy country that hated my presidency. I also thought the game did a great job of showing the two opposing views on all public policies. Many policies that I would consider favorable, had strong arguments against implementing them which gave me pause. I would love to see the negotiations round become a little more intensive though. Thanks for sharing!

  2. I played one round of the game and it was really interesting, and kindof tough! It really highlights how resources are so interconnected by policies. I was also surprised that some of the policies wouldn’t reduce emissions as much as they did. I was also surprised that recycling only had a financial cost and no other gains. It also highlighted that even though a policy may have great incentives in protecting natural resources and the environment, it will almost always come with negative reviews by the public since there’s always another cost associated with it. Awesome find!

  3. I think this was an awesome game. It really lets individuals interact with the struggles and hard decisions involved with climate politics. Unfortunately, we need governments to help with climate issues, but they are pulled in so many directions already that it seems like it will never get done. I think it would have been interesting to play an American version of the game. I think doing a European one made being climate friendly a little too easy — I don’t think the average American would support windmills as much as the average European.

  4. This game is so difficult! I mean I always understood that environmental policy is hard to implement and have it work effectively but this website really portrays the challenges in a unique and fun way. This is a really unique and interactive website for portraying how policies may go over in the sense of the environment and with humans in the future as climate change continues.

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