Yvo De Boer at Rio+20 on the Importance of Adding Up Climate Mitigation Actions

In Rio. That’s CI’s Travis Franck and me with former UNFCCC chair Yvo de Boer. Asked him about the importance of adding up mitigation actions. He said:

“The goal of the UN climate convention is to prevent catastrophic climate change. Therefore, efforts must be measured against that ultimate goal to determine their adequacy. If we get commitments to NAMAs (nationally appropriate mitigation actions) from developing countries, we will need to quantify those actions against a national target and the global goals.”

“World Climate” Mock-UN Exercise Energizes Youth

Youngest “World Climate” players yet!

Climate Interactive’s Drew Jones led a class of eleven seventh graders from Hanger Hall School for Girls through the “Mock-UN” policy exercise where three teams represent country groups and negotiate a global climate deal. They learned the biogeochemical carbon system through the “Bathtub” analogy and improved their understanding of climate dynamics.

Climate Interactive Heads to China

I’m excited to be leaving tomorrow to Beijing to work with our dear colleagues at Tsinghua University. They have asked for the C-ROADS simulation to be presented to a group of provincial leaders who are working to reduce the country’s carbon intensity 45% over the coming years. And we’ll collaborate on adapting the model for their own use.

The picture here shows many of us in Beijing during our last visit.

Good people, good goals, hoping to create a good future.

Professor He Jiankun of Tsinghua University (China) Loved the C-ROADS Climate Pathways iPhone and iPad App!

Our colleague in China, Professor He Jiankun, whose team is adapting C-ROADS to help with mitigation efforts in China, demo’ed and seemed to love our (beta version) iPhone and iPad app. In the photo he’s trying it at the UNFCCC negotiations here in Cancun.

Wants a Chinese version focusing on how to reduce emissions.

C-ROADS In Cancun COP16 — China, Emissions Gap Report, and Empowering the World

Second week in the COP16 UN negotiations in China showing good possibilities for climate progress for Climate Interactive and the world.

The photo here is our team of Drew Jones, Beth Sawin, and Travis Franck with Zhou Li (second from left) of Tsinghua University. We’re planning US-China-created workshops in China for provincial leaders who are working to meet their mitigation pledges. And using C-ROADS “China” to do so. Great to connect in person.

Today Beth is helping officially present the “Emissions Gap Report” (which she co-authored) from UNEP to the Mexican Government. The Report has gotten wide citation and note within the official and unofficial processes here. Very encouraged.

Other activities: Engaging “BASIC” countries who want to use C-ROADS, sharing the new iPhone app beta, talking with businesses (e.g., Nike) about business-oriented simulations, meeting venture capitalists who want a capital-driven simulation, and talking with civil society activists about sparking the global citizen support for action.

As signs here say, “From Small Seeds in Cancun…. Big Things Can Happen”

Emissions Gap Exists, We Can Close It, says Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and 32 other Scientists

What’s the latest on the sufficiency of country mitigation pledges to the UN? Now Dr. Beth Sawin of Climate Interactive and 32 other top global scientists have spoken in the UNEP “Emissions Gap Report”. Watch yesterday’s webinar briefing on the work below:

(Click on “Vimeo” in the bottom right corner of the screen to see a larger version.)

The key conclusions of the study are:

• There is a gap between where we would like to be and where we are heading;
• The size of the gap depends on what happens in the negotiations;
• The options on the table now in the negotiations have the potential to reduce emissions by 7 GtCO2e versus what would have happened otherwise (business-as-usual);
• This can be achieved by realizing countries’ highest ambitions and ensuring “strict” rules result from the negotiations;
• It is feasible to bridge the remaining gap through more ambitious domestic actions, some of which could be supported by international climate finance; and
• With or without a gap, current studies indicate that steep emission reductions are needed post-2020 to meet temperature targets.

Some background to the work:

Climate Interactive on Daily Kos — “Time to Do it Yourself”

Pimped a post by gmoke on Daily Kos — he heard our team member John Sterman of MIT Sloan.

DIY Climate Change: Ain’t Nobody Else

by gmoke

Tue Nov 23, 2010 at 07:48:30 PM PST

Last week, I heard presentations from the chief climate person at the World Bank on the outlook for international agreement in Cancun, a Harvard economist on the national outlook under the new Congress, and an MIT systems dynamicist on an online model of climate change anybody can play, C-LEARN http://forio.com/…

John Sterman, the business and management professor, demonstrated the C-LEARN and the C-ROADS http://climateinteractive.org/… simulations.  C-LEARN is designed for the general public and C-ROADS for negotiators. He said that even a majority of MIT engineering students don’t understand the dynamics of the climate system but that playing the simulations could be a powerful learning tool.

Chinese Version of C-ROADS Climate Simulation in Development

We’re excited to be working with Chinese colleagues to develop a version of the C-ROADS simulation in Chinese and calibrating it to match the dynamics of China.

A partnership with Tsinghua University as part of the MIT-Tsinghua-Cambridge Collaboration, along with support from a team of partners like Peter Senge, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others, has helped make it happen.

For non-speakers of the language, those graphs and sliders represent GDP, energy intensity, carbon intensity, fuel mix, CO2 emissions, and other factors.

We feel honored to be part of a shared effort between the US and China to address climate change.

More screenshots of the interface are below.

MIT Sloan’s Prof. John Sterman Featured in Huffington Post

Good interview with David Schmittlein, the Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, by Rahim Kanani, including his description of the work of Climate Interactive partner Dr. John Sterman. Full interview is here.

Let me give you a couple examples of MIT Sloan faculty who underlie those five themes. One is John Sterman. John was at the — probably fair to say — “failed” summit in Copenhagen around global warming and environment issues. He is a systems researcher here who has applied a deep understanding of systems issues in multiple settings including around the drivers and consequences related to climate change. It is his model of causes and outcomes of climate that was used at Copenhagen to tell the truth about every government proposal that was submitted. I think that’s a pretty important function because there was a lot of vaporware and double speak and confusion — including confusion, actually, among the delegates themselves, about what various country proposals would and wouldn’t do. John’s work brings a systems perspective to sustainable economic development, and to tell the truth about what is needed, and what will work.

Videos of John’s work with Climate Interactive are on our video page, and his website, with all his papers, is here.

Announcing the Spinoff of Climate Interactive

After a year of rising impact for the Climate Interactive (CI) program of Sustainability Institute, the board of SI and the staff of CI are pleased to announce that the program is “spinning-off” from Sustainability Institute.

Starting today, August 2, Climate Interactive is a project of the Washington D.C.-based New Venture Fund. After the transition, CI will continue to use system dynamics simulation modeling to help leaders around the world build better understanding of the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system and the human economic and energy systems that interact with it. SI will continue to pursue its core mission of shifting mindsets and systems towards sustainability as well as sharing the legacy of SI’s founder, internationally known writer and systems analyst, Donella Meadows.