Climate Interactive in the UK: Building grounded hope on climate solutions

“The workshop enabled participants to visualize how the various approaches and solutions interact and impact climate outcomes.  Some of the conclusions challenged received wisdom and intuition.”

– Workshop Participant

In the latest leg of our campaign to build understanding of climate change solutions, Climate Interactive Co-Director Drew Jones traveled to London to engage leaders with our simulations at an event organized by the German Marshall Fund and hosted by the U.K.’s Green Investment Bank.

Grounded hope shows us that reducing climate risk is “doable.”

In our first exercise with U.K. policymakers, the team of Drew Jones, Miriam Maes and Alissa Burger used our interactive climate and energy models—C-ROADS and En-ROADS—to spread “grounded hope.”

February 13, 2014March 19, 2014 by davidpedigo Categories: Analysis, Insights, Policy exercises and serious games, ToolsTags: Britain, C-ROADS, climate change, Drew Jones, En-ROADS, England, hope, London, optimism, policymakers, Solutions, UK, United Kingdom 1 Comment

John Sterman on the Power of Simulations

At a recent MIT conference, Climate Interactive member Prof. John Sterman provided an inspiring analysis of the relationship between big data, climate models and climate change action.

Climate Interactive team member, Prof. John Sterman

As we see data and models become more advanced and more available, we’re only really reaching the first step toward solving the problem of climate change.  The real challenge that we’re facing, Sterman said, is communicating all this information so that it teaches and inspires people to pursue the appropriate solutions.

“The burden is on us,” he said. “People are solving problems—data doesn’t solve problems [and] information doesn’t solve problems.”

November 26, 2013November 27, 2013 by davidpedigo Categories: Analysis, Insights, ToolsTags: C-ROADS, China, Climate, climate change, Climate Interactive, climate model, john sterman, Shandong, Shenzhen, World Climate, World Climate Exercise 1 Comment

Counterintuitive Climate Strategy: See The Solution In Order to Even See the Problem

By Drew Jones, Climate Interactive Co-Director

How can we build political will to take responsibility for climate?

It is time to invest in grounded hope.

We should inoculate the world with an attractive, rigorous, comprehensive path toward climate success, as a means of helping people see and own the climate challenge in the first place.

I think we need to see the solution in order to see the problem.

Sounds backwards, right?

We’ve flipped the cause-and-effect for too long. We’ve mostly been saying (think “An Inconvenient Truth”), “climate disruption is a huge problem. So let’s solve it. Every small action counts.”

But it isn’t working. Too many people think, “it’s an overwhelming problem without a clear solution. I give up.”

We’ve seen the alternative work first hand. Over the past year, I’ve facilitated large groups of Stanford graduate students, international energy execs, a climate-and-business advisory panel in Washington, D.C. and others, and asked them to chart out viable solution paths and then see the impacts immediately in our simulators En-ROADS and C-ROADS.

They dream, grieve, learn, dream again, then emerge a bit readier to take responsibility for the problem, roll up their sleeves and try something a bit more ambitious. As Gerard Moutet of the French oil company Total said, “It now seems challenging but possible.”

Challenging but possible. Grounded hope.

November 8, 2013March 19, 2014 by davidpedigo Categories: AnalysisTags: Andrew Jones, C-ROADS, climate change, Climate Interactive, climate simulation, Drew Jones, En-ROADS, hope, optimism 4 Comments

Climate Interactive Simulation Opens Minds of 200 International Fellows

A group of 185 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows from across the world got a crash course in climate change policy from Climate Interactive Co-Director Drew Jones at this year’s Global Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C.

The World Energy and World Climate simulations helped these leaders, who represented 93 countries, gain insights into the complexity of international climate negotiations and what we need to do in order to address climate change.

Kristina Jenkins, the senior program officer at the Humphrey Fellowship Program, said the exercise helped establish a sense of solidarity among participants.

November 4, 2013November 4, 2013 by davidpedigo Categories: Policy exercises and serious games, Presentation, Resources, Team and community, ToolsTags: Activism, Andrew Jones, C-ROADS, Climate, climate change, Climate Interactive, Drew Jones, energy, Environment, Hubert Humphrey Fellows, John Kerry, system dynamics, systems thinking, Washington DC, World Climate Leave a comment

Two Interactive Graphics to Illuminate the UN Climate Report’s Latest Findings

After much anticipation, the U.N. recently released its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change, leaving us with more certainty than ever that we need to do more to address the effects of climate change

In case you don’t have the time to read over the entire 900-page document we recommend a few visual aids that can help you understand some of the report’s major findings and what their implications will be for life as we know it.

To see how the U.N. projects temperatures could change over your lifetime, check out The Guardian’s interactive graphic, which allows you to input your birthday and see how much the planet has already warmed over your lifetime and how much hotter it will get. According to The Guardian’s analysis, if the world continues along with business as usual, a child born today would see rise of 2.7 – 6.3 degrees Celsius in his or her lifetime. To put that in perspective, 4 degrees was enough to take the planet out of the last ice age.

Image taken from The Guardian website

Because of the long time span and the detail of The Guardian’s graph, you can also see how temperature fluctuations have varied over time while exhibiting a clear general upward trend. This is especially important given the reactions of many climate skeptics to the lull in temperature increases over the last 15 years. As the graph shows, however, there’s no reason to believe this lull will continue if we continue business as usual.

October 7, 2013October 10, 2013 by davidpedigo Categories: ToolsTags: C-ROADS, Carbon budget, Celsius, climate change, En-ROADS, Friday, global warming, Greenhouse gas, Guardian, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tools, United Nations Leave a comment

C-ROADS receives System Dynamics Society Award

On Tuesday in Cambridge, MA the Climate Interactive team won an award for the Best “Real World” Application of System Dynamics at the annual conference of the System Dynamics Society. The award goes to our work on the C-ROADS climate policy model, which thousands have used worldwide to better understand the level of emission reductions needed to address climate change. The award goes to the authors of the paper about C-ROADS that was published last year in the the System Dynamics Review.

The System Dynamics Society website says, “the best application [award] is based primarily on demonstrated measurable benefit to an organization through the use of system dynamics, and secondarily for new ideas that improve the art of applying system dynamics, or for relating work to existing system dynamics literature and/or other disciplines.”

Please visit our site to learn more about C-ROADS and request a copy to use yourself: http://climateinteractive.org/simulations/C-ROADS/overview 

For more on the whole story, read the following remarks by Dr. Brad Morrison, made at the awards banquet in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

July 25, 2013July 30, 2013 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Project newsTags: C-ROADS, climate policy model, system dynamics, System Dynamics Society Leave a comment

We head to Doha Climate Negotiations & Provide Free Climate Simulation

For those following and participating in the negotiations in Doha, especially those working on the ADP, Climate Interactive provides our C-ROADS simulator free of charge for you to assess the impact that national and regional emission reduction pledges have on climate change.

This robust tool enables the comparison and summation of pledges from up to 15 different regions with different reference years and units, making it easy to compare pledges to reduce carbon intensity with carbon emission reductions.

“For the first time, with C-ROADS, we have a way to capture on the spot the implications of the key decisions that will be made around the follow-up to Kyoto, with sobering and powerful results.”    — Dr. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director, European Environment Agency

Find out more and request a copy today:  http://climateinteractive.org/simulations/C-ROADS

Building on our analysis at previous negotiations, Climate Interactive will be in Doha and is available for consultations on our tools and services. Please contact info@climateinteractive.org to determine our availability.

November 27, 2012November 27, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Team and communityTags: C-ROADS, climate negotiations, climate simulation, COP18, Doha, Qatar Leave a comment

C-Learn Simulation Puts High-Powered Climate Analysis in Hands of Educators and Students

Climate policy analysis is accessible to anyone with the online C-Learn simulation. Just plug in your estimates of what kind of emissions reductions you think it will take to limit global warming to 2 degrees (or whatever your goal is) to see the effect on the rise of temperature, sea levels, or global CO2 concentration. C-Learn is a valuable tool for anyone teaching audiences and exploring the impact of different levels of climate change mitigation on our planet.

Recently we updated C-Learn to make it particularly useful to the growing number of people running the World Climate Exercise, a role-playing game simulating the UN climate change negotiations. Coupled with World Climate, groups can act out what it is like to be UN climate change negotiators working to create a global climate agreement. By creating pledges and testing them in C-Learn, groups can plan how to prevent the highest costs of climate change. World Climate is played in classrooms throughout the Tyrolean school system in Austria and in many other classrooms worldwide. Materials to run World Climate are available in English, French, German, and Chinese. These latest updates to C-Learn make the integration of C-Learn and World Climate even easier by offering the same inputs as the proposals World Climate Delegations submit. The fossil fuel inputs now accept a stop growth year, reduction start year, and annual reduction.

Check out C-Learn, World Climate, and our other simulations by visiting our website!

October 9, 2012October 10, 2012 by smccauley Categories: Project newsTags: C-Learn, C-ROADS, climate game, climate simulation, UNFCCC, World Climate Leave a comment

New Release of C-ROADS Available

The best tool to quickly analyze the long-term effects of different combinations of country and regional climate change mitigation proposals just got a little bit better. Just two months out from the next round of the international climate change negotiations, we’re releasing an updated version of the C-ROADS simulator. We’ve updated the data behind the model with the latest available and are giving users even more graphs and controls, along with resolving a few bugs to help you out. If you have yet to get behind the controls of this powerful simulator you can request a download on Climate Interactive’s website. If you would like to update your version of C-ROADS just login and navigate to the download page. Read below for all the details of the changes we’ve made or watch our latest tutorial video to walk you through the changes.

September 27, 2012September 28, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Project newsTags: C-ROADS, climate change, Climate change negotiations, climate mitigation, international climate change, new release, policy analysis Leave a comment

C-ROADS Article Published in System Dynamics Review

The current edition of the journal System Dynamics Review, features an article by our team here at Climate Interactive on our simulation C-ROADS.

With over 700 users worldwide and counting, C-ROADS has improved the understanding of which national climate commitments will have an impact and what is needed for us to close the gap between maintaining a safe livable planet and crossing tipping points that may have dire consequences. Our latest publication on C-ROADS reviews its uses and capabilities and explains a little bit of its structure and design. If you are new to C-ROADS and would like a better understanding of what this simulation can do for you we recommend checking out this article in particular. C-ROADS is available for free on our website. On our website you will also find much more detailed information and resources for you to explore as well.

Read “Climate Interactive: The C-ROADS Climate Policy Model”

September 12, 2012September 12, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Project newsTags: Beth Sawin, C-ROADS, Drew Jones, john sterman, Lori Siegel, Philip Rice, simulation, Stephanie McCauley, System Dynamics Review, Todd Fiddaman, Travis Franck Leave a comment