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

Beth Sawin at UMass Lowell: Climate Change Solutions for the Future We Need

Creating workable solutions to climate change isn’t easy, but human beings have a history of overcoming obstacles in difficult times (as we’ve said before, ending the slave trade was once similarly thought of as impossible).

In her speech at a teach-in at UMass Lowell, Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin reminded us that enormous progress on climate change is possible, as long as we’re ready to make some serious changes.  For inspiration, she said, she likes to look to her family history.

Here’s an excerpt from her speech:

In 1943 my grandparents built a house. They were barely out of their teens, already married, with two young children. As far as I know, they had never done anything as huge as building a house

But times were hard, money was tight and they kept getting evicted from whatever rundown housing they could find.

October 24, 2013October 25, 2013 by davidpedigo Categories: Analysis, Insights, Presentation, Team and communityTags: Activism, Boston, climate change, Climate Interactive, Environment, Massachusetts, UMass Lowell, university of massachusetts lowell 1 Comment

Climate Interactive Showcases Drought and Displacement Simulation before UN

As global warming advances, much of the planet’s most vulnerable population is already seeing its livelihood affected. In some cases, the effect is so strong that people must uproot their lives entirely and join the growing ranks of the world’s environmental refugees.

(From left) Dr. Travis Franck, Ovais Sarmad from the International Organization for Immigration (IOM) and IDMC Director Alfredo Zamudio present Climate Interactive’s new simulation before the UN.

It was in this context that Climate Interactive showcased some of our latest climate tools at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Humanitarian Affairs Segment in Geneva last month.

Presented by Dr. Travis Franck, the Kenya Pastoralists Drought-induced Displacement Simulator seeks to apply systems thinking to policies aiding environmental refugees in Northeast Kenya. As pastoralists who live off the land are increasingly displaced by droughts in this part of the world, governments and humanitarian organizations are hoping this model will help them develop the appropriate adaptation strategies.

“We’re using a model that’s never been used in this arena before,” Franck says.

September 9, 2013September 16, 2013 by davidpedigo Categories: Policy exercises and serious games, Presentation, Project news, ToolsTags: climate change, Climate Interactive, drought, ECOSOC, European Union, global warming, idmc, Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, International Organization for Migration, IOM, kenya, systems thinking, UN, United Nations, United Nations Economic and Social Council Leave a comment

Systems Thinking for Changemakers at Ashoka Future Forum

To put system thinking techniques into the hands of changemakers, Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin will be joining David Castro of I-LEAD Inc. to lead a workshop at the Ashoka Future Forum. This event is pulling together 400 top leaders in social innovation, business entrepreneurship, philanthropy and media to wrestle with the biggest problems and share insights on the solutions.

Here is Beth and David’s tantalizing workshop description:

Archimedes, one of the earliest systems thinkers, famously promised, “give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” In their passion for change, leaders and changemakers are constantly searching for that long lever and leverage point, deeply aware that addressing system complexity often marks the difference between success and failure. We may be searching for creative leverage points that yield new results within existing systems, or we may be engaged in ambitious efforts to re-engineer entire systems. Our work with systems often relies only on our intuition, a capacity that tends to fail more frequently in the face of mounting complexity. The rigorous study of systems promises to bring critical system elements into strategic sharp relief, thereby offering the potential for breakthrough strategies and innovations. This workshop will introduce the theory and practice of Systems Thinking, helping participants explore its relevance to changemaking. Participants will practice using its tools applied to current work settings and ongoing projects. The specific tools and concepts considered will include stocks, flows, links, and balancing and reinforcing dynamics. The long lever and its mysterious fulcrum await you. Take hold and move the world.

If you agree that this workshop sounds tantalizing, but you aren’t one of Ashoka’s select 400 participants, fear not. Climate Interactive is gearing up to offer the content of this workshop and much more through an online learning program later this year. We’re still many months from launching this effort, but you can sign up and be the first to know when it is ready.

May 21, 2013May 31, 2013 by Ellie Johnston Categories: PresentationTags: ashoka fellows, ashoka future forum, Beth Sawin, changemakers, changemaking, systems thinking Leave a comment

MIT Professor: We Ended the Slave Trade, We Can End Fossil Fuel Use

In this interview Climate Interactive team member and MIT Professor John Sterman describes how slavery was once an integral source of energy for our society and yet we realized how wrong it was and stopped.  John is optimistic that we will come to the same conclusions about the damaging energy sources we are dependent on today.

He explains his research, which shows that people are often so overwhelmed by the scope of climate change and the feeling they can’t do anything about it that they become cognitively dissonant. He explains that we can take steps to help people reorient their thinking about climate change, like reminding people that throughout history people have been able to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges, like ending slavery.

Check out the video interview from the Australian School of Business above or visit their website for the full transcript or audio.

March 22, 2013March 23, 2013 by Ellie Johnston Categories: PresentationTags: climate change, cognitive dissonance, insurmountable challenges, john sterman, optimism 1 Comment

March 12th: Climate Interactive at Oxford discussing future energy scenarios

Climate Interactive Co-Directors Beth Sawin and Drew Jones will be giving an interactive presentation tomorrow, March 12th, at Oxford Universtiy’s Saïd Business School on our global energy model En-ROADS.

 

The event:

‘En-ROADS: Interactive Experiments with a Policy-Maker-Oriented Global Energy and Climate Simulator’

Tuesday 12th March 2013, 12.30 -14.00

Seminar Room 14, Saïd Business School

Event abstract:

The Earth’s climate and society’s energy infrastructure are each complex dynamical systems driven by multiple feedback processes, accumulations, time delays and nonlinearities, but research shows poor understanding of these processes is widespread, even among highly educated people with strong technical backgrounds.

Existing climate and energy models are opaque to policymakers and too slow to be effective either in the fast-paced context of policymaking or as learning environments to help improve people’s understanding of climate dynamics.

In this interactive session we will together run experiments in En-ROADS (Energy-Rapid Overview And Decision Support), a transparent, intuitive policy simulation model developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan that provides policymakers, negotiators, educators, businesses, the media, and the public with the ability to explore, for themselves, the likely consequences of energy, GDP, land use, and GHG emissions policies. The model runs on an ordinary laptop in a fraction of a second, offers an intuitive interface and has been carefully grounded in the best available science. We describe the need for such tools, the structure of the model, and calibration to climate data and state of the art general circulation models.

En-ROADS is an extension of C-ROADS, the climate simulator that is being used by officials and policymakers in key UNFCCC parties, including the United States, China and the United Nations.

Climate Interactive is a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization that helps people see what works to address climate change and related issues like energy, water, food, and disaster risk reduction. Climate Interactive employs system dynamics modeling, which was invented at MIT Sloan in the 1950s.

Sawin and Jones are co-founders and co-directors of Climate Interactive – www.climateinteractive.org. Both hold their degrees from Dartmouth College and MIT.

Thanks to the event sponsors:
Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School, and the Saïd Business School

March 11, 2013March 12, 2013 by Ellie Johnston Categories: PresentationTags: En-ROADS, Energy Scenarios, Oxford University Leave a comment

MIT Professor Says We Are Playing Russian Roulette With Our Children’s Future

John Sterman, MIT Professor and fellow collaborator on many Climate Interactive projects, lays out the stark realities we are facing with climate change inaction in his presentation at the MIT Museum last month. He describes the risks we face by not taking immediate measures to address climate change in every sector of society and equates it to playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that has 19 of 20 chambers filled. His conclusion: we can despair, take no action, and allow the worst case to happen, or we can immediately initiate measures to reduce our carbon emissions as an insurance policy against the worst risks. Watch the video below for his complete presentation. Beginning around time 27:40 Professor Sterman demonstrates the unexpected dynamics of time delays and shows the Climate Interactive C-ROADS simulation, to demonstrate common misunderstandings about our climate system.

November 20, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Presentation, UncategorizedTags: climate simulation, john sterman, MIT, system dynamics, systems thinking 2 Comments

Carbon Prices, Regulation, and New Technology: En-ROADS Shows if it Will Work

With Climate Interactive’s En-ROADS simulation it becomes possible to try out differently energy policies and scenarios and quickly see how they will effect our world. Recently Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin led a workshop to exhibit the features of En-ROADS and explore the insights it provides. Below is a review of the event from Sarah Parkinson at the Donella Meadows Institute that explains some of the interesting results that the En-ROADS  simulation provides.

Using the En-ROADS simulation tool to visualize our energy choices and understand their implications

by Sarah Parkinson, Donella Meadows Institute

When we talk about climate change, we’re really talking about systems—a whole web of linked issues. We can’t really discuss the eroding health of our planet without bringing up the causes of that decline, such as habitat destruction and resource extraction. Mention of resource extraction brings us to the extractive fossil fuel industry, which in turn brings us to our economy of cheap energy. From the economy we can easily segue to issues like continuous growth and the recent economic crisis, which lead to questions of wellbeing and security. And security connects right back to the threats of climate change. These are all complex, interconnected challenges that affect our lives. And, as Elizabeth Sawin remarked at a talk last week, “Humans aren’t doing a very good job of managing that complexity.”

October 23, 2012November 16, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: PresentationTags: Beth Sawin, Donella Meadows Institute, En-ROADS, Energy Policy Leave a comment

Plotting the Clean Energy Transition: Grad Students Use En-ROADS for New Insights

Stanford students debating energy policy with En-ROADS

Last week graduate students at Stanford University got a special treat. As part of the Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference, students in energy-related fields at Stanford got to play with En-ROADS, Climate Interactive’s latest simulator, which demonstrates how different energy policies could make a difference in the decades to come. Exploring whether the accelerated retirement of coal-fired power plants paired with subsidies in renewable energy will help us reduce our emissions better than a $50 price on each ton of CO2, is just one of countless policy configurations that the En-ROADS simulation lets users explore. The Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference was co-sponsored by Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy, SIMES, the Global Climate and Energy Project, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Office of the Vice Provost of Graduate Education at Stanford.

September 19, 2012September 19, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: PresentationTags: 2 degrees, Climate, Drew Jones, En-ROADS, energy, Energy Policy, SLAC, Stanford 3 Comments

Rio: More than Beaches and Diplomats

Credit: Ellie Johnston

While the negotiations for Rio+20 progressed, Drew and Travis of Climate Interactive were sharing analysis and facilitating a group that is exploring pathways to break through the climate impasse at the Rio Climate Challenge. This event, part conference, part workshop, went beyond a typical conference speaker series with hundreds of audience members listening to experts who drop in for their part and then scoot off to the next thing. The Rio Climate Challenge included a plenary hall where audience members hear from leaders in different areas of climate, like from Yvo de Boer, the former secretariat of the UN climate change negotiations. The unique part of this event was that speakers when not on stage are working together in a small group to develop a set of recommendations for the climate change negotiations and Rio+20.

June 20, 2012June 20, 2012 by Ellie Johnston Categories: Presentation, Team and community, UncategorizedTags: adding it up, Drew Jones, Future We want, national commitments, Rio Climate Challenge, Rio+20, RioCentro, Travis Franck 1 Comment