An Interactive Game About Climate Change

The details of climate change can be technical and complex — as well as dispiriting and depressing. That's why Climate Interactive, a DC-based not-for-profit, created World Climate Simulation, a free online role-playing game that enagages people in the climate debate while suggesting what they can do to fight back.

The game "is a simplified international climate-change negotiations meeting for large groups, typically 8-50 people," in the words of Climate Interactive. "A facilitator leads the group, while each participant plays the role of a delegate representing a specific nation, negotiating bloc, or, in some cases, an interest group. Everyone then works together in their respective roles to reach a global agreement that successfully keeps climate change well below 2°C over preindustrial levels."

All materials needed to play are downloadable from Climate Interactive's website, in several languages. According to the group, the game "is suitable for people from middle school to graduate school students, community and religious groups, executive leaders, scientists, and everyone in between."

To date, over 1,000 simulations have been run, in 85 countries with over 46,000 participants. And it works. According to research published in September by scientific journal PLOS One, 81 percent of participants came out of the game with an increased desire to combat climate change, regardless of political orientation or prior beliefs.

“Research shows that showing people research doesn’t work,” says John Sterman, professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “World Climate works because it enables people to express their own views, explore their own proposals and thus learn for themselves what the likely impacts will be.”

—By Jocelyn Hessel