Climate Challenge

(5 votes)

A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office.

Currently there is a growing consensus amongst climate researchers that Earth's climate is changing in response to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The main debate amongst scientists is focussed on the amount of climate change we can expect, not whether it will happen.

With the current level of debate in mind, the BBC decided a game might be a good introductory route into climate change and some of the issues this creates for governments around the world.

The producers' primary goal was to make a fun, challenging game. At times it was necessary to strike a compromise between strict scientific accuracy and playability. For this reason, Climate Challenge should not be taken as a serious climate change prediction.

Wherever possible, real research has been incorporated into the game. This document describes the scientific sources used to create Climate Challenge and some of the compromises made by the producers. These sources are a good starting point for someone interested in learning more about climate change. This document also describes some of the compromises the producers made for the sake of playability.

Game focus and aims...

Apart from the primary goal of creating a fun game, Climate Challenge's producers aimed to:

give an understanding of some of the causes of climate change, particularly those related to carbon dioxide emissions.
give players an awareness of some of the policy options available to governments.
give a sense of the challenges facing international climate change negotiators.

Players must respond to catastrophic events caused by climate change as well as natural and manmade events, which may or may not be linked to climate change. This aspect of the game is meant to give some idea of what could happen as the Earth's climate changes and also introduce the unpredictable nature of some natural events.