Technical Reflection

During our war game debates we focused on two approaches to climate change: Mitigation and Adaptation. Before taking this class I was unaware of this delineation in climate change management strategy. Mitigation encompasses all efforts to prevent further global warming and climate changes from occurring whereas adaptation accepts the inevitability of climate change and focuses on initiatives to lessen its impact on vulnerable human populations through social, political, economic, and environmental projects. My takeaway from our thorough wargame roleplay exercise is that every single country needs to cooperate and take responsibility for their negative contributions in order to protect their own citizens and fellow humans across the globe. Climate change does not stop at borderlines and neither do ozone holes or polluted waters. A developing nation like India's pollution is also the UK's problem in one way or another, now or later- especially when considering the 50 year head start in industrial development that the UK, US and EU all had on the nations they invaded and suppressed. Each debate ended with monetary negotiations: which country needs/deserves what and who can/should fork it over? The general conclusion: every developing country needs A LOT of money to become stable and resilient to climate changes, but no developed country holds firm to their funding promises made during climate conferences. The dog chases its own tail: trapped in a misguided blame loop until the one in power realizes its action (or lack thereof) causes its own pain. I of course recognize the improvement and progress being made across the globe to increase attention and effort towards the Sustainable Development Goals. However, from the many projections used in each presentation it is evident that time is running out and massive change by certain countries is not massive enough to halt global warming in its path. Learning of adaptation strategies that have worked was very uplifting and impressive to me. They give hope to all that even if life drastically changes beyond our control, preparing with the help of climate projections and experts to become resilient to water, weather, pollution, and more is key to surviving and evolving as a species. The successful mitigation and adaptation strategies we've learned about proved to me that focusing on modeling short term climate change and promptly updating policies can prevent human suffering and save lives.

I enjoyed the guest lecturers included in this dialogue very much. They each brought a fresh perspective to climate change from economy to data science, which expanded my understanding of the issue. The lecture on Social Entrepreneurship where Grameen Bank was discussed piqued my interest at first because I have a friend who did their co-op at Grameen. Then understanding the brilliant and compassionate model that Grameen created for financial sustainability inspired me. I had not really considered the transformational impact that entrepreneurship could have on climate change; that poor people in developing countries can thrive if given a chance to use their skills and are held accountable for their own success. It is a revolutionary idea especially with its focus on loans to women only! I really enjoyed hearing the loan repayment rates being so high and our lecturers hypothesis on why this is: Women are more responsible due to their large amount of family/working duties which also makes them less likely to run away compared to men, and they are so grateful for the opportunity and therefore likely to pay the loan back. Economic responsibility is a vital part of climate sustainability across the financial spectrum, from banks to loan-takers to consumers.