BAKU – Activists and experts pushing world leaders to save an overheated planet have learned it’s not that easy, even in a simulated world.

The Associated Press brought the board game Daybreak to the UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. Experts from three countries were asked to play the game, which involves players working together to reduce climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions when fuels such as gasoline, natural gas and coal are burned. The goal of the game is to prevent the world from warming too much or being overtaken by devastating extreme weather events.

Three times activists, analysts and reporters have taken turns in the United States, China, Europe and the rest of the world, dealing with weather disasters, trying to reduce emissions with projects like restoring wetlands and fighting fossil fuel interests, all according to the books distributed. .

Crisis yellow-red cards are the ones that set players back the most. And each round comes with a new card, such as “Storms: Each player adds 1 community in crisis” at 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of temperature rise or “Sea level rise: Each player loses 1 infrastructure resilience”.

These are tempered by blue cards that represent local projects, such as around fertilizer efficiency, which removes a game symbol of methane-spewing animals, or universal public transport, which removes a sign of polluting car emissions.

In each game, the temperature exceeded the limit set by the world in the 2015 Paris Agreement: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, around the mid-1800s. Technically, the game did not is lost until a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is reached. However, 1.5 degrees was entrenched as a threshold in climate circles, so players’ shoulders slumped when their fictional world passed it.

After just one round of play, which lasted about 20 minutes in the second game, the global thermometer rose to 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit).

“How did this happen? It happened so fast,” said Borami Seo, head of food and agriculture at Solutions for Our Climate in South Korea. She deliberately chose Europe, arguably the world leader in climate policy and financial aid, so that it would be able to help the rest of the world.

She couldn’t.

“I thought this game should give us hope. I don’t gain any hope,” Seo said in a voice somewhere between curiosity and frustration.

The first two games were cut short as players had to go elsewhere during the busy climate negotiations.

But the third game went 47 minutes and three runs. Jake Schmidt, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, was playing “most of the world” and hitting a hurricane at a time when the average global temperature increase was 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit). For every tenth of a degree above 1.2 degrees Celsius, players had to add one “communities in crisis” game token.

Schmidt had more cities in crisis than the 12 the game allows: “All my communities are gone.”

The game and the world were lost.

“I’m sad,” Schmidt said. “I received toast very quickly. It was only three rounds and my communities were toast. And I was already at 1.8. I think they need a little bit of a slower path, to start from a lower base.”

The game starts at 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. The real world is now 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, according to the United Nations.

“Getting rid of emissions was very difficult,” Schmidt said, adding that it seemed realistic. But it made him more pessimistic about climate change, he said. I reminded him how difficult the problem is.

That’s the point, said game co-designer Matt Leacock, who first created the board game Pandemic — long before the real thing invaded the world.

“I wouldn’t want most people to beat the game the first time they play. I don’t think that’s a productive message,” Leacock said. “I want most people to lose but blame themselves and learn from their experience and then I really want to play again and say, ‘I see what I did wrong.’ . I have an idea of ​​what we can do better. Let’s try again and see if we can make it.

There is a political message to the game that the world needs saving, Leacock said. Winning or stopping the world from skyrocketing temperatures is doable but difficult and requires dramatic early action, he said. It’s what experts say is necessary in real life.

Leacock, who has researched the science and politics of climate change negotiations and consulted with the World Resources Institute, said he was in the middle of blocking a real-life pandemic a few years ago when he decided to turn what many call an existential crisis into a council. game—one in which people work together instead of against each other.

He wanted a game “that could make a difference.”

In the first game, Courtney Howard of the Global Climate and Health Alliance took that to heart and felt the weight of the world as temperatures rose and disasters multiplied.

“You feel the anxiety increase as you move away from your goal and the crisis points increase,” Howard said. “So I think we’re going to have to anticipate increased anxiety. And what will that do to human behavior on the local and global stage?”

A Canadian emergency physician, Howard played the role of the United States and did his best to help Nathan Cogswell of the World Resources Institute, who was playing “most of the world” and was stuck in trouble.

Howard then got a “debt repair” card that allowed her to give Cogswell anything she could get her hands on. She wasn’t going to let it go, saying, “I feel very guilty about my historical emissions.” The US contributed the most emissions of any country in the world.

Like most developing countries, Cogswell jumped at the offer from Howard, who then added a political and medical perspective to what was happening on board.

“I feel like this real glow of goodwill,” Howard said. “Did you know that giving actually increases well-being more than receiving? And that’s what I’m feeling right now.”

But it didn’t help. The players couldn’t save the world — this time.

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This story corrects the first name of Courtney Howard of the Global Alliance for Climate and Health.

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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