The Copenhagen climate negotiations are fast approaching- just 30 more days until we are there! In preparation for the talks I have been focusing on learning more about my role and how I can be most effective. While reading blogs, and keeping up to speed with the progress of the US Senate climate bill have been helpful, there's nothing better than gaining actual experience. That is why yesterday I choose to participate in an UN climate negotiations simulation at Michigan State University (MSU), hosted by their Environmental Science and Policy Program. Sarah, another MI delegate and an alumni of MSU, attended the event with me.

The purpose of the simulation was to highlight the difficult task ahead if the world is going to combat climate change. The negotiations this December are very important in ensuring that we begin to build a clean and just energy future. After completing the simulation is was even more apparent that we need to start taking action today, regardless of our state or national legislation.

In the simulation participants were split up into 3 groups: Developed countries (US, Canada, EU, Australia etc), Developing A countries (China, India), and Developing B countries (South African and Asian nations, Maldives etc). The number of people in the group represented the percent of the world that they make up- meaning that the Developed countries had the fewest (only 4), Developing A was the largest bloc, and Developing B was significantly larger than the Developed group, but smaller than Developing A. Sarah and I were both negotiating for the Developing countries.

After splitting up into groups we were briefed on the tools being used in this simulation. Students at MIT along with the Sustainability Institute have created C-ROADS, a climate change modeling device that inputs the different group's emission reduction targets and produces the scenario in comparison to maintaining Business as Usual (BAU) policies. The version that the UNFCCC will be using in the negotiations is more complex than ours, but the results still matched up closely to the predictions made using that model.

The final round was the last chance that the world had to come together and generate a comprehensive emissions reduction target for the different groups and to provide the necessary funding needed to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. In this round the Developed country negotiators chose to split up and talk with both developing country blocs separately. Every group gave into certain concessions put in place by all negotiators and we were able to come up with a new set up numbers to put into the model.