Perception of the Pre-Conference Interactive Simulations

Environment   Oct 11, 2016 by Elena James

As a part of the pre-conference activities, I completed two interactive simulations (the ecological footprint calculator and climate challenge) which were designed to broaden students’ knowledge on climate change and provide them with ideas on simple ways of how to contribute to battling the issue.These activities, especially the ecological footprint calculator, were extremely helpful as they made me rethink certain parts of my lifestyle and what things I would need to change in order to have a more positive impact on Earth.In turn, I am now convinced that climate change is one of the most severe issues that Australia is facing and needs to be given the utmost attention.

The first simulation activity, the ecological footprint calculator, takes into account your individual lifestyle and makes a prediction on how many ‘Planet Earths’ and global hectares it will take to support said lifestyle.It also provides a detailed pie chart on how your ecological footprint is broken down and simple actions that can be taken to improve your footprint.My results showed that it would take 3.2 Planet Earths to provide enough resources if everyone lived like me and to support my lifestyle, it takes 5.7 global hectares of the Earth’s productive area.This is based primarily on the fact that my family consumes an abundance of packaged/processed foods and mainly travels by car (which has excessive fuel consumption).In order to improve my ecological footprint results, it is recommended that I halve my intake of animal products, consume more locally sourced foods and purchase products that use less packaging.

In the past few years, Australia’s environmental ranking has improved based on the nation’s ecological footprint. As a first world country, Australia has relatively high standards of living so it is not surprising that our ecological footprint is ranked as the 7^th largest in the world (as of 2012). This is because it takes Australia 3.6 Planet Earths to sustain our total demands on nature and 7.7 global hectares of land. Therefore, it is imperative that Australia takes immediate measures to reduce the overall ecological footprint.

The second simulation I took part in was the Climate Challenge, a fun and interesting activity which allowed me to take on the role of the European President, suggest political schemes to help tackle climate change and negotiate with other world leaders.This game required me to think like a leader- I had to ensure that my policies were ecologically and economically friendly and also take into account the opinions of the people.This proved to be a difficult task to maintain however it was great to feel a sense of responsibility and opened my mind to the challenges of being a successful leader.

In summary, these two simulations provided me with a considerable amount of knowledge on climate change and made me think about how my actions and Australia’s actions are considered to be ‘damaging’ to the environment. It is irrefutable that climate change is an extremely significant issue and because of the failure of our parent’s generation, it is up to our generation to speak up and take action in the hope that we can save our planet for the future.

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