To avoid dramatic climate change, we need to significantly curb current emissions by using a set of mitigation actions. Many of such actions are already available and span from technological improvements (e.g. car efficiency), to natural sinks (forest preservation) or changes in individual and social behaviour (diet and transport). Unfortunately, none of these actions alone can reduce carbon emissions to reasonable targets. However, a mix of mitigation actions can do the job fairly well, thus the main issue becomes of decisional type, i.e. a technically feasible and socio-environmentally acceptable mix of actions (mitigation strategy) must be proposed. Inspired by the work on the Stabilization Wedges by Pacala and Socolow (Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Princeton University), we developed the PolyGame, an educational game where participants study the available mitigation actions and propose their own mitigation strategy combining in a creative, yet scientifically sound way, different actions. We prepared a database with tens of actions (with data, references and links) that can be explored with a web user interface; the purpose is to assist both game organizers (teachers) and players. The whole application will be soon available on the Internet, to allow playing the game from everywhere. PolyGame is a simple framework for understanding both the carbon emissions cuts needed to mitigate climate change and the tools that are already available to do so.

The PolyGame was presented at the La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy during the 20th Conference of the Italian Ecology Society (S.It.E.)

pdf (abstract)  |  slides presented at la sapienza university (rome, italy)  |  video