Inspired by the involvement of two Dartmouth delegations in the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen in December, students and professors at Dartmouth have become focused and motivated to pursue creative solutions to climate change.
Alumni at the conference included U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern '73, the lead negotiator for the United States, and members of the team that developed the Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator, known as C-ROADS, a model that determines the long-term impacts greenhouse-gas emission reductions will have on a country's climate.
Prior to COP15, students in biology professor David Peart's "Science for Sustainable Systems" class were already navigating the complex issues facing international delegates at the conference, according to Peart. Classes like this encourage Dartmouth students to "think creatively about complex issues," Peart said, fostering an educational climate that may account for the involvement of members of the Dartmouth community at COP15.
"I'd like to think that our approach to liberal arts encourages students to think creatively about complex global problems," Peart said.
Interactions at the conference led student delegations to realize that they must take an active part in the climate change discussion, instead of merely leaving political leaders to sort out the problem, according to several participants.
The group from Tuck the only business school formally represented at the conference focused on the implications of climate-change decisions on business and society.
"Unlike other issues of global significance, climate change is an issue where businesses happen to be front and center in terms of cause-and-effect relationships," Tuck professor Anant Sundaram, the leader of the Tuck delegation, said in an interview.
Sundaram, who teaches a class on business and climate change, said he believes companies will play a significant role in the future of sustainable development, as they are responsible for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. They need to come up with technologies to solve the issue, he said.
Sundaram called COP15 a "massive turning point" in the global approach to climate change. Although attending the Copenhagen conference did not significantly change his views, Sundaram said his own opinions and those of others were reinforced by the conference's findings.
"COP15 was a huge change from six months ago when some countries weren't as eager to work on this issue," he said. "Now one can confidently say that everyone is on board, and we can get to some serious negotiation."
Manoj Sahoo Tu '10, one of eight students in the Tuck delegation, noted the effect that education can have on the future of climate change.
"Academic institutions play a key role because they can propagate to the masses much faster," he said. "Who knows? The next leaders that come out of Dartmouth could have a big impact on future policy."
The Climate Justice Research Project, lead by environmental professor Michael Dorsey, conducted research at COP15 by surveying attendees. The project is aimed at promoting climate-change decisions and economic development while maintaining social justice.
Dorsey credited environmental studies professors Andrew Friedland and Ross Virginia and geography professors Chris Sneddon and Susanne Freidberg with cultivating students' interest in the relationship between the environment, energy and political economy.
"Their foundation has helped inspire and enthuse a generation of Dartmouth students and [alumni] to not just want to participate but have the requisite skills to do so," Dorsey said.
In his "Science for Sustainable Systems" class last Fall, Peart said he divided students into groups representing affluent nations, rapidly-developing nations and less-developed nations as part of a mock COP15 conference using C-ROADS technology.
"For me, the most exciting thing was to have students feel the immediacy of this issue and to understand what the international community is grappling with," Peart said.
At COP15, C-ROADS was used by delegates to provide real-time climate models based on the provisions of negotiated agreements, according to Peart.
Peart said that students quickly adopted the concerns of the countries they represented as their own and were disappointed with the results of the mock negotiations. Despite their investment in the simulation, they were unable to limit the extent of climate change to the proposed target level.
"They were representing so intensely the interests of their groups and they negotiated hard but didn't quite get to their goal," he said.
Peart said simulations and mock negotiations educate students in ways that traditional lectures cannot because they mirror how policy makers form decisions.
"Leaders approach every big issue strategically and in systems terms," Peart said. "Educators should be thinking the same way."
Late environmental studies professor Donella Meadows sparked initial interest in sustainability for many of the developers of C-ROADS, according to Drew Jones '90, who attended COP15.
"She opened our eyes to the power of a systems view on making the world a better place," Jones said.
