[SustainableTompkins] Reversing global warming through the Wedge Game

[Elan Shapiro]

    Al Gore and the Wedges Game
     By Kelpie Wilson       t r u t h o u t | Environmental Editor
	Saturday 24 March 2007

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032407A.shtml

complete kit for using the Wedge Game for classroom instruction:
EDGES' -- THE GAME
Coming soon to a classroom near you
The "wedges" game wasn't designed to juice up a Saturday night.
It's a role-play diversion aimed at teaching players about the 
complexities of global warming. And people who've played wedges in 
meeting rooms and classrooms say it does just that.
"It made them think outside of who they were, and what their special 
interests were," said Susan Capalbo, an economics professor at 
Montana State University, who led a game with her undergraduate 
students last fall.
Players from Greenpeace and the Nuclear Regulatory Institute sifted 
through their differences at a Washington, D.C., wedges game in the 
summer of 2005. Organizers can count more than a dozen wedge games 
played over the last three years.
In a typical game, players form teams of four or five. Each team 
chooses seven wedges (each representing an energy technology or 
policy ) out of a portfolio of 15 (To see the complete list, click 
here).
Judges weigh each team's choices and declare a winner. Most games 
last about 90 minutes to two hours.
Sarah Wade, a Washington-based consultant who has organized about a 
half dozen wedge events, said the games help people understand that 
climate change can't be solved by focusing on one technology. It also 
forces participants to think outside of their comfort zone, selecting 
nuclear power, for example, over wind energy.
"Inevitably, someone has an option they put forward, but they don't 
really like it," Wade said. "That's one of the messages about climate 
change. This isn't going to be an easy thing to fix. We're not going 
to like all the things we have to do. But what are the best ones 
given what you want to achieve?"
The wedges' creators, Princeton University professors Stephen Pacala 
and Robert Socolow, wrote about the concept in an academic paper. 
They turned their idea into a game to serve as an icebreaker at a 
conference. They have since teamed up with BP and Ford Motor Co., 
with the intention of developing educational materials for high 
schools.
About 500 teachers will get a lesson in how to use the wedges during 
the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science 
conference next month in San Francisco.
"I think," Socolow said, "there are ways of making this fun."

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources/CMI_Wedge_Game_Jan_2007.pdf

CAUTION: Two of the supporters of this project,  the Carbon 
Mitigation Initiative,
  are  BP and Ford Motor. This is not a systemic relocalization and 
culture change approach, but still has many valuable pieces to it.
-- 
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Program Co-Chair
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249

"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
	          Mohandas Gandhi