In A Board Game, Climate Experts Work To Save The World, Which Diplomats At Cop29 Try In Real Life

Activists and experts who are pushing world leaders to save an overheating planet learned it's not so easy, even in a simulated world.

The Associated Press brought the board game Daybreak to the United Nations climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan. Experts from three countries were asked to play the game, which involves players working together to curb climate change, caused by the release of greenhouse gas emissions when fuels like gasoline, natural gas and coal are burned. The goal of the game is to prevent the world from getting too hot or overrun by devastating extreme weather events.

Three times activists, analysts and reporters took turns being the United States, China, Europe and the rest of the world, coping with weather disasters, trying to reduce emissions with projects like wetlands restoration and fighting fossil fuel interests, all according to the cards dealt.

The yellow-red crisis cards are the ones that set players back the most. And every round comes with a new card, such as, "Storms: Every player adds 1 Community in Crisis" per 0.1 degrees Celsius 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit temperature rise, or "Sea Level Rise: Every player loses 1 Infrastructure Resilience."

Those are tempered by blue cards that represent local projects, such as around fertilizer efficiency, which eliminates one game token of methane-spewing livestock, or universal public transport, which eliminates a token of polluting car emissions.