To make the problem more tractable, we divided the stabilization triangle into eight "wedges." (Figure 4) A wedge represents a carbon-cutting strategy that has the potential to grow from zero today to avoiding 1 billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2060, or one-eighth of the stabilization triangle. The wedges can represent ways of either making energy with no or reduced carbon emissions (like nuclear or wind-produced electricity), or storing carbon dioxide to prevent it from building up as rapidly in the atmosphere (either through underground storage or biostorage).

Keeping emissions flat will require the world's societies to "fill in" the eight wedges of the stabilization triangle. In CMI's analysis, at least 15 strategies are available now that, with scaling up, could each take care of at least one wedge of emissions reduction. No one strategy can take care of the whole triangle -- new strategies will be needed to address both fuel and electricity needs, and some wedge strategies compete with others to replace emissions from the same source -- but there is already a more than adequate portfolio of tools available to control carbon emissions for the next 50 years.

The "stabilization wedges" concept is a simple tool for conveying the emissions cuts that can be made to avoid dramatic climate
change.

We consider two futures - allowing emissions to double versus keeping emissions at current levels for the next 50 years. The emissions-doubling path (black dotted line) falls in the middle of the field of mostestimates of future carbon emissions. The climb approximately extends the climb for the past 50 years, during which the world's economy grew much faster than its carbon emissions. Emissions could be higher or lower in 50 years, but this path is a reasonable reference scenario.

The emissions-doubling path is predicted to lead to significant global warming by the end of this century. This warming is expected be accompanied by decreased crop yields, increased threats to human health, and more frequent extreme weather events. The planet could also face rising sea-level from melting of the West Antarctic. Ice Sheet and Greenland glaciers and destabilization of the ocean's thermohaline circulation that helps redistribute the planet's heat and warm Western Europe.

Princeton University Climate Mitigation Initiative: Wedge Game Teacher's Guide
Instructional guide for implementing the wedge game into the classroom >>
WedgesGame_teachersguide.pdf

This game is best used after students have learned about various mitigation strategies. In the Barnard/Columbia Responding to Climate Change Course, students studied carbon capture sequestration, ocean fertilization, and geoengineering prior to playing the Wedge Game. Prior lessons constructed the background knowledge necessary for interactive game play.

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Please post your response to the following questions:

1) Given physical challenges and risk, how many wedges do you think "conservation in transport" and "CCS electricity" can each realistically
provide?

2) Can you think of reasons, other than the adoption of alternative, nuclear energy or CCS electricity, that emissions from electricity would be lower or higher than
we predict?

3) If we gave the wedge game activity to a future class, what would they learn from it?

Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative: http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/game.php