You've Heard Of 'The Oregon Trail,' What About 'The Climate Trail?'

Speaker 1: 00:00 The mission get from a camp for climate survivors in devastated Atlanta to safety far North near Canada. Your fellow travelers have various survival skills and you're carrying limited resources. Can you make it? Can you continue to survive? That's the premise of a new video game created by video game developer and San Diego and William Volk. It's called the climate trail and it's free and ad-free as part of coverage from the KPBS climate change desk. Volk spoke in studio recently with round table host Mark Sauer. Speaker 2: 00:34 Here's that interview. The premise of your game, the climate trail is the horrific challenges of life facing those surviving a worst case scenario in the United States. Describe our country as you envision it for players of your game. Well, it's interesting because when I first one of the game I fought, it was very hypothetical, but as time went on and events happened it seemed more likely. So basically there are a couple of things happen. There is major fires that basically burn a lot of things and they're out of control like we see in Australia, but much larger in scope. There is a diseases that are released from permafrost and glaciers. In fact, it was a story today about yesterday from Iceland. There was some viruses out of Ireland that they never seen before. And then there's resource Wars, which I don't want to, I don't dwell on the too much, but if there's going to be this much disruption, there's going to be resource Wars, people fighting each other for what their food, water basic or the country is fighting each other. Speaker 2: 01:28 So basically I envision, uh, you know, a ruined situation, uh, no society, no organization, so on. Basically the survivors are living in a camp in Atlanta and they have to make their way to count it out. I, I mimicked that play of the most successful educational game in history to the Oregon trail, which did 25 million copies. And the game itself was inspired by a short story called a full life by Paolo Bugatti or something like that, and the MIT press. So basically that story is about a girl being shuffled around for the same reason. And we're talking about this perilous journey from city to city in the quest to survive. And it reminds me a bit of the walking dead. Uh, when do you, uh, you think this could happen or it's more specifically what's gonna cause this environmental collapse? Well, I'm trying to be somewhat unclear on the date cause I want people to worry about that. Speaker 2: 02:17 If I gave him a date, people will say, well I'm not going to be around by then or Oh that's crazy. So I don't want to list a certain day. But there are some indications such as the scientists talking about being in school when the Amazon burned down and I'll be updating the game to represent Australia and so on. And as far as what could set it off, there are several things. One, right now our carbon emissions aren't going down, so we're on a path for what they call RCP 8.5 or basically four degrees centigrade warming or more, which is disaster, which is disastrous. Um, we can't necessarily avoid climate disaster where we can control how bad it is. The, the Irving's that can send it off are the blue ocean event. Blue ocean event is when the article is ice-free and that changes diabete or the earth. Speaker 2: 02:58 And it's equivalent to about 25 years of warming. The worst case is the carbon bomb because that puts us into like eight degrees centigrade or more warming. That's if the permit for us released its carbon, which is equal to 40 years of, uh, of emissions, all that methane stored for all that time, all that time, including, uh, all of those diseases, storage for all that time. So these, uh, and of course we read the stories you're citing a lot of, uh, anecdotes and statistics and we see these all the time. But the point of the game, uh, right, is to bring this home, you play the game. So you experience it as a game player. I wanted to do this once again, so much a story in the news can tell you that's right. And what I think is people tend to not make decisions based on statistics and facts thrown at them. Speaker 2: 03:39 So I felt that people tend to respond to an emotional thing and I could use my experience in the game industry even though I have a full time job to do this on my own and put this out. I spent some money on this artwork and music and all that, but I'm, I felt it was a worthwhile venture and so far it sounds that way. I just got a a in a joke. Your own funding, you're not on funding. I am trying to raise some money but I will. I wanted to get the game. They're very long. I have a whole bunch of enhancements going on in the game right now. I have a an ebook on climate being built into the game and every character conversation, if a character have mentioned something like wet bulb temperature or you know carbon bomb that will be hyperlinked to the article so that schools which are starting to use this can benefit from it. Speaker 2: 04:21 I just saw a tweet today that a major school system college used this as in their curriculum and it was a very fascinating read. Now, how closely do you just stick to the science and predictions from scientists and very close climate judge found articles. In fact, the website itself, the climate trail.com has a page where it links stuff and I'll, I'll be updating that as I go along. So the IPC, which is the international protocol on climate change, they use models and they are scientists and they're trying to do the best job they can. The thing that's unpredictable as the feedback loops and also as someone said to me today in a conversation, if you talk to palaeontologists people who study the earth in the past, they're far less optimistic. Uh, they are very worried about the carbon bomb and also oceans going anaerobic, which I mentioned in the story as well as buying a permafrost. Speaker 2: 05:10 A lot of these loops that tune just accelerate. There's a rather surprising ending in this game because I don't want people to think that just because you got the candidate, everything is great and wonderful. So I have a, I fro a little bit of a loop at people at the very end of the game. Hopefully the scientist you're with makes it because he see explains that if she hasn't made it in your, you're going to lose out. No. A, you touched on this, but the best scenario you, what do you hope to achieve with the climate trail? I mean, you're really trying to educate people. I want to educate people about more important. I want to be honest. I want to move people emotionally to wait at a, on the beach moving when I was a trial. That movie terrified me. Greg wants people to be angry. I want people to be scared and angry. I hate to say that, but the way that they were about nuclear war, I had been speaking with William Volkis, the designer of the climate trail. A new video game is exploring a dystopian future we may all face due to climate change. Thanks very much. Thank you.