The Environmental Endgame: Mainstream Economics, Ecological Disaster, and Human Survival

Chapter 1: The Making of the Godgame: Winners Take All

1 1 TH E M A K I N G O F TH E G O D G A M E Winners Take All There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another. — M A R K T W A I N, A D V E NTU R E S O F H U C KLE B E R RY FI N N The “Godgame,” the in-group term for an online computer game that over one hundred software engineers are developing at Electronic Arts, the industry leader in the computer game business, is not designed for use by testosterone-driven males under the age of twenty-five. The designated players are social scientists, and their interactive playing field is a virtual planet Earth generated by sophisticated imaging software from photographic data gathered by satellites and high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft . The players will be able to look down on this revolving planet and observe the environmental impacts of large-scale human activities by zooming in and out on any region from the tropics to the poles. The goal in this high-stakes competition is to coordinate large-scale human activities in ways that will lead to the emergence of a sustainable global environment by articulating coherent and workable proposals for changing the institutional structures and processes that coordinate these activities. Equally remarkable, the social scientist players will be constantly reminded that this must be accomplished prior to the point at which largescale changes in the ecosystem are projected to occur. Another anxietyproducing aspect of this game is that the amount of time that remains before these changes are likely to occur will not be arbitrary. This projection will be made by a large group of internationally known environmental scientists based on simulations of the global environment generated by state-of-the-art climate modeling software running on a network of supercomputers. When players of the Godgame click on any location of the virtual planet, they will be able to access a nested series of images, diagrams, graphics, and charts that describe the complex web of interactions between large-scale human activities and the environmental impacts of those activities. For example , integrated computer models on population density, socioeconomic behavior, and the dynamics of the ecosystem serve as the basis for describing the impacts of the growth of cities on water use, nutrient distribution , and biodiversity. Other, equally sophisticated computer models will be used to depict the impacts of economic activities on wetlands that filter contaminants, the hydrologic cycle that maintains supplies of freshwater , and the climate system that regulates and sustains temperature, precipitation, sea level, estuaries, and fisheries. Players can learn more about an environmental issue or problem by clicking on particular regions of the virtual planet or accessing menus at the top of the screen. If a player clicks on rain forests, the present condition of these forests will be described in multimedia format, and the impacts of human activities on these ecosystems will be simulated at various scales and times. Simulations of these impacts on a global scale will include graphical illustrations of feedbacks between changing conditions in this ecological system and those in other major ecological systems. When a player clicks on a particular rain forest, the complex interactions between the interrelated aspects of this ecosystem will be described and imaged , and descriptions of particular aspects will be synthesized from the best available data from diverse research fields. For example, the material on biodiversity is based on data on all known species in a particular rain forest, including their genetic diversity, and the functional interdependence of these species, including microorganisms. Simulations of the complex web of interactions associated with human impacts on this rain forest, or other complex ecosystems, are synthesized from an analysis of data in the following fields: ecology, geology, molecular biology, genomics, soil sciences , conservation biology, hydrology, environmental engineering, and geographic information systems. The players will be able to ask environmental scientists specific questions and engage other players in dialogue by e-mail, instant messaging, and Web-based videoconferencing. These interactions will be facilitated by electronic Delphi tools for collective discussion and decision making, shared notebooks and databases, and interactive maps and graphs. When a player or group of players feel that they have sufficient background 2 THE ENVIRONMENTAL ENDGAME knowledge to articulate changes in institutional structures or...