---
id: communication/ft-climate-game
about:
  group: Playing
  label: 'The Climate Game: can you reach net zero?'
  description: >-
    Financial Times game from 2022 in which the reader, as global minister for
    future generations, makes three rounds of choices to 2050 and sees the
    warming their path leads to.
  tags:
    - climate
    - net zero
    - newsgame
    - journalism
    - interactive
    - energy
story: {}
domains:
  - climate
  - energy
  - people
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'The Climate Game: Can you reach net zero? (Financial Times)'
      url: 'https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/'
    - title: >-
        The game's own text, including its notes, credits and methodology
        overlay, read from the page's script
      url: 'https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/assets/entries/pages_index.BzUf7jGH.js'
    - title: 'FT launches: The Climate Game (InPublishing, 22 April 2022)'
      url: 'https://inpublishing.co.uk/articles/ft-launches-the-climate-game-20685'
  created: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed_by: >-
    Claude, from the game page and its own notes and credits; the FT's article
    on how the game was made could not be opened
  status: draft
---
The Climate Game is an interactive piece by the Financial Times. After another wave of extreme weather, the reader is appointed "global minister for future generations", with temperatures already 1.2°C above the pre-industrial average.[^2] They have three rounds, covering 2022 to 2050, to cut energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero and keep warming below 1.5°C.[^2] Those emissions reached a record 36 billion tonnes in 2021.[^2] First they choose one of four advisers, each with a specialism.[^2] Each round is a set of multiple-choice decisions; the game's slides cover subjects such as carbon prices, methane, diet, land use, critical minerals and adaptation.[^2] Choices cost effort points, and a player who runs out is sacked.[^2] At the end the game charts the player's path and gives a projected temperature for 2100.[^3]

The FT launched it on 21 April 2022, open to readers with and without a subscription, according to the trade publication InPublishing, which quotes Sam Joiner, the FT's visual stories editor, hoping it would reach younger and non-specialist readers.[^3] The game credits Sam Joiner, Alexandra Heal and Leslie Hook of the FT, working with Wongdoody, an Infosys company, with additional development by Dan Clark; the title page says it was made in partnership with Infosys.[^2]

The numbers come from the International Energy Agency.[^2,3] The game says the IEA did bespoke emissions modelling for it in 2022, recalculating the scenarios of its Net Zero by 2050 report to give a temperature outcome for each path in the game.[^2] The work used the IEA's World Energy Model and Energy Technology Perspectives model, coupled to MAGICC v7+, a simplified climate model used in IPCC assessments.[^2] The credits name Leonardo Paoli, Daniel Crow, Laura Cozzi and Timur Gül of the IEA.[^2] In the game's code, the endings correspond to three IEA scenarios, net zero, announced pledges and stated policies, and the final warming falls into bands from below 1.5°C to above 2°C.[^2] The game says of itself that it is "based on real science and reporting" but is "a game, not a perfect simulation of the future".[^2]

The piece shows one way to put a large model in front of a general reader: the model runs ahead of time, and the reader walks through a set of choices whose outcomes it has already worked out.