While the intention of this paper and the corresponding challenge is to stimulate innovative solutions to climate change, there are some unintended consequences that we would like to acknowledge and address here. These include the carbon footprint of running the simulation itself, the economic disparities that can exist with climate negotiations, and the potential extensibility of this simulation to the real world.
First, it is important to acknowledge that running climate change simulations in RICE-N will inevitably release carbon emissions into our atmosphere. While the computational requirements of these simulations are much smaller than training large language models, they still exist. To mitigate this harm, we are encouraging participating teams to consider their energy use during experimentation, offsetting their own carbon emissions if possible.
Second, as the World Bank states "Climate change is deeply intertwined with global patterns of inequality" and yet "the most vulnerable are often also disproportionately impacted by measures to address climate change". While it is important to determine ways to mitigate climate change it is equally important to ensure that vulnerable populations are not negatively impacted by climate change measures.
Last but not least, it is important to note that the climate and economic predictions made in RICE-N may differ in a real-world setting due to externalities beyond the boundaries of the simulation. A fictional world is utilized in this competition to further illustrate the potential gap between simulation and reality, but the uncertainty of the results should be fully understood, especially before implementing any policies recommended by RICE-N.