Fresking

Our completed Climate Fresk.
We were invited to choose a group name and ran out of time after "Oh Fuck!"
Which is an apt enough summary of the situation.

The Last Paper was/is supposed to be about climate crisis response, for one of the ethics classes. The instructor looks at ethical issues using “See – Judge – Act” method, with which I have a tortured relationship (that was supposed to be yesterday’s topic, but I just couldn’t), but other than that, the signs were good. I can write it in English! I was planning to go to something called the “Eco Summer Camp” anyway! Easy!

Ha. I did go to the Eco Summer Camp, last August, and I don’t at all regret it, but to my disappointment the paper did not write itself, either during the camp or in its aftermath. I am convinced, somehow, *both* that I have something I want to say on this topic *and* that I utterly lack the expertise to say it. So since then I’ve been plugging along, trying to learn more, trying to write, sitting with this problem that refuses to come into focus.

Enter: the Climate Fresk, a 3-hour workshop designed to educate people about the climate crisis. It works like this: The participants are split into groups. Each group gets a table covered in a huge sheet of paper and a set of 44 cards containing climate-related topics and facts. The goal of the exercise is to arrange the cards on the table to tell the story of the climate crisis. So for example there are cards for rising global temperatures, carbon emissions, sea-level rise, and the greenhouse effect, and the group is supposed to arrange these from cause to effect: carbon emissions - enhanced greenhouse effect - global warming - sea-level rise. Periodically the facilitator comes over to check the group’s arrangement, correct common misconceptions (which for my taste too often took the form of gotcha climate trivia: melting sea ice is a *consequence* of global warming but not a *cause* of sea level rise because the ice is already in the sea! Cows don’t fart methane, they burp it! etc. I guess this kind of thing is memorable, but it felt like a distraction), and deliver more cards. By the end of the workshop everyone has arranged the 44 cards to tell a science-y story that starts with human activities (transport, construction, agriculture), continues through greenhouse gas emissions and environmental effects, and ends with human consequences (floods, famines, forced migration). The groups get pens to draw arrows and decorate their arrangements (“fresk” means “fresco,” which feels like not quite the word they looking going for, but this comes from France so maybe something got slightly lost in translation?). The workshop closes with brainstorming individual and collective solutions to the looming crisis and a round of “what are you taking away today?,” where the preferred answers are clearly “wow, I didn’t know all this – now I’m really motivated to reduce my carbon emissions!” and/or “this was so cool! how can I become a facilitator?”

It's a great idea, to be sure. Straightforward, interactive, social, educational. *And* I wonder if it made a bit more sense waaaay back in 2018 when it felt like humanity still had a chance of steering this Titanic clear of this iceberg. The Climate Fresk story is exactly the one I can’t bring myself to write, not because I think things are hopeless, but…well yeah, because I think things are hopeless. Or: if we as a species are going to live beyond the end of this century, we’re going to have to include a lot more cards in this exercise and maybe acquire some bigger tables.

All that is to say: I haven't been able to put my own fresco/collage/puzzle/story together, but I do have some idea of what I think the other cards might be, so maybe if I try writing about them one by one I’ll eventually be able to see what this wants to become? Is my thought for today. Stay tuned.