En-en pitch

From Climate Fresk
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This phase takes about ten minutes. The aim is to help the players memorise what they have learned, process it and make conclusions. It follows the creative part and precedes the debrief.

Gameplay

This phase has two parts:

  • A summary of the Fresk
  • A focus on a link or a card that has particularly touched the players.

Facilitation advice

Who summarises the Fresk?

To continue in the spirit of group intelligence and to make sure they have understood the Fresk, a player can summarise it. However, it is difficult for someone who has just done the Fresk to summarise and they tend to read out the connections without necessarily highlighting the overall dynamics and getting to the point. Most of time, it is more advisable for the facilitator to summarise the Fresk.

Examples of pitches

Complete pitch

  • Human activities that use fossil fuels - industry, building usage, transport - emit CO2.
  • Part of the CO2 will be absorbed by carbon sinks, in particular the oceans. This acidifies the ocean waters, making it more difficult for pteropods and coccolithophores, at the base of marine food chains, to build calcified shells, thus jeopardising marine biodiversity.
  • The CO2 that is not absorbed by the oceans or by photosynthesis (because trees absorb all the more CO2 if there is more of it in the air) stays in the atmosphere. Half of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere, taking its concentration from 280 ppm (parts per million) before the industrial revolution to 410 ppm today. This CO2 plus the other greenhouse gases coming from agriculture cause an increase in global warming.
  • This causes radiative forcing and an imbalance of the planet's energy budget. The oceans absorb 93% of the surplus energy received by the Earth, pushing up the water temperature. 3% of the energy goes to melting ice, whether sea ice, glaciers or ice sheets. The rising water temperature and the melting of the glaciers and ice sheets make the sea level rise. Only 1% of the energy goes into the atmosphere and has already caused a 1°C atmospheric temperature rise. Projections forecast in increase between 2°C and 5°C towards the end of the century.
  • Rising air and ocean temperatures increase evaporation, disrupting the water cycle. This causes stronger cyclones, flooding, droughts and diminishes on freshwater resources, impacting agricultural yields. Add heatwaves, forest fires and impacts of terrestrial biodiversity, in particular on potential vectors of disease, and we have a recipe for disastrous effects on human health and wellbeing. It will become necessary for many to migrate away for their safety, causing armed conflicts and geopolitical turmoil.

Shorter pitch

Human activities emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases. These disrupt the CO2 cycle, acidifying the oceans and endangering marine biodiversity. They also skew the energy balance of the Earth, cause ice to melt and temperatures to rise. This disrupts the water cycle and contributes to rising sea levels. All this causes extreme weather events such as forest fires and cyclones that have direct consequences on human populations, causing them to migrate or to die of hunger or diseases.