Workshop on climate becomes a meeting held in a Brazilian bar in Paris – 08/24/2023 – Environment

On a recent summer night in central Paris, a few people wandered into a trendy Brazilian bar where the music was bossa nova, past patrons sipping caipirinhas, and up a back wooden staircase. They found themselves in a small room with a table on which were arranged large printed cards with graphics explaining the science behind climate change.

A young man greeted them saying “Welcome. Let’s have fun.”

Over the next three hours, the group used the cards to recreate the global warming chain, trying to understand phenomena like radiative forcing and ocean acidification. After that they discussed the possibility of limiting energy-intensive air travel and the development of nuclear power.

The group was participating in “Climate Fresk”, a workshop organized by an NGO of the same name that teaches the basics of global warming and highlights possible solutions. The workshops became a funky alternative to a night out; more than 1 million people have already participated in them in France.

The Climate Fresk workshops, named after the poster participants create with the cards, are gaining in popularity as Europe grapples with warmer summers linked to climate change.

Since Climate Fresks started in 2018, they have gained increasing traction among the public and private organizations that want to encourage people to take action for the environment. France has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions and cut waste drastically. Large universities, companies and even some government departments are sending more and more students, workers and civil servants to the workshops.

The workshops are already reaching other countries. They have been translated into nearly 50 languages, and over 200,000 people outside of France have participated, including those in the United States.

Some green activists and environmental experts criticize the workshops for not going far enough and not questioning political and economic decisions that accelerate climate change.

Cédric Ringenbach, creator of Climate Fresk, said the workshop focuses on the science behind climate change and lets participants form their own opinions.

“It’s not the poster that’s going to challenge the political-economic paradigm,” he said, “it’s the participants themselves who come to these conclusions. We’re here to pave the way.”

The workshop is based on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body. It uses 42 cards that represent the different stages of climate change, from the use of fossil fuels to the melting of glaciers. With the help of a facilitator, participants should arrange the cards on a large sheet of paper to represent the causes and consequences of climate change.

“It’s not easy,” said Ariane Prin, who attended the workshop at the Brazilian bar, looking at a card about little-known greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

Around her, participants debated the process of disrupting the water cycle, concern etched on their faces as they placed cards that showed bleak images of floods and droughts. They drew arrows between the cards to illustrate the links between deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions. They titled their poster “The Map of Consciousness”.

“Facing this map, we feel so small,” said Prin. “But we also feel empowered, because we’ve already learned so much.”

The popularity of the Climate Fresk workshops echoes a growing interest in France to understand the environmental changes affecting the country, whether it be wildfires in the south or rising sea levels that are eroding beaches in Normandy. The best-selling book in France last year was a comic about the climate crisis, “Le Monde Sans Fin” (The World Without End), which sold more than 500,000 copies.

Several participants said the workshop spurred them into action, doing things like reducing their consumption of meat, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and lobbying their employers to institute greener practices.

The Climate Fresk workshop has grown so quickly also thanks to its relative ease and accessibility: templates for producing the cards are freely available online, and training to become a facilitator only takes a few hours.

Interest in the workshops has been so great that they are now part of introductory courses at several elite French universities and are promoted at large companies such as BNP Paribas. The French government is studying the possibility of including the workshop in a plan to, by the end of 2024, teach the country’s 25,000 highest-level civil servants about the green transition.

Claire Landais, the government’s secretary general, said educating her fellow government officials about the climate issue is of utmost importance because they will be the ones to put climate policies into practice. She underwent initial training last year that included Climate Fresk, which she described as a “very rich and dense” workshop.

Ringenbach said his aim is to “hit the winning triangle” —citizens, business people and politicians—to gain enough momentum to accelerate the fight against climate change.

Critics warn that the workshop could be used by companies to “greenwash” — that is, as an easy way to claim they care about climate change without actually doing much to address it.

BNP Paribas, for example, boasts that it has already used the workshop to train thousands of employees, but, according to a 2022 report by non-governmental organizations, it is still one of the world’s largest financiers of fossil fuel projects.

“Climate Fresk has become a somewhat simplistic way of addressing these environmental issues,” said Eric Guilyardi, a climatologist and president of the UN-linked Office for Climate Education, which promotes climate education in schools around the world.

“It’s like saying ‘OK, I’m aware of the problem, I’ve done my part,'” he explained.

Stéphane Lambert, head of Climate Fresk development at BNP Paribas, said the accusations were unfounded, arguing that the workshop helped the government’s plans to move away from fossil fuels. BNP Paribas said in May that by 2030 it would cut its funding for oil exploration and production by 80%.

When the workshop at the Brazilian bar in Paris came to an end, the participants gathered for a photo. They positioned themselves behind his colorful poster covered in drawings expressing hope and fear: verdant forests and flooded houses, seas full of fish and a tornado.

“Should we smile?” asked Prin. “Or cry?”