“The Climate Fresco makes the political and ideological roots of global warming invisible”

2023-04-23 09:30:10

Cike hundreds of thousands of French people, journalists from the Monde have started to follow, in recent weeks, the training on climate change created by Cédric Ringenbach in 2015, the Fresque du climat. It is a playful and educational workshop lasting about three hours, during which the trainer (the “fresco artist”) guides the participants (the “frescos”) through a card game whose objective is to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. Each card embodies an element of the phenomenon and must be placed after the cards representing what causes it, and before those representing its consequences.

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Schematically, the “combustion of fossil resources” card is placed after the “human activities” card, but before the “greenhouse gas emissions” card. It is logical: human activities are at the origin of the combustion of gas, oil and coal, this combustion being itself a cause of carbon emissions. In some forty cards, a panorama of the climate problem is thus composed – a fresco, therefore – which is easily understood and embraced at a glance.

From the Earth’s radiation balance to the acidification of the oceans, from the impacts of atmospheric carbon on marine life and terrestrial ecosystems to those on agriculture, the Climate Fresco gives almost everything to understand about the question. And, at the end of the workshop, the “fresco artist” presents posters to the participants indicating to each the average carbon footprint of their most fundamental activities (transport, heating, food, etc.) and thus makes everyone face up to their responsibilities.

A “neutral and objective” approach

While a survey (Ipsos / EDF) published at the end of 2022 on the subject suggests that 37% of French people remain climatosceptic, no one can dispute the usefulness of the Fresco. Especially since it bases its credibility on a “neutral and objective” approach, based on the most solid scientific consensus: once out of training, one can only be convinced, both of the size and of the causes of the problem, as well as of the existential risk that there would be for human societies if they did not concern themselves with it.

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The Fresco however has the defects of its qualities. To be able to pride itself on neutrality and objectivity, it only addresses global warming from its technical aspect. It makes it a physico-chemical problem, a question of natural sciences. It thereby renders its political and ideological roots invisible and thus takes the risk of spreading, implicitly, two dangerous ideas.

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