A card deck made to help people navigate the tough conversation of climate change. Climate Conversation is a group of community members around Lexington that help facilitate conversations between community members and create meaningful connections.
Lauren Cagle, a writing, rhetoric and digital studies professor at the University of Kentucky, is one of the members who was there at the very beginning.
The idea for Climate Conversations came about during Lexington’s 2020 Tree Week. Mary Arthur, a University of Kentucky professor emeritus of forest ecology, and Christine Smith, executive director at Seed Leaf, along with others from the community, were talking about how the tree events were happening without acknowledgement of climate change.
“The group that ended up working on this, we’re all thinking about, worried about climate change, and yet we find ourselves in these spaces with nature people not talking about climate change, like that’s wild,” Cagle said.
Initially, the idea was to set up a table and engage with strangers in talks about climate change, however, the group found it unsuccessful.
The inspiration for the card deck came partly from the card deck “We’re Not Really Strangers” and partly from Smith’s experience doing intimate one-on-one questionnaires about race.
“It’s a card deck about climate, but it can be a deck about any of the things we should be talking about that would also bring us together and help build community,” Arthur said.
In 2023, the group finally created the card deck.
The cards are divided into four different levels. The first level starts with ice-breakers. Participants would choose one card from each level and would take turns sharing.
The ice-breakers are not meant to be intimidating. Some of the questions are “what do you like most about your neighborhood?” and “do you have a favorite tree?”
“In my experience thus far with this game, everybody has a favorite memory with a tree,” Cagle said.
The second level is where participants talk about their feelings on climate change, “really getting at the heart of what people’s feelings and concerns are,” Cagle said.
The third level is envisioning a future. It has questions like, “what leads you to feel energized to work on climate change?” or “what helps you feel calmer about it?”
“What we really need is to figure out how to have questions or to frame things in a way that tickles people’s imaginations, that gets them to imagine a future,” Arthur said.
Arthur thanks Cagle’s skills as an expert on environmental communications and in how we communicate with one another for making questions that get those kinds of responses.
“It’s by envisioning the future that we can manifest it. And if we can’t envision it, then we can’t manifest it,” Arthur said.
The last level encourages reflection on the conversation. There are questions like, “how would you describe our conversation?” and describe "how you feel right now.”
“There is no winning or losing. It’s really just to give people an entry point to having conversations about climate change that are not intimidating and have a very low barrier to entry,” Cagle said.
“It’s meant to guide people to really what’s in their heart space,” Arthur said.
Arthur explained there’s a misconception that the cards are meant for those who don't understand climate change, however,3 they are most widely used among those who do understand and yet they don’t have the chance to talk about it.
“To get to know how they feel about it, get to share those feelings with others and then through that kind of almost intimate, vulnerable space is this opportunity for an energized sense of being able to go in the world and do something differently because now you realized you’re not the lone-ranger suffering from this worry about the climate changing,” Arthur said.
Callie Dickman, a University of Kentucky graduate and former Sustainability Director of the Student Government Association, is another member of Climate Conversation who helped bring their work onto UK’s campus.
During one of the Tree Week events on campus, Dickman used the card deck and chalk to make the conversations interactive for students.
“I asked people to draw their visualization of their answer, and then we ended up with this beautiful chalk mural outside the 90 that had included energy, included recycling, included trees, included sunlight, included animals, and it’s just all these people’s ideas combined in this area and it was a really cool visualization,” Dickman said.
Another memorable experience for Dickman was presenting the card deck at the Bluegrass Greensource 2024 Sustainability Summit. The Summit brings community and business leaders who seek to implement sustainable practices in their own communities.
“It was really cool because I was standing up in front of this room of maybe 100 people. And I got to see them all turn to the person next to them and then start talking, and then being vulnerable and emotional. And it was like the chatter filled up the room and it was really powerful to watch that and I feel special for having that unique experience,” Dickman said.
For Cagle, a memorable experience was listening to a conversation between Claire Hilbrecht, another member of Climate Conversation, and Skip, a Lexington bus driver.
During a tabling event at Julietta’s Market, Hilbrecht invites Skip, a long-time bus driver of the Lexington area.
At first Skip seemed hesitant to start the conversation because he believed he didn’t know enough about climate change, but for Climate Conversation, prior knowledge is not necessary to share your feelings about climate change.
Through their conversation together, Skip realized he knew more about how weather patterns have changed and how they affect the condition of the roads.
“It went from, ‘I don’t know anything about climate change,’ to ‘I have expert insight into climate effects here in Lexington,’ within the space of less than 15 minutes,” Cagle said.
Arthur was present during the conversation with Skip and added that not only did the cards help people realize how knowledgeable they already are, but also lead people to have empathy for others.
“To a person, when they engage meaningfully with these cards they tell us it was joyful, it was heart centered, it was wonderful, they feel calmer and happier,” Arthur said. “And they’re emboldened to go out in the world and feel now that they’ve linked arms with other people and they can do it together. Not by themselves. We’re not doing this work by ourselves.”
The cards have also changed the way Cagle teaches her classes at UK.
“I’m teaching a climate justice class this semester and we literally spent the whole first class with this card deck… I don’t just want to read articles, we need to be able to actually talk to each other about this,” Cagle said.
Cagle shared how she hopes that these kinds of conversations become the new normal. She wishes that it won’t take an overly passionate individual to engage in these conversations, but that everyone will feel comfortable to share their feelings with one another.
On that note, Arthur said, “You know I want to live in a world where it’s normal and not politicized to talk about the real things that are happening all around us.”
She was surprised by the disconnect many had during the L.A. fires. To her, it felt like no one had a thought about the tragedy.
“To feel brave enough to do that,” Arthur said. “Not to feel like people are going to label you as a weirdo because you said the thing that I think must be on everybody’s heart but that they’ve pushed down so that it’s not actually on their mind.”
The group decided they didn’t want to be responsible for selling cards, and so instead they made the cards available to download in PDF form on their website. They suggest sending the file to professional printers to get a physical deck.
The cards come in English and Spanish versions, with French versions in the works.
Climate Conversation website:
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