Spring 2010
Cool It!, a new card game from UCS, aims to teach kids that climate change is a problem we can solve—provided we choose the best policies and technologies.
"I'm a card game nerd," says UCS Press Secretary Aaron Huertas. He is also a science nerd who read Carl Sagan's Cosmos when he was 12. So it surprised few of his colleagues when Aaron arrived at the office one Monday morning and announced that he had invented a global warming card game for kids.
"I read a Washington Post article that weekend about how children are afraid of climate change," he says, "and it struck me that it's because the media covers it with scary images and doesn't focus enough on solutions. Kids often don't understand that we have a choice about how bad global warming could get."
| In this issue of Catalyst:
> Securing the Skies |
Creating an educational tool for children is a new endeavor for UCS, but we are convinced that Cool It! will enable teachers and parents to talk about global warming in a fun and hopeful way. Kids, meanwhile, will learn that all of us make choices that determine whether the world warms a little or a lot, and which of those choices will help us make the necessary reductions in global warming emissions. "Games are a great way to teach young people how the world around us works," Aaron says. "It takes the abstract and makes it real."
Playing Our (Climate) Cards Right
Aaron worked with both UCS staff and a science educator affiliated with the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) to refine his ideas. The finished game requires at least three or four players (more can be added with additional decks) and is appropriate for ages eight and up. To win, a player must collect a certain number of "solution" cards in the categories of energy, transportation, and forests; players can slow each others' progress by playing "problem" cards in those same categories. In the process, kids learn about the ways in which heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions are created and the best solutions for reducing those emissions.
UCS Communications Director Suzanne Shaw tested a prototype of the game by playing it with 20 children on "science night" at her children's elementary school in Cambridge, MA, while Aaron played the game with kids after delivering a speech at a parochial school in Mount Holly, NJ. Aaron's appearance was even featured in the town newspaper.
"Students got the hang of the game immediately and, most importantly, had a lot of fun learning about the cool clean technologies available to reduce emissions," Aaron says. "A lot of parents are worried about talking to their kids about global warming. Our game helps kids understand that, yes, global warming is a big problem, but there's still a lot we can do."
So were kids still scared about global warming after playing the game? "Only one boy cried," Aaron says. "But it was because he lost." As Catalyst went to press, UCS was preparing to unveil Cool It! at the NSTA's annual conference in Philadelphia, along with an elementary and middle school teachers' guide developed by the science educator who worked with Aaron on the game.
You can purchase Cool It! online for $7.95.
