Casey Meehan

Joyful Climate Work: The Power of Play in a Time of Worry and Fear

About the author

Casey Meehan, PhD, believes in the power of joy and delight to bring about the regenerative, thriving world we want. He seeks to challenge the doom and gloom mindset prevalent in the climate movement by helping adults more effectively engage in climate work in innovative, playful ways that build their personal resilience and engage creatively with climate solutions. At the time of publication, Casey served as the Director of Sustainability and Resilience at Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin and a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on climate change education. Among his latest ventures, Casey co-facilitates Climate Camp, a multi-day workshop centered on playful climate work and resilience-building. He is also a SeriousWork Certified Facilitator of LEGO® Serious Play®. Seriously.

Recommendations

While playful climate engagement isn’t exclusively about games, games do offer one avenue for role play, fun, creative thinking, and connection. Here are a few games about climate change:

Green House is a cooperative card game to help you turn your climate anxiety into hope and action. Every turn starts with an event, but you've got the power in your hands to do something about it. Plus, each action card is a real life climate solution that someone somewhere in the world is working on right now.

A deep, flexible, fun and engaging way of learning about your own carbon impacts. Needs a facilitator to work well and is based on the popular science book by Professor Mike Berners-Lee.

In this free, online game, created by the Financial Times, you take on the role of the Minister for the Future. You need to keep global warming to 1.5C by cutting energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 while simultaneously dealing with other greenhouse gases and protecting people and nature. The game is modeled on published scientific research.

Daybreak is a cooperative boardgame about stopping climate change. It presents a hopeful vision of the near future, where you get to build the mind-blowing technologies and resilient societies we need to save the planet.

Excerpts from the chapter

[To] only recognize the unpleasant emotions inherent in the climate crisis limits by at least half the spectrum of human experience. In danger of being sidelined is the joy, wonder, and delight that serve as important sources of human renewal, inspiration, and action. Through joyful climate work we remind ourselves to attend to the whole of the human spirit and psyche.  Yes, we grieve; we fret; we anguish. But we also celebrate; we laugh; we take pleasure. In the human project, grief lives side-by-side with joy.

[…]

Despite the seemingly innate drive to play, play is often viewed in secondary and college classrooms as a frivolous endeavor not suitable as a means for working on Serious Topics. And if the climate crisis is anything, it’s a Serious Topic. Why would we choose to play at a time like this? It turns out that a rich and growing body of literature offers empirical evidence as to the extensive benefits of play.

Further resources

Projects and thinking from other scholars at the nexus of joy, playfulness, and climate change:

Climate change-related sketch comedy created by students for a class on creative climate communication. This is part of a larger project called “Inside the Greenhouse” led by a team of professors at the University of Colorado – Boulder.

Marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save Project, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, PhD, asks what are you good at? What is the work that needs doing? And what brings you joy? Where your answers intersect is where you should put your climate action effort.

Contact details

Casey is interested in speaking to live audiences and is contactable via his website: https://www.playfulclimate.fun/.