With climate change, you can not joke but you can play!

by Marzia Fialdini

Va.D.Di. (acronym of "Tell that to the dinosaurs") is the first role-playing game entirely devoted to climate change, an online simulation developed by ISPRA (National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) to help high school students to reflect on one of the most urgent and serious problems of our days: global warming. Presented in May and consisting of a kit of teaching materials Va.D.Di. meets the aims of education geared to sustainability, as indicated by the Strategy for the Onu Decade of Education for Sustainable Development in progress until 2014, and it finds its origins in the organization by ISPRA of the National Conference on Climate Change of 2007.

The game-simulation is structured to teach students to deal with the issue of climate change firsthand, to enhance their civic awareness, encourage them to reflect on the climate issue and then bring them to identify their possible solutions. Each game involves 50 people and is set in the region Pycaia and its three main centres: Molaria (a seaside town), Naraoia (a major metropolitan city) and Santacaris (a picturesque mountain village). All places are named many fossils, so here explained the reference to dinosaurs in the name of the game.

Students can play the role of administrators (mayors, councillors, president of the region), ordinary citizens, experts and journalists to discuss and finally develop a plan for development of the entire region Pycaia, which prevents or minimizes the damage caused by climate change. Several issues must be addressed: the need to understand the responsibilities of human activity in climate-related problems (in fact, there are also the positions of the "deniers," those that define as natural cycles of climate changes occurred in the past), the need to combine economic development with reduction of CO2 through environmental education for citizens, budget and economic interests of industry. For each of the three affected communities, at the end of the simulation, it will also draw a profile of sustainability based on the choices of individual participants.

The distribution of materials to play the game-simulation will start with the beginning of the next school year in high-schools that request it. The teachers who decide to follow the project are required to participate in specific courses still in planning stage.

What future for the quiet Pycaia? And most importantly, what can the citizens do individually or working together? How do we need to change life choices and habits so that the environment does not become an enemy but can continue to be the ally of all time? We can therefore say that with climate change, you can not joke but thanks to Va.D.Di. you can play!