Press Conference Role Play
Time: 30 – 60 minutes
Learning Style: Oral, humor, group-building
Objective:
Participants practice discourse and narratives on carbon pricing through a mock press conference. The objective is to create a safe space to practice and to work together to speak truth to power while articulating our positions.
Instructions:
Participants assume a role in a mock press conference and practice speaking out about various aspects of carbon pricing. Facilitators can begin by representing a press team and asking the questions, while the participants can take turns being representatives of specific organizations or groups, and/or members of the press. This session can be organized in different ways. Feel free to be creative with your session (costumes, setting up the room, etc.). Some examples of organizations that participants can represent could be a small farmer group, a group fighting genetically engineered trees, a conservation NGO, or a group fighting against a REDD project. It should be fun and low-key, but also give people a chance to practice their arguments and knowledges. In one of the pilot workshops, two people role played as pro-carbon traders with everyone else in the audience confronting them.
Materials:
No materials needed, but phones and cameras can be used.
More Ideas:
You can use phones to record the interviews if the group wants to use this as serious practice. Then play back the interviews and work on sound bites.
Some questions could be:
Putting a price on carbon is the only way to create a price signal. If you are against this, then what is your solution?
A carbon tax is the first step towards controlling emissions. Don’t you think that a carbon tax can be one of many tools that would be helpful?
The technology for carbon, capture and storage (CSS) is already being developed. This is a path towards carbon neutrality, so how do you propose we capture the carbon if you don’t want CCS?
Preserving forests is the only way to save the lungs of the planet, so giving money to tribal governments to conserve forests is a win-win. What could possibly be wrong with this?
