Most efforts to educate the public around climate change are pretty dour and leave people feeling hopeless and helpless. But there are things an individual or small group can do to have a meaningful impact on the climate. And now, there’s a board game that teaches people about the most effective climate solutions and gives them the agency to take action.
Samuel Levac-Levey is the Founder and Game Designer behind Solutions, a collaborative board game designed to inspire hope and action on the climate crisis. On this bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change, Sam joins Ross and guest host Christi Taylor, Marketing Coordinator at Nori, to explain how the book Drawdown informed the creation of the game and describe how it serves as a starting point for real-world climate action.
Sam walks us through the mechanics of the game, discussing how it’s being tested both in schools and with a general audience. Listen in to understand how Solutions exposes players to job opportunities in the climate space and learn how you can support Sam’s project and play Solutions yourself by contributing to his Kickstarter campaign before it closes on August 17th.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
Solutions: The Game on Kickstarter
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming edited by Paul Hawken
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace for her first official podcast co-hosting experience. Christi Taylor, Nori’s marketing coordinator. Hi, Christi.
Christi Taylor: Hi, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Well, happy to have you here. You’ve been a huge help with all that we do at Creative. And we had the pleasure of playing a climate board game yesterday, which was super fun. Yes, we got paid for doing that in the workplace. That was great. It’s called Solutions. It’s on Kickstarter right now. And I think Kickstarter is nearly over. So if you’re listening to this and you think it sounds cool, you should definitely jaunt over to Kickstarter. The link is in the show notes and make sure you support it before it closes.
And we have the founder and game designer of it, Samuel Levy. Hey, Samuel.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Hey, it’s so great to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Great to have you here. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for sending us a copy of this and letting us play it. I love stuff like this.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, I absolutely had to. And I’m really excited. I think that this was the first time that I’ve been on a podcast and you guys have actually played it. So maybe I can like turn it on you guys at some point and get your thoughts, feedback on the game as well.
Ross Kenyon: This is your first time on a podcast?
Samuel Levac-Levey: No, but the first time when the hosts have actually played the game ahead of time. So that’s really exciting.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, that’s cool. Okay. That’s good. As I say, it’s 2021. How have you not done a podcast? Have you not already started like three of them yourself? Well, we had fun playing it. I think we mostly played it correctly. What do you think, Chrissy? I think we got 80 to 90% of the way to correctness. What do you think?
Christi Taylor: I think when we started trying to challenge ourselves a little more, we might have taken a wrong turn, but we did learn a lot.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, well, I’ll see if I can say you guys straight.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I would hope so. But perhaps you should start just by introducing the game, how it came to be, what is it? And we’ll start from there.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, that sounds great. So the original inspiration behind the game, honestly, maybe the pre-inspiration for the game was the book Drawdown. And it’s a book I’m sure you guys are very familiar with. It’s really just a fantastic compilation of climate solutions that I think they have about 100 in the book. And the solutions have been analyzed by a team of over 200 experts and It was just a really unique and surprising list for me when I read it. And when most people think of climate solutions, they think of, for example, electric cars or solar panels, kind of all the usual suspects.
And those solutions are super important and they’re absolutely in there. But really, the Drawdown book showed me that there’s so, so much more out there. And a lot of the more surprising solutions can have really surprising impacts as well. So I actually, I would flip through the book and kind of just think, well, how can I fit into this solution? How can I fit into this one? And I ended up flying out to their first ever conference in September 2019, had an amazing time, it was in Penn State, and I was just First of all, really impressed with how the researchers were presenting materials and fielding these really tough questions from the really technical audience.
But then at the end of the conference, we held what we called an unconference, which was basically the attendees kind of brainstorming ourselves and giving back and seeing what we could come up with. And one of the attendees happened to be Hank Rogers, who’s the entrepreneur behind Tetris. And he, of course, ran a session on the gamification process. And one of his suggestions was, well, let’s turn Drawdown into a card game. And I heard him say that. I was just immediately like, no, this needs to be a board game. And I just started brainstorming the rules on the spot.
And I ended up chatting with Hank, chatting with a member of the Drawdown team. And they were like, yeah, you can go off and do this. So here I am two years later.
Ross Kenyon: It takes two years to make a game, is it? I think everyone has had enough board game idea in their life, and I think it sounds really easy, but it’s really well put together. It seemingly is a huge amount of work to make this work.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, definitely. It’s been a long two years. It really started out as a part-time project, and I was working on it just totally by myself, part-time, with a ton of help from my amazing girlfriend, Tegan, honestly. But Yeah, I was working on it by myself for maybe a year and a half. And then a few months ago, I got a really amazing partner, Murad, on board. And he’s been a huge help with the business and operations side of things, which has been really, really useful.
Ross Kenyon: So when we’re playing, the temperature is going up and the years are passing. And there’s cards that you have to do things with. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I want you to explain that. I don’t want to say too much. But how are the mechanics of the game designed?
Samuel Levac-Levey: First things first, kind of like you mentioned, you’re moving forwards through time. And as you move forwards through time, you can imagine a giant thermometer on the board. As you progress through time, global temperatures are going to increase. And you’re under this kind of constant pressure of temperatures increasing as humans are doing their thing. And it’s your job to play together as a team. It’s a completely collaborative game. And you need to play these solution cards. There’s a giant stack of them, about 100. And as you play them, if you play them well, then you can keep temperatures down and keep the Earth cool.
Christi Taylor: So when we were playing, we got really excited when we were able to rank the cards and we had them all laid out. And these were when the arguments were sort of happened. And that moment when you’re about to turn them over and find out what the actual ranking is, is really nerve wracking. I found that to be probably the most addicting part of the game.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, it’s something that honestly surprised me a bit. I didn’t realize just how much kind of the tension builds and is released after that card flip. And as we’ve been playtesting the game, and we’ve tested it on over 600 people at this point, we’ve been getting videos back from people and just seeing these amazing reactions at various points throughout the game. So it’s been great.
Ross Kenyon: That’s the main driver, if you’re listening, is you have these cards of the various drawdown solutions, and then you have to, with your other people playing, rate which of these are the most effective to, I don’t know, least effective. That’s maybe not the nicest way to put it. But we got kind of hung up there. This is one of the parts that we weren’t able to figure out ourselves, which very much could be our fault, probably is, of how many cards to be ranking at any given time. Is it up to us to choose how much to risk to do it?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, yeah, you got it. So you can play more and more cards, but the more cards you play, the more difficult it is to rank. And so at some point you might be making a decision, well, do I risk playing another solution or do I play it safe and keep it the way it is now? I have to say, the rulebook is a bit of a work in progress still. We’re constantly getting feedback on it throughout the Kickstarter campaign. But yeah, it’s really good to get that feedback as well.
Ross Kenyon: Have you mostly been testing it in schools? I imagine this would do very well if I was a student. It would be a great game.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, definitely. So as I said, we’ve had about 600 playtesters. Maybe... A bit over half of those have been in schools. So we’ve tested in elementary school, middle school, high school, bachelor’s degree, master’s, PhD level. And we’ve also done like climate experts. And the other half has been really making sure to test the game with just regular everyday people and gamers and people who don’t have a particular even care for the climate space. Or maybe they care, but they don’t know much about it. And I think with the school testing, it’s been really obvious that it’s an amazing fit for schools.
And talking to teachers, we’ve found that many of them really want to teach about climate, but don’t necessarily know how. And this is a really great way for them to start doing it. But with a more general audience, we’ve found really, really positive reactions as well. For example, we were playing with a game designer in Switzerland. And he told us after, well, listen, I mean, if you normally told me to go and buy a game about climate change, I would never want to do that because I just think it’s boring.
It’s going to be a dry educational game. But after playing it, I’ve totally changed my mind. Everyone should play this, even if they have just the slightest interest in the topic. And I think that really shows a bit of the challenge we’re up against in terms of Hopefully making the game go mainstream. Well, when people think of a climate game, they probably do think of something more dry and educational. And our goal is to show that this is kind of like a Cards Against Humanity type game where you’re just going out and having fun discussions and really something that we believe everyone can enjoy.
And we’ve seen that everyone can enjoy.
Ross Kenyon: Have you thought about reaching out to Sid Meier? He’s Canadian, right? Sid Meier’s Solutions?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, I have not actually. That is a great idea.
Ross Kenyon: I guess- Is it a great idea? I’m not sure.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Well, so I actually, I did talk to Will Wright on Clubhouse briefly about it, the founder of The Sims and SimCity and stuff. I don’t know, he’s been thinking about climate video games as well, but he’s really stayed away from the space, I think, for several reasons. But yeah, I think we do actually have a virtual version of the game that’s kind of like a video game in a way. And I think there could be ways to make it into a more proper video game as well.
Christi Taylor: Well, I love the idea of students playing this game in schools. I know that’s like the very obvious use for this that has been very successful so far. But it just takes me back when I was in high school, we would play Scattergories as our warm up for my AP. And I feel like my brain was expanded in more ways from the competition and the excitement of that than maybe our typical classwork exercises. So I could see this being the sort of thing where students are getting competitive. They’re learning about all the different potential job fields that they could go into.
And it gives you a more tangible idea of how you might work on climate in the future. So I love that.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, we have done several things to really focus on teachers. And we do have an educators edition, which we’ve worked on with our partner, Climate Science, to develop a lesson plan that really helps teachers integrate into their classroom. But really, I think one of the magical things and one of the goals of the game is that The game doesn’t necessarily need to be over when it’s over. And what I mean by that is my hope is that the game can be used as a starting point for real-world climate action.
And it’s something we’ve already seen in the school system. So we sent the game to a school in Palm Beach, Florida. And two of their grade six classes played the game and they happened to flip over the reducing food waste part, which is one of honestly the most shockingly impactful solutions.
Ross Kenyon: That was the first card that I think we played and we’re like, really?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting because there’s a lot of hidden impacts in food waste that many people don’t think about. You can think about all the energy going into growing the food and transporting it and keeping it refrigerated and then makes it onto your table. And then if it ends up in landfill, then it’s releasing methane. But on top of that, there is such a shortage of good farmland in the world. A lot of the impact of food waste is actually, well, because you’re not using that food, now you have to grow new food, which means new farmland, which means you have to deforest for new farmland.
So definitely one of the more surprising ones. And both these classes flipped over that card, and they independently decided to do class projects after on reducing food waste in their cafeteria. Actually, their local news station picked up a story and there’s this amazing video of the kids dragging this giant bag of food waste, popping it onto a scale. And they’ve managed to reduce their food waste by about three kilograms a day. And they’re hoping to expand that into the next years as well and take it further. And the teacher was telling me, oh, the kids are like, are we doing this next year?
Are we doing this next year? But the kids actually ended up presenting this project to the faculty. And it ended up inspiring the faculty to bring back a school garden that they used to have in previous years and to start a composting program as well. And so the impacts really radiated beyond that. And hopefully when the kids then go home to their parents, then they can tell their parents all about the game and the solutions. And I think that one of the best ways to get people to act is through their children.
Which is something you see with smoking, right? If you look at people who smoke, no amount of government ads or seeding their gross lungs on packets of cigarettes is going to make any sort of difference to their decision. But what gets them to finally quit smoking is their kids begging them. And I hope we can get a similar effect with the gaming climate.
Ross Kenyon: Does it work the other way too? Could kids get their parents to start vaping with them?
Samuel Levac-Levey: I don’t know. I feel like that’s a less emotional hold. Daddy, please leave vape with me. It’s killing you not to vape. I feel like it’s not quite the same thing.
Ross Kenyon: I had a couple of doozies this episode.
Christi Taylor: I also saw that there’s an option on your Kickstarter to have your face immortalized. Can you talk more about that?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yes, so it’s kind of a joke, but also, I mean, hey, if you want your face in the game, then sure. So actually, one of the solutions is telepresence, which is something I’m sure we’re all very familiar with over the pandemic. And it’s what we’re doing right now. We’re obviously talking to each other virtually since we’re in a different country. And so on our telepresence card, Obviously, telepresence has the effect of being able to prevent a lot of emissions from transportation, business flights, etc. And so the picture on the card, they’re all real pictures, and we thought it was important to have real pictures on the cards rather than draw on artwork, just because we want to hammer home that these solutions are real, they’re tangible, you can do them now.
And so on that card, we basically have a woman looking at a Zoom screen. And so you can actually put your face in one of those Zoom screen squares and your friend’s face as well. So it’s kind of just a fun thing and a joke. But if you want your face over every game that everyone will buy, then you absolutely can.
Ross Kenyon: Is the Kickstarter going pretty well then? It looks like it’s over double what you were asking for to fully fund the project.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, so we got off to a really great start and we were funded within the first 24 hours, which is really, really awesome. And I think we’re somewhere around 250% funded right now. And now our goal is to just take things further. And really the purpose of the Kickstarter was to... Raise enough money to be able to do a proper, because we’ve been making these one-off prototypes that are honestly crazy expensive. And so now that we’ve met that basic goal, now we have a bunch of additional funding goals that unlock various improvements for the game, such as different game modes, or we’re probably going to do one soon with FSC certified paper in the game, which will be really cool.
And also things like having a full curriculum that’s tailored to different age groups. So if we can raise enough money, we’ll do a full curriculum for elementary schools, one for high schools and one for universities.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. And this is a business, right? I see ink here. This isn’t a nonprofit of yours.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yes, yes. So, yeah, we had a corporation from a failed business from a few years ago and I just had it lying around. So I was like, yeah, let’s repurpose it for this.
Unknown speaker: Who doesn’t have a corporation in their lives? Well, that’s fun.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. So that’s sort of what you imagine the next couple of years is curriculum development. It’s maybe expansion packs like you’ll see for Catan or other things. And yeah.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, to be perfectly honest, we’re not quite sure what the future has in store. It’ll be a lot based on how we do in the Kickstarter, and then we’re going to kind of evaluate how much further we want to take things. Right now, our heads are kind of down just marketing the game, getting the word out there, and trying to make the Kickstarter as big as it can possibly be.
Ross Kenyon: When does it close?
Samuel Levac-Levey: August 17th.
Ross Kenyon: August 17th. Yeah. By the time this reaches listeners, you’ll have more than a week to go. And I think if they support it with certain packages, they can receive a copy of it now. There’s also various upgrades or perks. What do they call them exactly?
Samuel Levac-Levey: So we have stretchables and we have add-ons. And so the add-ons are kind of additional things you can do. Add to the game. It’s mostly just more copies of the game, to be honest. And we also have a partnership with Green Teacher, which is a network of eco-teachers. And they have a fantastic book that we’re kind of packaging of the game there and can get as an add-on. And then the stretch goals are our additional funding goals. So like I was saying before, we can unlock curriculums or different updates to the game that will apply broadly to everyone if we reach those funding goals.
Christi Taylor: So Sam, it seems that you’ve worked on rockets, drones, turbines, energy storage, electric flying cars, and now a board game. What’s next?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, it’s a great question. I have had a wide variety of work experiences. My background is mechanical engineering, so honestly nothing to do with game design whatsoever. Yeah, I am not sure what’s next. I partly, like I said, depend on how the Kickstarter goes. I’ve also been working a lot in entrepreneurship and a bit in venture capital. And so really I’m passionate about the entrepreneurship space and how creativity can be applied to solve the climate crisis. And so I’m trying to do whatever I can to support climate entrepreneurs there.
Ross Kenyon: I forgot even to mention that you’re the vice chair of the board of directors of Work on Climate too.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yes.
Ross Kenyon: Busy guy.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, it’s been a ton of fun and honestly really surprising as well. We started Work on Climate in September and there were eight of us back then. And I think there’s almost 3,000 of us now. We’re just growing by like hundreds every month. And we’ve really... So the purpose of the Slack channel is to help people who want to work on climate but aren’t or aren’t to their full capacity. And the way the community was founded, the two founders were senior Google engineers and they ended up meeting each other and realizing that They want to work on climate change, but they had no idea how, they had no idea what to do about it.
So they convinced each other to drop out of Google with no plan whatsoever. And they ended up starting this community and we joined them. And so they made... Social media posts about their decision to quit and why they thought it was an important thing to do. And those posts went semi-viral and there’s tonnes of responses of people being like, oh, we wish we could quit our jobs and work on climate. And the... Really, that’s the driving idea behind the community is it’s just such a shame that there’s people, there’s all these people who are passionate about climate and want to work on it, but aren’t for whatever reason.
And so we want to enable them to pursue their dreams.
Ross Kenyon: Relatedly, one of the reasons why I think this board game is so cool is that most of the people I speak with who want to work on climate, they tend to have either a software background or they think the jobs that are available or the entrepreneurship that needs doing is hard sciences and hardware. They’re like, ah, I’m not a mechanical engineer. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know how to, you know, take like a bench scale technology and deploy it commercially. That sounds hard. And I think there’s a huge opportunity for creative people to be involved.
There’s a great climate designers group I think is really neat. I think this is...
Samuel Levac-Levey: I found my artist through there.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, did you? Oh, that’s... That stuff is so important. And I think people forget about how valuable projects like this can be for teaching people, making it fun, making it a good intellectual adventure to go on, making it actually genuinely attractive. Climate change stuff can often be quite doer. I’m not sure that’s always the best tone. It’s right in some circumstances, but I don’t know. I think what you’re doing is important and I wish more people would approach it with this sort of creative frame of mind. And you can stop blushing now.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Thanks, Ross. Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely, that’s really one of the driving purposes behind the game is, first of all, let’s just expose people to the fact that there are solutions and there is hope because I think we’re really kind of, first of all, inundated with the negative messaging and the ice caps are melting, the polar bears are dying. It’s all very true and very serious and very important, but When you don’t feel like you have a sense of agency, that’s when climate anxiety can set in and depression can set in.
And so I think it’s really important to also show that side of things. We all see these lists online of top five things you can do to stop climate change, top 10 things. And honestly, if you look at these lists, well, all right, you can fly less, you can... Eat less meat, have less children. I mean, and some things go as far as, like, you can unplug your TV at night. And it’s just, well, when you see a lot of these lists, it’s really easy. And I’m going to quote Paul Hawken here, who’s co-founder of Drawdown.
And we’ve been partnering with him a bit on the Kickstarter as well, which has been amazing. And he has this great interview where he says, Anyone with an IQ above room temperature who sees these lists just realizes that we’re screwed because the magnitude of these tiny solutions does not meet the magnitude of these huge problems that we’re constantly flooded with. I think a lot of the point of the game is When you’re thinking about climate solutions, most people are thinking there’s these personal things you can do and then there’s these giant actions that only governments or corporations can take.
And I really believe that there’s a huge sphere of action in the middle where a single individual or a group of individuals can have a really significant impact well beyond just themselves. And it’s the difference between, for example, putting solar panels on your roof or doing a community solar program for your entire neighborhood. It’s the difference between reducing your food waste at home or doing a program for your entire school cafeteria like those kids did in Florida. And by enlarging your sphere of influence outside just yourself, you can actually have a pretty meaningful impact.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Sam, thanks so much for being here with us. Obviously, the Kickstarter is the one call to action that I imagine you most want to focus on. They can go there, they can support the project, they can buy the game. Is that right? Is that what you want them to do?
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, I think we are so grateful for everyone’s support. And the more support we can get, the more we can get this out there, the more we can distribute it globally and get it to people around the world. There’s also an option if you’re not a board game person yourself, And maybe it’s just not your thing. You can donate a copy to a school in need. And we’re working with some pretty cool partners on that. But yeah, we are so, so grateful for your support. Maybe the last thing I’ll kind of say quickly is I just want to maybe give a bit of a plug for having some hope still on climate.
I think it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by the problem And the truth is that climate is an exponential problem. And it really, it does get worse as time goes on. As the world gets warmer, we’re more likely to have these feedback loops, permafrost melting, ice melting, et cetera, that will make the world even warmer. As the world gets warmer, again, some natural systems that are helping us out, such as trees, forests, algae, can get less effective at doing their job and helping us sequester carbon as well. So it’s really an exponential problem and a really serious one.
But that being said, the solutions to climate change are exponential as well. And we’re all familiar with Moore’s Law and how technology can grow exponentially. And I definitely mean that, but I mean, well beyond that as well. It’s not just deep technology. It’s also the fact that we’re building on previous knowledge. And a lot of most interesting climate solutions to me are many natural solutions that do agriculture, which you guys know all about, obviously, and natural systems. But It’s not only these solutions that are exponential, it’s also social change that’s exponential.
And there’s a really great rule called the 3. 5% rule. I won’t really get into it. It’s pretty easy to look up if you want to. But the basic premise is that no government has withstood a challenge of 3. 5% of the population being mobilized during an event. And what I mean by that is not that we need to go have an uprising. What I mean, the point is that when you reach only 3. 5% of the population being really seriously engaged with an issue, it means that everyone mathematically knows someone who knows someone who’s really passionate about that issue.
Really, I think that’s one of the purposes of the game is let’s get people talking about it, get people actually engaged, actually thinking about it. And I just see the climate problem as kind of a race of exponentials. Are the good exponentials going to win? Are the bad ones? Well, that’s up to us. So let’s do it.
Ross Kenyon: I feel pretty helpful hearing that. How about you, Christi? Did that make you feel buoyant?
Christi Taylor: The race of exponentials. What a phrase.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, what a phrase. Well, thanks, Sam, for joining us. And if you’re listening, the link to the Kickstarter for Solutions, the board game in the show notes, go click it, check it out, send it to a friend, buy a copy for a school in need. That’s a great thing. Sam, that’s a cool little bonus there. And thanks so much for being here with us.
Samuel Levac-Levey: Yeah, thank you, guys. This has been an absolute pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: For us too. Thanks so much for listening. If you could please rate and review us on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, it’s really the same thing. It helps a lot. It helps us get this content to more people. Definitely check out that Kickstarter. Have a great day and thank you so much for listening. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review.
You can keep up We are also now on Patreon at patreon.com slash noripodcasts if you’d like more content, engagement, and community. And thank you so much for your support.
