• Practicing counterarguments
• Acknowledging our fallacies and the fallacies of the others

Duration : 45 minutes

Gather all participants and ask them to figure out that they are in the following situation :

Jean-Michel is your uncle, not completely climate-negationist but a bit ecologist skeptic. His problem is that by watching too much mainstream TV his interest in ecological issues has diminished. To whom wants to listen, he states that he is not ready to change his life standards. Christmas is a great moment for him to talk about this topic and to create polemics. Usually, you hear them without reacting and just pour yourself another drink. This year you have decided that you will face him. After all Christmas might make miracles come true…

Divide participants in small groups (6-7 groups - 3-4 persons per group). Give each a statement of their uncle :

• 2 degrees is not that horrible
• I already do my part
• We will find technological solutions
• The real problem is African demography
• No matter what we will do, the other countries won’t move
• The ecologists are obscurantists, they want to come back to candles
• We don’t have time, everything is doomed

Ask each group to imagine the discussion that follows, taking into consideration that each argument from a side (theirs) must be followed by an other argument from the other side (the uncle). Give them 30 minutes for this task.

Gather all participants. Ask each group to read out loud to the other their conversation with their uncle. Ask then the audience to point out the arguments that could be consider as fallacies. Mark them with red dots.

As a conclusion, invite the participants to share what they learnt from the exercise.

• Paper and pens