Materialising the climate crisis with ration cards

Each Norwegian is responsible for annual emissions of 8.4 tonnes of CO2. By comparison, the UN Climate Panel's recommendation is that we should be at 1-2 tonnes of CO2 each. In other words, there is a great gap between how we live and how we should live.

Thought-provoking

Brunvoll's master thesis "We have a crisis" examines how graphic design can convey and visualize the consequences of the climate crisis in a concrete and easy-to-understand way. The result of the project was a book and an exhibition at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and is a thought-provoking, tactile and three-dimensional infographic illustrating the connection between personal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Consumption is the scarcity of our time

The project draws inspiration from both World War II ration cards and the book Kriseårets kjøkkenalmanakk (The Kitchen Almanac of the Year of the Crisis), which was published by Norwegian cookbook legend Henriette Schønberg Erken at the turn of the year 1939/40.

While ration cards during World War II distributed scarce goods such as food, textiles and fuel, in 2019, it is CO2 and personal consumption that are the scarce goods that need fair distribution.

In the book, clothes, shoes, air travel, driving and meat consumption are rationed and followed up with useful knowledge that makes the reader aware of both problems and solutions related to consumption and climate.

The jury's statement

This project puts the climate crisis in a personal perspective and manages in an incredibly efficient and easy way to specify consumption in a way that almost forces us to reflect. We think the project manages to make the climate crisis more comprehensible in a quirky, clever way, by using visual communication in familiar contexts of history in a new context.

The project is a reminder of the past, and while it gives us hope that we can make it through this if everyone plays their part, it also emphasizes that we do in fact face a crisis.

This is a clear DOGA Award for Newcomers recipient because it manages to make something so big – and for many, abstract – concrete and understandable using simple means.