Finding the Future
Our Missing Future
Why do people resist climate action? The evidence for climate change is clear, the technologies work, and the alternatives are horrible, yet resistance remains and often gets stronger. Why do people resist? Because the climate movement is asking for massive changes to people’s lives but does not speak to the future this will create. Beyond unattainable utopias and the non-human technological singularity, there is little to show what it will be like for everyday people. Will life be better? Will life be worse?
Without any narrative about the future, it is easy for the worst story to become dominant. When people hear electric stoves, they think you will ban gas ones. When people hear dense urban living, they see massive towers of drab apartments. With these poor futures in mind, resistance becomes understandable. People are not responding to the technology itself. They are responding to the fear that their way of life will disappear. Fear is a dominant zeitgeist.
To act, people must want to live in the future we create. They need a future that is familiar. A better future. The good future. We must create a compelling vision of this future to get the buy-in for the changes we seek. Without it, resistance will only increase.
Choose the Non-Apocalypse
Today, we are launching Finding the Future to propagate a positive narrative to align people and generate a new wave of climate action. This project will be a work of collaborative futurism. The future we seek is a realis topia, a real place, anchored in the technologies and system you are building. We need your help. We need storytellers, system thinkers, engineers, and policy wonks to connect the project of today to tomorrow’s future.
Right now, this project isn’t for everyone, if you’re not up for a raw, unpolished project,
This isn’t for you.
If you do not want to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and elusiveness,
This project isn’t for you.
If you want a clear guide to what the future could be,
This isn’t the time to join.
If you are up for all that:
You are the do-er and shaker we need.
Join our weekly Zoom meetings; we are here to write the story that builds the future and inspires the world.
