From ‘Hard’ Science and ‘Heart’ Science — Flourishing with Climate Futures
Written by Paul MacLean, Chris Medary and Mariela Tovar
A desire to bridge the ecological divide provided motivation for a u-lab 2x experiment in community-based conversations on climate change. The 2x team (authors of this article) aimed to facilitate conversations among diverse stakeholders through a multi-part workshop that combined Theory U tools and methods alongside a modelled scenario of future climate. This future scenario was co-created by the workshop participants and became a vehicle for sensing into the needs, assumptions, and values of society to support a future climate and shed light on possible actions and pathways for change today.
“Sentipensante!¹ a member of the core team shouted out into the Zoom-iverse. That beautifully blended descriptor for experience, presence, and guide for engagement — to think and feel, know and intuit, analyse and empathise, to listen and express. All of a sudden we received clarity on our modus operandi for prototyping what we came to call Climate Futures.
In this initiative, part simulation, part group therapy, part praxis development, we called on trusted colleagues and friends to participate in a 3-part workshop series. Initiated in a year of record-breaking global temperatures and significant climate disruption, Climate Futures aims to improve systemic understanding of our shared climate system, to illuminate values necessary for a safe and just climate transition, and to develop a sense of urgency and agency around today’s interrelated crises. This effort is led by a core team of Paul MacLean, Mariela Tovar, and Chris Medary.
The rough idea had been brewing in the core team for years: How do we help people understand and find their place within the climate transition? It appeared to us that the answer requires looking inward and outward, across long time scales, into many different cultures, centering intersectional issues, all while remaining scientifically sound. But how to do this?
Using Theory U as guidance on framework and process, we came up with the idea that a unambiguously clear and scientifically sound portrait of climate change would be the best way to engage stakeholders and seek ways together to effect the changes that a just climate transition calls for. From there, preconceptions and assumptions about responsibility for climate change and so-called “climate solutions” could be let go, discussions could deepen and participants might be freed to find and explore common values that are the source for change. This became the goal — whether we could achieve it in one, two, or three sessions together was unclear, but the idea gave us a road map to follow down the U.
Co-Initiation
To begin our journey, we needed to build a container for testing ideas from a broad range of perspectives. Our personal networks brought forth a group of 12 participants from Canada, the U.S., and the UK, aged 27 to 70. The cohort included an artist, an ethicist, a business leader, an entrepreneur, a county commissioner and owner of a demonstration farm, educators, scientists, students, activists and an elected representative, each willing to give their time for three online workshop sessions during the winter and spring of 2023.
For the core team, the relatively short contact time with participants meant weekly meetings and detailed planning behind the scenes for each session to be respectful of participants’ time (our sessions were held on weekends), to hold the potential for fruitful outcomes.
Workshop Part 1: From Co-Sensing to Co-Creation — Modelling the Future We Want
As we all know, the climate crisis represents an unprecedented threat to our shared world — a manifestation of the ecological divide that is deeply connected to the social and cultural-spiritual divides. Many of us are already aware of some of the drivers, impacts, and actions relevant to the crisis, recognize how systemic and institutionalised the issue is, and are confronted with how it can feel too large to approach, with too many problems and too little time. Unfortunately this often manifests in obsessing about the future we don’t want — a business as usual (BAU), 3.3⁰C of warming climate catastrophe with mass migrations, mass extinctions and scorched soil — and too few conversations and planning towards a future we do want, with a safe and just planet for us all (one in which global temperature does not exceed 2⁰C of warming by 2100).
To bring these two worlds into focus, we began Workshop Part 1 using En-ROADS, a powerful climate simulation model for exploring how to address global energy and climate challenges through large-scale policy, technological, and societal shifts. Created by MIT Sloan and Climate Interactive, En-ROADS is designed to be used interactively with groups where it can be the basis for scientifically rigorous conversations on addressing climate change.
Figure 1a depicts the En-ROADS opening screen, a representation of “Business as Usual”, i.e., the current trajectories of Global Sources of Primary Energy and Greenhouse Gas Net emissions in this century, along with Temperature Increase above the pre-industrial level. The simulator provides 18 policy and technology “levers” which can be used, for example, to subsidise or tax the different sources of energy (e.g., fossil fuels vs renewables), incentivize improvements in the ways energy is consumed (e.g., electrify buildings, industry and transportation), or model the effects of removing carbon from the atmosphere (e.g., through reduced deforestation or technologically). For our u-lab 2x work, the simulator served as a powerful substitute 3D model (a tool used in Theory U and other change processes). In our case, the En-ROADS climate simulation model enabled the workshop participants (and ourselves) to imagine and map realities that are supported by hard science.
Our Workshop Part 1 objective was to work collaboratively to achieve a world in which global temperature by 2100 did not exceed 2⁰C. The core team facilitated the group’s use of the tool, presenting additional graphs, incorporating the group’s chosen actions, answering questions and bringing further aspects to consider. As participants became comfortable with the exercise and as we listened to each others’ stories and experiences, one could sense some of the burdens of our current reality beginning to collectively slip off. Judgement and preconceived notions were suspended and a sense of validation of very different lived experiences and perceptions, from the worlds of students, artists, farmers, business leaders and academics, living at different places in our system, began to emerge. We learned how to leave behind our baggage of preconceptions and roles in the current social-climate system and just observe the forces at work. We were, in effect, opening our minds and hearts as we descended the left limb of the U together, which travels through the initiation and co-sensing phases.
We had begun to shape our container as a sort-of liminal space, hospicing the world as it is while nurturing the birth of ways in which it might be. Free to think and feel what might be possible, we used the simulator to begin to sketch the outlines of a desirable future world of flourishing, in which we stabilise global temperature at a max 1.5⁰C increase by 2100 (Figure 1b). We took actions to price carbon, subsidise renewable energy sources, support energy efficiency and electrification of transport, buildings and industry, and to enable changes in agricultural practices by reducing methane emissions and massively supporting deforestation and afforestation. At the end of Part 1, we had made a first journey through the U, glimpsing a possible future. From there, we returned to deepen our understanding of the drivers that could enable that future.
Workshop Part 2 — Presencing: Underlying Values and Contextual Nuances
What would be needed to really bring the world closer to a 1.5⁰C scenario? In our second workshop we explored the societal values, beliefs, and assumptions that would underpin such a reality by dwelling together. Part conscious effort, part allowing the knowledge to emerge of its own accord, we devoted this second section to deepening our understanding of what societal transformation would entail.
Both Business as Usual (BAU) and 1.5⁰C worlds are part of the emerging future, but seen from the vantage point of 2024, much public discourse is about the perils of the BAU trajectory. After Part 1’s inspiring but wholly aspirational scenario, workshop participants expressed the challenge of imagining something that doesn’t yet exist, or a place they know could exist but with no road to get there.
Thus, we began Part 2 with a fictional story written by Chris of our core team from the perspective of the year 2100, in which he reflects on the past century of climate action based on the scenario participants developed in Part 1. From there, we worked collaboratively to dive deep into the value systems that underpin the current operating system in western society (social, political, economic, ecosystemic, cultural, etc.). Topics were diverse and the conversation became uncomfortable at times, but the space enabled us to engage with openness, vulnerability, and compassion. We talked about the things that scare us. We talked about our frustrations. We talked about things we grieve for. We talked about all the things we cherish. Then, we moved again toward a conversation about a world we want to build compared to what we have today. At this point one could sense a shift in the social field² as we drew upon the collective wisdom in our hearts to embellish the sketch of the future provided by the hard science model.
Returning to our proxy 3D model and our emerging value system around our 1.5⁰C simulation, we asked ourselves, and journaled, on the following questions from the four cardinal point perspectives³ (Figure 2).
Feelings
What do you love in our future scenario that ignites your best energy?
Truth
What social and equity considerations need to be considered as we transition to the future?
Drivers
What assumptions / values / priorities or hard truths underlie our present vs future scenario?
Moving to action
If this scenario could speak, what advice might it offer? What might be some guiding values that you could enact today that could move us closer to the future we want?
After the journaling time, participants shared what had emerged for them in each perspective. The values fell into four themes:
- Embracing Diversity — in people, practices, and perspectives. Embracing complexity, equity and diversity, resisting dualisms and the inherent merit of indigenous knowledge / perspectives. What does a balanced societal approach look like? Who needs support? How do we live in a way that honours the diversity and complexity so necessary for flourishing?
One Indigenous participant described what is often missing in conversations about climate change:
“I think that there’s kind of been a loss of that sense of spirit, the spiritual dimension of the human person and a loss of meaning. And when that happens, people don’t really care. … People just focus on what gives them immediate satisfaction… But, if people get a sense that there is something more, that there’s a spiritual dimension to them and a possibility of something greater, then there is a sense of meaning to existence, that they’re not just puppets, and that they can take action, they can play a role.”
“This is the indigenous contribution, in my view, is this allowing spirituality back into the conversation again. And so that when we talk about the climate future, that spirituality plays an important role.”
2. Education, Communication, and Engagement. Dealing with the perspectives we have inherited from colonisation, i.e., unlearning much of what we have been taught, learning what we haven’t been taught and identifying what is not serving anyone — all through engagement and conversation — diverse, wide ranging, multi-lingual, mixed-media, intergenerational conversations.
One participant noted that we are often unaware of the importance of our individual actions, good and bad:
”The evil of systemic structures… we contribute to decline without even really recognizing that we’re part of the problem. And I think that really came out clearly in what you were doing… And I saw that as important — to be attentive to that level ,that there are things in place that good people are engaged in without really intending to do harm. But we do harm. And that needs to be brought to consciousness.”
3. Property and Things. Growth, capitalism, restoration and regeneration. Assessing our relationship to materials and their use. What is the nature of property? What is the nature of ownership, i.e., rights vs responsibilities? Who or what does this structure serve? How can it be made to evolve?
4. Relating — Connection and Collaboration. Kinship, collaboration, de-individualizing, “two-eyed seeing,” reciprocity. Finding ways to recognize our sameness, to connect, undertake mutual effort around shared goals, specialise and collaborate to build resilience.
One participant saw the discussion create an opening of possibilities:
“….a broadening of our horizons, a broadening of the kinds of questions we’re asking, and it seems that the process really facilitates that because we work together, and by working together, we think about ideas. Ideas are generated that we wouldn’t be able to generate on our own. And that facilitates this possibility of thinking differently. ”
Workshop Part 3 — Crystallizing and Prototyping:Finding Agency in an Emerging Future
At this point, we sensed that stakeholders felt confident and trusting of the space that had been created. True to the u-lab 2x prototyping principle of roughly sketching our intention and being open to possibilities, this was somewhat uncharted territory for the core team, so idea and input from our stakeholders on structure and content was very much encouraged.
To contextualise our insights into specific actions that align with a 1.5⁰C world, we next tried to tackle issues as individuals and/or collectively to actualize the changes we wanted to see, to move us closer to the world we want, while recognizing that we all live diverse realities and hold differing abilities and strengths to contribute to these changes. We also recognized that the notion of “individual climate action” itself poses challenges, as current social and economic reality favours the status quo and limits available options from sticking, scaling or creating synergies that have real impact.
Borrowing from Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s model for Finding Joy in Climate Action, we invited the group to think and feel their way to identifying a form of action that made sense to each of them (Figure 3). Some felt encouraged to continue work they were already doing while others were inspired to begin new initiatives. Notable examples:
- One participant will continue designing courses on enhancing awareness of nature and our place in it, including in urban environments.
- Another felt empowered to further develop the experimental farm on which they work as a learning and action space for young people.
- Another aims to continue to facilitate conversations on “inner development” by exploring subtle forms of activism (climate or other) attuned to living in a world facing multiple crises.
- Another began imagining a community-level “maker” space in which members of a community work to actively reduce unnecessary consumption of material and resources.
- Another felt inspired to head in new directions in visual art and music:
“I’ve really been focusing on the words ‘courage’ and ‘encouraging’. It’s one thing to have courage, but it’s another to encourage other people. And that’s really what we need right now is to get people not to be scared and not to feel that they have no agency, because that is something that modernity has taken advantage of, and that has to be counted at some point for each human being.”
Co-Evolving: Did it work?
The CF workshop prototype was conceived as a U-lab 2x project, in which we aimed to facilitate climate change conversations by bringing together Theory U methods with the En-ROADS simulator. The Presencing Institute supports social change by encouraging practitioners to think and feel from the emerging future as an operating space, as opposed to current reality. As such, clear markers of success for us came from participants’ comments, all of whom had had no prior exposure to Theory U, about the uniqueness of the space as it was entirely voluntary, the broadening of horizons about what was admissible as a topic of conversation, the effect it had on some participants as they returned to their professional lives and the freedom to explore elements that were at times deeply personal and more about the heart than the head. While science is extremely useful in seeing the physical reality of climate change with clear eyes and informing a vision of what is possible, we succeeded in sketching the future in some small way by freeing up space to explore our other sources of wisdom and future possibilities. Disassembling the climate crisis into distinct motivations and actions allowed participants to better identify their preferred engagement within an overwhelming system.
Stakeholder Interviews
To come to the above conclusions, the core team asked for participants’ feedback and their guidance on next steps for the workshop prototype. We did this through one-on-one interviews.
The comments were inspiring, sometimes heartrending, encouraging and constructively critical:
- One participant said that the nuanced discussions on climate change awareness had a positive influence on their management style in implementing environmental programs at work, specifically when dealing with climate deniers.
- Another felt uncomfortable “playing God” with a global simulator that oversimplified the messy realities that effecting societal change will entail.
- Yet another struggled with climate equity considerations when the objectives of reduced GHG emissions and global temperature, as provided by hard science, are clear and should be pursued without compromise.
One participant drew personal motivation to take action and saw the broader potential of the prototype:
“I think momentum is important here, ….someone once said that revolutions happen in 2 stages. The first is when everybody knows something’s going on; the second is when everybody knows everybody else knows something is going on… I think that’s where we’re at right now, and that’s really critical to promote action instead of despair. So how do you do it? It’s a matter of inspiring people. And how do we do that? By being in these meetings… just to kind of lay a fire under each one of us, too, pursue the things that we’re either already invested in, or change direction and go that way. But anything that motivates us is positive.”
What’s Next for Climate Futures?
We (Paul, Mariela, and Chris) all expressed interest in offering another similar workshop or to incorporate Climate Futures into regular coursework or existing projects. Our extended team gifted us two key insights on future participant diversity and the overall process:
- The composition of participants greatly impacts the workshop’s feel — the sense of safety, ideation, mutual learning and understanding, etc. By having a relatively diverse group, participants often taught each other or embarked on a journey of mutual discovery through conversation, offering adages and stories along the way. The less diverse the participant group (the more similar they are in lifestyle, culture, age, etc.) the more specialised and in-group specific the outcomes and reflections will be.
- Participants all reported and asked for more emphasis on sharing their personal experience and perspectives of climate change. Having this discussion prior to introducing challenging ideas, allows participants to speak for themselves, to express their interest and presence in their own words, AND to better meet their cohort. In this way, the entire group settles into the dynamic together — navigating the sea by starlight in a single skiff, rather than isolated dinghies.
We were encouraged by the enthusiasm and brilliant contributions of all of our stakeholders. Perhaps the most compelling takeaway of this first iteration of Climate Futures came spontaneously from one young participant who said that Climate Futures was maybe the first time they were able to discuss climate change without the backdrop of the existential crisis that it is.
Paul MacLean is an advocate of multisectoral approaches to mitigate climate change. He recently co-led the Climate Change Risk and Impact group at Pivot Projects, an international volunteer collaboration devoted to applying systems thinking to global crises. He founded ÉEM Sustainable Management Inc., an environmental consultancy, is a principal at Nimonik Ltd., an environmental software firm, and co-authored two books on environmental management. He currently facilitates conversations on climate change in business, government and civil society, with people of all ages and backgrounds.
Mariela Tovar, PhD. specializes in teaching and learning in higher education, specifically in the development and facilitation of quality, engaging, learning experiences for students. As an Academic Associate at McGill University, she led projects designed to enhance teaching and learning across the university. She has also worked as an educational specialist in environmental education and human rights education. Presently, Mariela designs and facilitates educational experiences that examine the values that drive humans’ relationship with nature and the creation of a more sustainable world.
Chris Medary is a sustainability consultant, thought leader, and amateur mycologist. He has worked on interdisciplinary projects across the US and Canada and co-led the Pivot Projects Climate Change group. Now based in Colorado, Chris pursues projects in context-based sustainability and fungi for climate adaptation.
References
¹ Sentipensante is a pedagogical model where “outer knowing (intellectual reasoning, rationality, and objectivity)” is brought together with “inner knowing (deep wisdom, wonder, sense of the sacred, intuition, and emotions)” to validate the learner and dis- cover new knowledge” (Rendón, Laura. Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2009. p. 27)
² Pomeroy, E., & Herrmann, L. (2023). Social Fields: Knowing the Water We Swim in. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00218863231174957
