Imaginings of the commons
Achieving success could be described as a combination of imagining what’s desirable and then creating the conditions to make it so.
There is plenty of scholarship to support the belief that we are more likely to achieve a goal if we can imagine success. Yet even the ambitious imagineers among us sometimes get frustrated by the gap between the possible and our current track.
Case in point: being willing to imagine reversing global warming sometimes causes consternation, incredulity and even outright dismissal. Too ambitious! Not reasonable! Fair cries for imaginative moderation. If only not achieving the goal was a remotely workable option. But it isn’t.
And so, I am always heartened when I come across actions that validate envisioning us getting this right. It is possible, and we can do it, and some people are actively closing the gap between imagination and reality, right now. If the first step is shifting the mindset to permit imagining a reversal pathway — rather than simply reducing emissions, incrementally slowing the pace of increased warming — then we can take a cue from the increasing number of leaders who are saying “reversal”.
And if the next step is to set in motion the activities and mechanisms that make the reversal of global warming at least more likely if not assured, then once again we can see a growing…
