Genie

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genie@maillist.au.dk

April 2026

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A multiplicity of tomorrows: how people imagine the future with climate interventions
by Benjamin Sovacool 07 Apr '26

07 Apr '26

Greetings colleagues, I've been saving this post for after the Easter Holiday. Kenneth Boulding is reputed to have once said: "The human experience can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all decisions are of the past, all decisions are about the future." It is with this deep appreciation for ruminating about climate futures that we led a participatory technology foresight exercise across 44 focus groups in 22 countries to explore how the public imagines the deployment of carbon removal and geoengineering technologies by 2030. We drew from these data to publish two papers: One on the five most recurring, collective futures: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629625004104 One on the 299 distributed, more individual futures: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901126000626 Both studies are fully gold open access so everyone can read them. My lovely colleague Ramit Debnath has put together a short story, summarizing our findings below. Best wishes, Benjamin https://www.climaterepair.cam.ac.uk/news/multiplicity-tomorrows-how-people-… How do you imagine the future? A new paper explores imagined futures where climate interventions, like solar radiation modification (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), reshape our world. The key takeaways, according to Debnath: Diversity matters - Futures vary wildly across cultures, geopolitics, and technologies. Public perspectives shape policy - Inclusive dialogue is critical for climate action. We face a multiplicity of tomorrows - There's no single future, only choices. In the context of increasing global warming, alternative climate intervention strategies are gaining prominence in policy, scientific, media, and public discourse. This study provides novel insights into public perceptions of these interventions, and the foreseeable changes for the near future, through a global foresight exercise involving 44 focus groups across 22 countries, evenly divided between the Global North (e.g. Australia, Germany, United States) and the Global South (e.g., Brazil, India, South Africa). Engaging 323 participants, the study explored imagined futures where climate interventions-such as solar radiation modification and large-scale carbon removal-are widely implemented in 2030. The participants generated 299 distinct futures, each characterized by an imagined newspaper headline, key actor(s), events and specific outcomes. In this paper, these futures are analyzed across the dimensions of technology, societal impact, actor networks, and in terms of spatial and scalar considerations. The findings reveal an extraordinary diversity of futures, ranging from optimistic futures of technological innovation and disease eradication to pessimistic futures of ecological disruption, the spread of cancer, and social inequities. This study underscores the plurality of perspectives on climate intervention futures, reflecting the interplay of cultural, geopolitical, and technological factors. By illuminating the breadth of futures, these findings provide timely insights to inform the development of inclusive, culturally sensitive climate policies at a critical juncture in the global response to climate change.

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