As the writer and activist Naomi Klein puts it, ‘There are no non-radical options left before us.’34 I believe imagination is the only thing we have that is – or could be – radical enough to get us through, provided it is accompanied, of course, by bravery, and by action.

The environmentalist and microbiologist René Dubos said that if we lived on the moon, our imagination would be as barren as the moon.16 Our imagination needs diversity. It expands or contracts – or plummets, as the case may be – in response to it.

People talked. They communicated: the television and the radio were switched off, and any location became a place for dialogue and discourse. People changed. Ideas and inspirations with the potency to last a lifetime and to change it forevermore, were everywhere. —JOHAN KUGELBERG (speaking of Paris in May 1968), ‘A Jumble of Realia’

we were just trying to spark something that might unlock a creative spirit, a renewed sense of possibility, a fresh and hopeful way to think about the future, without any thought that it could spread to other places. But spread it did.

with imagination, the things that currently look like intractable problems are actually huge opportunities for new thinking.

What is most fascinating about this approach is the extent to which it affects the people who take on the role of future generations. As Saijo notes, they develop what he calls ‘futureability’: ‘an increase in happiness as a result of deciding and acting to forgo current benefits as long as it enriches future generations.’35 Research shows that

As the writer and activist Naomi Klein puts it, ‘There are no non-radical options left before us.’34 I believe imagination is the only thing we have that is – or could be – radical enough to get us through, provided it is accompanied, of course, by bravery, and by action.

Facts won’t persuade someone who feels that collapse is inevitable. What unlocks new possibility is story. As the author Annette Simmons puts it, ‘People don’t need new facts – they need a new story … change their story and change their behaviour.’

One might say that human societies have two boundaries. One boundary is drawn by the requirements of the natural world and the other by the collective imagination. —SUSAN GRIFFIN, ‘To Love the Marigold’