11337: The Limitations of Climate Change Futures

This PDW is oriented towards facilitating scholars to engage in critical reflections, insights, and open discussions on the limitations of climate change futures. The central theme of this PDW is that current understandings of 'climate change futures' are interpellations of utopian and dystopian thinking. However, both utopian and dystopian narratives seem to limit climate change mobilization and action. This PDW, therefore, opens up the space to seek alternative insights and ways to organize a climate change future that goes beyond the two positions. The central questions that this PDW seeks to ask and answer are: (1) are there limits to our existing understanding of a climate change future?; and (2) through these limitations, how can we generate alternative imaginations for climate change futures? To address these questions, we bring together a panel of scholars, all of whom have in-depth interactions with climate change research. Two overarching processes of reflection will occur in this PDW space. The first process reflects on existing limitations in our current imaginations and directions of a climate change future. Scholar presentations serve as a conversation starter, where they reflect on how existing understandings of a climate change future are both given meaning and constrained by such meaning; and how an alternative imagination can be made possible. The second process of reflection focuses on next-step actions and consequences, laying a foundation for future activities and events of collective imagination and radical reflection on climate change.