About the Project
When we think of climate, the stories we tell about the future are bad: megastorms, crop failures, and heat waves loom over us, sending a signal that the problem is so vast, so complex, that it’s out of our control. That narrative is compelling for some, but leaves others feeling hopeless, helpless, and disillusioned. Even the most ardent champions of decarbonization sometimes focus more on sounding the alarm than on imagining and mapping out what success might look like. Without positive climate futures, visions of climate adaptation and resilience that we can work toward, it’s much harder to motivate broad-based efforts for change in the present.
The Climate Imagination Fellowship seeks to inspire a wave of narratives about what positive climate futures might look like for communities around the world. Our goal is to curate and share amazing new stories about what success might look like, and to invite people to imagine their own climate futures—to feel both agency and responsibility for defining a future that spurs us to take action today.
We need hopeful stories about how collective action, aided by scientific insights, culturally responsive technologies, and revolutions in governance and labor, can help us make progress toward inclusive, sustainable futures. These visions should center on how we can create a vibrant, thriving, interconnected global society that celebrates local variations and solutions while achieving the international coordination and shared values we need to meet the challenges of climate chaos.
The Climate Imagination Fellowship is an effort to model how we might generate the kinds of stories we need, drawing on the talents of top science fiction authors from different parts of the world, as well as a network of experts on climate science, governance, ecology, and other essential fields.
The Climate Action Almanac
In January 2024, we published The Climate Action Almanac, a digital collection of stories, essays, and art that chart pathways toward a vibrant, decarbonized future. The Almanac is presented in collaboration with the MIT Press and, like the larger Climate Imagination Fellowship project, is supported by the ClimateWorks Foundation. The book is free to read, download, and share under a Creative Commons license.
The Almanac includes eight original works of climate fiction—four novelettes and four flash-fiction stories, written by our Climate Imagination Fellows—along with fifteen essays, two dialogues with global climate experts, and a set of illustrations created by artist João Queiroz. It features perspectives from writers and artists representing more than fifteen different countries from around the globe, from Argentina, Norway, the United States, and China to Nigeria, Germany, Malaysia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and more. The digital book also presents video recordings of events hosted as part of the Climate Imagination Fellowship, with more multimedia content coming soon.