Lab · Climate & social foresight
The Impossible Futures Lab imagines the climate and social futures we’re told are unrealistic, then documents them with the same rigor as a scenario considered reasonable. This lab explores what becomes possible once we decide to build the future.
Analyses written by YouthShare contributors, on the questions this lab works on.
In 2023, global CO₂ emissions were 39,023.9 MtCO₂e, a staggering increase from 36,154.3 MtCO₂e in 2020. In the same year, climate catastrophes caused $380 billion worth of economic losses worldwide
Climate change is a transcontinental phenomenon caused by anthropogenic activity, which operates as an augmenting agent for existing disparities within societies and between nations. The impacts of climate change are unequally distributed.
Digital products shape almost every daily choice: from what we buy to how we move, learn and work. Yet, these same technologies contribute to growing energy demand and waste.
Topics open to contributors, detailed on the research avenues page. Your own idea is welcome too.
See the avenues in detailMany climate and social scenarios get judged too ambitious before anyone has studied them seriously. The Impossible Futures Lab takes on that work: documenting these scenarios with the same methodological rigor as an institutional report, so that “impossible” becomes a hypothesis to test.
The Impossible Futures Lab works on several fronts at once: methodological rigor, confronting contradiction head-on, and translating each scenario into concrete implications for today.
Every hypothesis we keep rests on data and an explicit method, even the boldest.
Every scenario is submitted to the criticism of people who consider it unrealistic, to strengthen its foundations.
A useful future says what needs deciding now to get there.
A future imagined from a single place in the world reproduces the very blind spots it claims to overcome.
Move from occasional output to a reliable annual milestone.
Precisely document how a scenario gets built, so the method can be reproduced by others.
Make sure our scenarios get published, read and discussed.
Widen the geographic base of every scenario, so it accounts for the widest possible range of realities.
Every output of The Impossible Futures Lab fits into one of YouthShare’s five forms of action.
Research, advocacy, mentorship, international dialogue, foresight: see how The Impossible Futures Lab combines several of these forms of action, alongside the four other labs.
See What we doA scenario to propose, an interest in contributing to the next publication, or simply a wish to join the lab? Write to us.
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