Designed by Dio Hasbi Saniskoro
If the first act of liberation is critique, then the second is creation. Not creation as novelty or invention, but as remembering—reawakening what we already know deep down: that the possible is always gestating in the margins. It does not arrive through centralized planning or algorithmic foresight. It is born in improbable moments when people act together, from below, without certainty of outcome. Without permission.
The work of imagination cannot remain suspended in the clouds. It must press into the dirt.
If the child in us dares to dream, then the adult in us must learn to grieve—to stand with eyes wide open to what has been lost, not in the name of nostalgia, but in reverence. When media outlets warn of an “abnormally” hot summer or note that the cherry blossoms are blooming “early,” we must recognize that these are not anomalies, but symptoms of a world already altered.
Extreme weather events—floods, droughts, heatwaves—are becoming more frequent, more severe, and more prolonged. We are living through the sixth mass extinction of species. Between 2015 and 2020, the UN estimates that 10 million hectares of forest were lost each year. Our planet is not merely changing—it is already changed. Our task, then, is not to yearn for a return to some simulacrum of pre-collapse “normal,” but to carry forward the weight of responsibility without relinquishing wonder. To be grown-up, in the truest sense, is not to foreclose imagination in favour of pragmatism, but to allow mourning and moral vision to walk hand in hand.
So I offer this gentle provocation to my generation and those beyond it: what if intergenerational responsibility is not about preserving a broken status quo out of fear, but about preserving the capacity to act in the face of fear? What if the most radical thing we can do is resist inherited determinism—resist the claim that the future is already sealed?
To look to children—not to retreat into naiveté—but to remember the plasticity of our moral worlds. To recover our agency not through grand gestures, but through grounded gestures. To stop trying to solve the problem and begin instead to expand what is possible in the small, intimate, overlooked places where our lives already unfold. And already, it is happening.
Across the world, seeds of transformation are being sown—not with fanfare or institutional endorsement, but with quiet, persistent courage:
- In London, a guerrilla gardener transforms abandoned urban spaces into flourishing community gardens, inviting neighbors to reclaim power through plants.
- In Scotland, communities restore vast peatlands, healing ecosystems while earning UNESCO World Heritage status for their stewardship.
- On a Virginia farm, young farmers revive the soil with regenerative practices, proving that small-scale agriculture can nourish both land and livelihoods.
- In a small fishing village in Zanzibar, women gather weekly to share seaweed harvests and stories, rebuilding ecosystems and empowering women at once.
- In Canadian schools, elders and children co-create projects to strengthen Indigenous knowledge and intergenerational learning in local communities
- A housing co-op in London works together to generate clean energy and cut collective energy use as an act of solidarity and climate justice.
These are not templates for replication. They are gestures—living metaphors. Acts of imagination that emerge from love of place and a refusal to give up on one another. Their power lies not in their scalability, but in their contagiousness.
Social transformation is rarely announced. It gathers whispers into a crescendo.
Erica Chenoweth’s research tells us that just 3.5% of a population engaging in sustained, nonviolent resistance can shift the course of history. But what if our measure of impact wasn’t just scale—but depth? What if the true metric of success was how deeply our relationships were changed?
In that light, imagination becomes a collective muscle. One that grows stronger through use—especially when exercised in community. Together, we can resist the enclosure of imagination. We can create space to live with uncertainty. To ask better questions. To allow slowness, care, and relationality to become the groundwork of transformation.
This is not a call to abandon urgency. It is a call to redefine it.
Because urgency without rootedness can mimic the very forces we seek to dismantle. In our haste to fix, we sometimes forget to feel. In our pursuit of systemic change, we overlook the systems closest to us: our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, our families. But systems are not abstract. They are animated and sustained by the nature of our relationships.
So, the question becomes: how might we begin to transform those?
There is no universal answer. The invitation is as varied as our contexts. But we can take cues from the simple and the small:
- Host a dinner party with those across political or generational divides.
- Start a swap shop at your school or workplace.
- Plant fruit trees in public places.
- Learn to mend clothes, grow herbs, or share skills intergenerationally.
- Pool money or time for a local regenerative project.
- Create rituals to grieve with the land.
- Join or begin a workers’ cooperative.
- Redesign your block, your building, your backyard as a commons—a space where land and resources are owned and provide a sense of belonging for the whole community.
Under the heavy air of climate collapse, these acts may seem trite. Even laughable. But that’s the lie we’ve been sold: that only what is large and loud matters.
The truth is quieter.
In a world addicted to speed, disruption lies in slowness.
In a world obsessed with control, resistance lies in humility.
In a world paralyzed by eco-anxiety, courage is found not in performance but in practice.
The future will not be dictated by models. It will be coaxed into being by communities who dare to dream otherwise. By those who refuse to wait for the right framework or the right moment. Who begin, wherever they are, with what they have. Who choose fidelity over visibility. Who find one another—and stay found.
The climate crisis may have been created by systems, but the future will be imagined by neighbors.