Salzburg Global Fellows Luis Felipe Alvarez Vega and Sophia Kaur Badhan reflect on helping participants reimagine climate action
This article was written by Salzburg Global Fellows Luis Felipe Alvarez Vega and Sophia Kaur Badhan, who participated in the Public Policy New Voices Europe program and attended the session on "Beyond Fragmentation: Rebuilding Trust and Cohesion in European Democracy.”
At the Creative Bureaucracy Festival on June 11, 2025, we had the opportunity to host a workshop through our participation in the Public Policy New Voices Europe program with Salzburg Global. Our interests intersect in many ways, but one theme stood out as both urgent and deeply personal: climate action. We wanted to go beyond policies and data to ask a more imaginative question – what could a climate-just world actually look like?
Imagining the Impossible
In our workshop, we challenged participants to suspend their outlooks on climate change and imagine what a climate-just world would look like by 2050. What would it feel like to live there? What values would guide us? Participants tried to imagine that anything was possible and forget their preconceptions about what could or could not be achieved.
To structure this exploration, we used a Futures Studies methodology known as backcasting. This involved imagining the best possible future, working backwards to understand what is keeping communities from achieving that vision, and brainstorming concrete actions to remove these blockers.
Surprisingly, the first portion of the workshop was the hardest. Even among these creative and forward-thinking participants from across sectors, many were very aware of the limitations and challenges to significant and systemic change. After overcoming this hurdle, participants could identify creative solutions for removing blockers that were stopping them from reaching their desired future. Solutions ranged from changes in tax incentives, bottom-up changes to regulations, and even specific actions like incentivizing travel via sleeper trains.
Why Is It So Hard To Dream?
We found it fascinating how much more difficult it was to imagine the future than to analyze the obstacles standing in its way. The participants were creative people at a Creative Bureaucracy Festival - why was it so hard to imagine a better future? The strangest disconnect is that we all seem to know what we need to do, but we are not doing it, or we feel powerless to actually change anything.
Why was it so hard? We identified three key reasons. First, there is the status quo fallacy - it's simply difficult to imagine things being different. Second, we are living through an overwhelming state of polycrisis - interconnected global challenges that make the future feel volatile and incomprehensible. But we would argue that a third, even larger, component is that this hopelessness is by design.
There are powerful organizations, corporations, and individuals that benefit financially from the status quo, meaning the exploitation of people and the environment at alarming rates. A clear example is the Exxon scandal, where it was revealed that Exxon executives knew about climate change as early as the 1970s and yet did nothing to change their behavior. This case is still being debated in courts in 2025. These were people who knew the potentially catastrophic results of their actions and decided not to communicate them to society, prioritizing personal financial gains over the well-being of millions of people.
These same dynamics persist today. From investments in fossil fuels and data centers that consume vast amounts of water, to resistance against green innovation and deregulation of social protections, there are clear incentives to keep things as they are. They also benefit from keeping communities from taking action and keeping would-be changemakers feeling hopeless.
Reclaiming Our Imagination
That is the importance and the “magic” of this kind of exercise - to invite others to imagine daringly what could be, and more importantly, to ask: how do we get there? Too often, those working in social impact underestimate how interesting or useful their ideas could be, and even how they could be complemented by others' ideas and trigger change. But collaboration, imagination, and shared hope are powerful tools. One idea sparks another, and together, they can build real momentum for change.
There are things we can do, and there are many people out there thinking about how to make them happen and making them happen. If you feel alone or hopeless, just remember that.
If there is one takeaway from our workshop, it is that we simply cannot give in to hopelessness and climate anxiety. Community and action are the antidote. It is up to all of us. Everyone should dare to be bold, to grant ourselves permission to imagine a better future first, and then, like our participants, work backwards to identify and dismantle the barriers standing in our way.
We must ask ourselves not just where we are, but how we can move, right now, in the right direction and dream what lies behind and beyond the status quo. Change begins not just with what we do - but with what we dare to imagine.
Luis Felipe Alvarez Vega and Sophia Kaur Badhan are members of the fourth cohort of the Salzburg Global Public Policy New Voices Europe program. They attended the session on "Beyond Fragmentation: Rebuilding Trust and Cohesion in European Democracy" in October 2025.
Learn more about the Public Policy New Voices Europe program.
