I’ve just been reading this paper by Kari Norgaard about the connections between sociological theory and environmental crises. I was heartened to be reminded that the almost unimaginable scale of these crises and their pervasiveness through all of our societies also provides an unprecendented opportunity to reimagine our futures. She focuses particularly on the possibilities for sustainable energy futures.

Norgaard emphasise the necessity of seeing – in a sociological sense – the social structures that are driving high emissions and imagining otherwise. This needs to involve attending to whose imaginations, histories and understandings are included in or excluded from our conversations. We need to move beyond apocalyptic framings to avoid simply staying mired in denial. Norgaard goes on to explain what she has learned from Indigenous people about how to see better futures.

One of the dominant stories that Norgaard asks us to rethink is the one that says we have broadly been moving in the direction of technological and human progress, which has just been unfortunately interupted by the climate emergency or other global challenges. When the perspectives of marginalised groups are brought to the fore, it becomes very clear that the climate emergency is but one manifestation of hundreds of years of destructive social structures and perspectives that focus on the privileged pursuit of individualised wants and that disregard the lives of other humans and non-humans and deny our fundamental interdependence with one another and the wider natural world.

A related myth is that current trajectories toward collapse are inevitable. Norgaard reminds us that humans existed on earth for tens of thousands of years without jepordising planetary survival and that there are communities still living successful in ways commeasurate with liveable futures. I think that one of the key implications of this work for education is the need for experiential learning where students participate in the regenerative ways of being that already exist in the world. We need to provide learners with opportunties to imagine otherwise.

Photo by Luca Campioni on Unsplash