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From Doom to Dream - The Power of Imagination in Tackling Climate Challenges: Thought Leadership by Carey Lovelace
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Summary
"Jump the Doom Loop: Solving Climate in Surprising Ways" by Carey Lovelace explores how shifting from a focus on climate catastrophe to imaginative, solution-driven thinking can catalyze action. The article highlights the power of dreaming forward, featuring Visions2030’s Lumisphere, an immersive experience blending art, science, and technology to envision ideal eco-futures. By redirecting collective energy from fear to aspiration, the Lumisphere empowers individuals to visualize and co-create a sustainable, hopeful future.
When people have achieved great things—from inventing ice cream to landing on Mars—it is because they have dreamed. The imagination is a powerful device. Without it, there would be no science, no physical tools. Inventors often start with mental pictures of future innovations. The climactic turning point of Civil Rights in the United States hinged on a speech that intoned “I Have a Dream.” The Wright Brothers dreamed of flight without motors while observing birds in flight. Thomas Edison would take short naps to gain creative inspiration.
On the other hand, we see what we look for. Continually concentrating on disaster, as we often do with climate challenges, is another use of the imagination – but one that can paralyze. Of course, there is reason we focus on the negative -- to motivate. With good reason. As the United Nations has stated: “Climate change is a real and undeniable threat to our entire civilization. The effects are already visible and will be catastrophic unless we act now.”
Yet, right this minute, we possess the knowledge and means to reverse environmental degradation. The real challenge lies in igniting the will to act.
The Power of “Dreaming Forward”
Visions2030, a creative design studio founded in 2019 to harness creativity in service of society's biggest challenges, believes that shifting toward solutions and away from the "Doom Loop" turbo-charges action—the crucial first step in shifts in consciousness that lead to systemic changes around climate, urbanization, social justice, and more. With eyes on that vision, the studio produces inventive platforms that stimulate novel ways of thinking about the future: live and virtual events, workshops, and startup incubators, fostering collaborations between artists and scientists to bring “wild and crazy” ideas into reality. Workshops are staged with everyone from court-involved school kids to seasoned scientists together learning how to collectively dream where we want to move as a society.
And now, Visions2030 has invented a wild and crazy idea, a theme park ride for the imagination. One whose impact could change our world.
The Lumisphere: What Is Your Ideal Eco-Future?
The Lumisphere, which premiered in Los Angeles in late 2023, was conceived in collaboration with the legendary design studio, Minds Over Matter, that was responsible for the technology behind Las Vegas’ $2.2-billion Sphere. A three-dome experience, the Lumisphere moves visitors through 6,500 square feet into a spectacular audio-visual journey of special effects from leading-edge technologies.
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Inside the Lumisphere: Unlocking Imagination
Inside, while orienting guests with the challenges the world faces, guests are invited to contemplate: what is your ideal eco-future? What are we trying to move toward? Guests are led on a curated journey into a shift in consciousness. In Dome 1, around a communal hi-tech “campfire,” they are prepared for the journey. In Dome 2, lounging in reclining chairs, they are invited to envision their own distinct eco-paradise. This dome creates a spectacular immersion: a state of relaxation that, first, feeds the imagination with possibilities—of pastoral landscapes, smart cities, lush forests, and family-friendly environments. Like a cosmic bath, it deluges with a kaleidoscopic display that elicits daydreaming, the kind of passive, subconscious ideation that comes, for example, when traveling a journey.
As those who experience the Lumisphere can attest, wonder and curiosity spark unique fantasies -- some hazy -- some vivid that manifest from deep within.
Be a Pathfinder
In the third and final dome, by means of an easy-to-use touch screen and AI, guests transform their ideal eco-future into a vivid artwork, like a huge, virtual book illustration in high definition. These dazzling visuals are displayed in a gallery of nine-foot-high LED screens in vivid detail, alongside the imaginings of others. And guests have them emailed to them to keep.
The Lumisphere transfixed several thousand attendees during its inaugural installation, including more than 600 school children. Onsite surveys chart a small, meaningful shift in participants' moods to increased optimism. Former Obama White House Climate Advisor Molly Kawahata praised the Lumisphere as a “climate- envisioning tool” putting “hope into the climate narrative.” Kawahata, a leader in environmental activism, points to the importance of what she calls a “Promised Land”— an ideal state toward which to aim. “If people can't envision where they're going,” she observes, “it's hard to motivate them to take action.”
Go Ahead, Think Wild and Crazy
The point, though, is not one's innovation. It is the potency of redirecting our energies. Athletes use visioning to help them toward desired results. Psychologists have observed that focusing forward can even ease anxiety. Studies have shown that visualization, “future thinking,” measurably affects the brain and behaviour.
Here's an exercise: to imagine the climate future in two ways. First, picture what you fear will happen. Now, picture what you would like to see. Which comes more easily? If it's the dark predictions, you're not alone—our muscle for gloom is well developed. But if you do the slightly more challenging task of building in your mind a future you might like to move toward, you are helping build new directions of where humanity can move. It helps build a new GPS for society. And what your imagination delivers may surprise you.
About Carey Lovelace
Carey Lovelace is an internationally known producer, events-organizer, curator, journalist, playwright, activist, and the Founder of Visions2030. She specializes in galvanizing the imagination to shape tangible futures.
About The SustainabilityX® Magazine
The SustainabilityX® Magazine is an award-winning, digital, female-founded, and female-led non-profit initiative bringing the environment and economy together for a sustainable future through dialogue. Founded on May 8, 2016 and inspired by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by Canada’s Top 30 Under 30 in Sustainability Leadership awardee, Supriya Verma, the digital media initiative focuses on approaching the world’s most pressing challenges with a holistic, integrated, systems-based perspective as opposed to the traditional and ineffective siloed approach with a single lens on interdisciplinary topics like climate and energy. This initiative ultimately seeks to explore how to effectively bring the environment and economy together through intellectual, insightful dialogue and thought-provoking discussion amongst individuals across sectors taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to untangling the intricate web of sustainability.
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