Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how people conceptualise desirable energy futures as opposed to likely ones and how we can can consciously move towards these futures via deliberative methods.

Paper long abstract:

The climate and ecological crises (CEC) demands solutions now but these solutions will have a long tail and effect into the future. Thus, the CEC is an issue of both intra and intergenerational justice. In this context, nuclear power is offered as a ‘green’ solution. Yet the vast majority of nuclear power enabled states have not dealt with their accumulated nuclear waste, which itself will have 200,000 to one-million year radiotoxicity. At the same time, nuclear power and wastes sites are specifically located often in economically and geographically peripheral places, thus loading the socioenvironmental costs onto minorities. Thus, nuclear power and waste are also aspects of intra and intergenerational justice. This paper explores these issues using the backcasting approach, which in contrast to much work done on projections or scenarios of the future that use predictable or likely assumptions, instead focuses on normatively desirable futures. The overall aim is to explore democratically and deliberatively how people think about and represent desirable futures. In these workshops participants will firstly explore likely futures usings a range of support questions, narrative tools and computer simulations. Next they will imagine and outline desirable futures with again support questions and narrative tools, while also filling in an infographic. Finally, using the narratice tools and support questions participants will consider what would need to change moving backward to achieve this future.