The Planetary Commons: A Six-Week Climate Futures Lab
Practice navigating uncertainty, exploring climate futures, and building the skills needed to make sense of a rapidly changing world.
Part simulation. Part futures lab. Part collaborative StoryWorld.
Planetary Commons invites a small cohort into an immersive, evolving future scenario where participants respond to emerging signals, navigate complex trade-offs, and explore what more just, cooperative, and life-centered futures could look like.
This is not a passive learning experience.
It is a participatory futures lab where we practice making sense of uncertainty, together.
What You’ll Practice
🧭 Futures Literacy
Learn to recognize signals of change and explore multiple possible futures.
🌐 Systems Thinking
Understand how climate, technology, politics, economics, and culture interact across scales.
🤝 Collective Sensemaking
Work with others to interpret uncertainty, surface patterns, and navigate complexity.
✨ Strategic Imagination
Move beyond prediction and explore alternative futures and their implications.
Why Join?
Planetary Commons is designed for people who want to move beyond climate overwhelm, abstract discussion, or passive concern, and instead develop practical ways of engaging with uncertainty.
Across six weeks, you will learn how to:
Make sense of complex and rapidly changing systems
Identify and interpret emerging signals of change
Navigate uncertainty with greater confidence and curiosity
Explore alternative futures through structured scenarios
Collaborate across different perspectives and disciplines
Strengthen your capacity for imagination, reflection, and response
What to Expect
Across six live, weekly sessions, participants will:
Engage with emerging climate, social, technological, and geopolitical signals
Explore structured futures and foresight scenarios
Participate in collaborative decision-making and group dialogue
Co-create responses, systems, and speculative artifacts
Contribute to a shared narrative world that evolves over time
See ideas and insights reflected in ongoing dispatches and final StoryWorld outputs
Each session builds on the last, combining immersive briefings, structured reflection, and collaborative worldbuilding.
Do I Need Any Prior Experience?
No.
Planetary Commons is designed for both newcomers and experienced practitioners.
Whether you are encountering futures thinking for the first time or already working in climate, systems change, storytelling, education, or foresight, the experience is structured to support meaningful participation from a wide range of perspectives.
All that is required is curiosity, openness, and a willingness to engage with complexity.
Why Six Weeks?
Futures literacy is not something you learn in a single workshop.
Planetary Commons unfolds over time.
As the StoryWorld evolves, new signals, dilemmas, and perspectives emerge. Each session builds on previous discussions and decisions, allowing participants to deepen their thinking, relationships, and contributions.
The depth comes from continuity.
Format
Live weekly virtual cohort experience
Wednesdays, 6:00–7:30 PM ET
Six sessions beginning July 8
Small-group format designed for continuity and participation
Because this is a cumulative StoryWorld experience, participants are encouraged to attend consistently and actively shape the evolving world together.
What You’ll Walk Away With
By the end of the experience, you will have:
Hands-on experience with applied futures thinking and foresight
New tools for navigating complexity and uncertainty
Greater confidence engaging with climate futures
Experience in collaborative sensemaking and worldbuilding
Meaningful connections across climate, storytelling, systems, and culture
Contributions to a co-created StoryWorld narrative
A digital artifact documenting your journey, reflections, and outputs
Who Is This For?
Planetary Commons is for:
Climate practitioners and changemakers
Storytellers, artists, and creatives
Educators and facilitators
Systems thinkers and foresight practitioners
Community leaders and organizers
Curious individuals seeking a more meaningful way to engage with the future
Whether you are new to futures thinking or already working in these spaces, you will find opportunities to contribute, learn, and explore alongside others.
Can't Join the Full Experience?
You can still participate in the unfolding StoryWorld through the Climateverse Dispatch.
Subscribers receive narrative signals, field notes, worldbuilding artifacts, and selected outputs emerging from the studio.
Paid subscribers can go further—responding to prompts, sharing signals, and influencing future developments within the evolving StoryWorld.
It’s a lighter, asynchronous way to engage with the same unfolding universe.