Today, we decided to take our bikes to meet our friends in the community garden “Rathausmarkt” right next to the Alster. Cycling past ongoing construction sides, replacing parking lots and sealed areas with local parks.
Yes, you heard right. Hamburg in 2041 is now centered around nature and people.
After the Hamburger Zukunftsentscheid in 2025 something started rolling. Not only here, also in many other places of the world protests arose. Even before the catastrophic flood of 2029, people realized the current state of the world and stopped believing everything said by our beloved politicians.
Hence, the last sceptics made up their mind about what is really worth living for. We drive on broad bicycle lanes. Since most of our transport is now electric and shared instead of individual, there is so much space available! And even though it is the middle of the day on a Tuesday, there are only a few buses on the road – nothing compared to the noisy city center we had a few years back.
Finally, we arrive at the city hall, from here we have a great view over the park that is now in front of it. Turning around, we still see the banner hanging from the building saying: Climate Revolution: Together for us!
We remember it as it was yesterday, the roads all over the world flushed by people demonstrating for a future not only for a wealthy minority, but for everyone. The former were relatively unmoved by this, continued to pursue their goal of a second earth somewhere in the universe as their privileges started shrinking.
They eventually ended up rocketing up into space with a super-rich elite. The crazy thing is that now, people could actually start working, people whose concern was not self-enrichment but real collaboration.
There are no individual climate futures for any of us. We are all connected and what we desire is not so different from desires across the globe. Luckily, we acted on it.
This post is part of a mini series on desirable climate futures. Students from the class “Researching and Shaping Climate Futures 2026” have imagined a desirable future in the context of climate change.