Climate no future? Picturing imaginaries of climate activists between hope and violence

Abstract

This visual essay adds to current research on climate futures, violence and conflict by presenting findings from ‘Security Imaginaries of Climate Movements’ (SECIMA), a citizen science project with climate activists conducted between 2022 to 2024. Combining elements of photovoice and photo elicitation, the project engaged activists from Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and The Last Generation to explore how activists imagine (violent) futures in the global climate crisis. The authors present a condensed account of how these activists balance fears of climate catastrophe and related violence with images of hope, solidarity and resilience. Through the eyes of the activists, the essay explores three alternative and interconnected imaginaries of climate-changed futures: as a major catastrophe which can be acted upon, as an open horizon to be shaped by political action and as a projection of present injustices and violences. These imaginaries crucially shape contemporary forms of climate activism and the conflicts surrounding them.

Introduction

Images of climate futures affect what we feel, think and can do about long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns on our planet (Brosch, 2021; Troy et al., 2024). Pictures such as Figure 1 can promote hopes for technological change and society’s ability to cope with climate change. However, climate discourse is often dominated by visions of a future marked by violence, conflict, chaos and destruction (Benner et al., 2019; Heinrichs, 2025; Methmann and Rothe, 2012). And, while such images depict future phenomena of violence, they can contribute to conflicts in the here and now. This is reflected in the literature on climate change and conflict, which has long focused on future threats such as climate migration or resource scarcity, but is increasingly acknowledging the conflict potential of present-day policies – from adaptation measures to decarbonization strategies or the lack thereof (see Ide, 2025). As Tobias Ide argues, ‘climate conflicts’ arise not only from the consequences of climate change, but also from ‘climate inaction’ and the resulting frustration among concerned and affected actors (p.3). Many climate activists are driven by images of catastrophic climate change and the emotions they evoke, such as grief, fear and anger (De Moor and Marquardt, 2023; Green et al., 2024). Others accuse the activists of hysteria and disrupting public order, and call for ever more drastic criminal measures to stop them (Köhler et al., 2025; Murray et al., 2025). It is this analytical and conceptual shift – from imaginaries of future conflicts to conflicts over alternative imaginaries of climate futures – that we perform with this visual essay.

Figure 1.

‘The climate crisis can also be a very nice photo’ (Activist L, somewhere in Brandenburg, Germany, 9 May 2023).

Research on ‘climate imaginaries’ – understood as collectively shared visions and narratives about desirable and undesirable futures in the context of anthropogenic climate change – has explored different sites of future making. These include (non-)fiction literature, scientific research, popular culture and media (Davoudi and Machen, 2022; Nikoleris et al., 2017; Streeby, 2019; Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011). Work on visual politics (O’Neill, 2017; Schneider and Nocke, 2014) and visual imaginaries (Benner and Rothe, 2024; Milkoreit, 2017) have added to this by stressing the importance of images to imagine spatially and temporally ‘distant’ threats such as climate change in the present. Such work has also critically discussed the limits of representing climate futures through visual technologies such as photography or satellite imagery that privilege ‘the “here and now”of the visual’ (Doyle, 2007: 129). ¹ A crucial finding of this literature is that future climate imaginaries and their visual representation are involved in shaping the horizon of possible political action in the present (Benner and Rothe, 2024). Thus, if we want to better understand current conflicts around climate activism, we need to investigate the imaginaries and worldviews (in a literal sense) of the actors involved.

We advance and contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring imaginaries of (violent) climate futures in collaboration with activists from three major climate movements. Treating activists’ visual practices as both empirical material and epistemic interventions, the visual essay reveals the ambiguities of imaginaries and attached emotional registers of climate activism between hope, violence and agency. At the same time, the article speaks to a broader readership of this journal interested in the relationship between political protest, media and conflict as well as participatory methods.

Research design

This visual essay is based on the findings from ‘Security Imaginaries of Climate Movements’ (SECIMA), a citizen science project with climate activists that ran from 2022 to 2024. Together with 10 activists from arguably the most important climate movements in Europe today, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and The Last Generation, we examined how climate activists imagine the future in the climate crisis and what role images play in this process. Through iterative dialogue with activists, this research question was further refined to include emerging themes – such as the visualization of violence – which activists identified as central to their experiences. To address these questions, we employed two participatory visual methods: photovoice and photo elicitation. Photovoice empowers participants to document their perspectives through self-generated images, often used to amplify marginalized voices (Wang and Burris, 1997). Photo elicitation uses photographs as prompts in interviews or discussions to deepen reflection and access affective or subconscious dimensions (Harper, 2002). The project furthermore involved an exhibition in which a selection of 34 photographs was presented to the wider public in May and October 2024 in Groningen as well as in Hamburg.

To operationalize this approach, we recruited the activists through calls for participation in our research project SECIMA, which were circulated in social media groups of climate movements that operated in the regions of our two institutions . After a kick-off workshop in February 2023 in Groningen to introduce the project and align on research questions and methods, activists took photos of climate futures over three months – during actions, in activist contexts and in daily life. At a second workshop in May 2023 in Hamburg, we collaboratively analyzed the images through focus group discussions, combining collective reflection with individual explanations of each photo’s rationale. Transcripts and images were then coded in MAXQDA for further analysis.

Together, these methods revealed rich, layered insights into activists’ future imaginaries, including emotional and interpretive contexts often overlooked in text-based research. We also felt that the collaborative design empowered our activists as co-researchers, ensuring their input shaped the project. This facilitated agency and ownership over the research process and outcomes. The iterative process, including workshops and feedback loops, also allowed for reflexivity and continuous refinement of the research process. We collaborated with a professional curator, who helped us organize the exhibitions. While this experience was certainly insightful, it also contained balancing different ideas between researchers, activists and curators over aesthetic coherence and choices (e.g. the arrangement of images and image clusters), the story or message of the exhibition (e.g. the captions and accompanying texts) and institutional constraints (e.g. funding limits).

Picturing climate imaginaries

The goal of the visual essay is to give a condensed account of the activists’ climate futures and show how they balance fears of climate catastrophe with images of hope, solidarity and resilience. What the images show is an imaginary landscape marked by ambivalence. For it is often assumed that groups such as XR would be motivated by a singular future scenario of a planetary catastrophe. However, we find competing, alternating or fragmentary images – sometimes in one and the same frame. For the visual essay, we tell a story based on three different and interconnected future narratives that influence the current conflict over climate policy (and the lack thereof). These stories emerged from the joint interpretation of the images with the climate activists involved, as described in the previous section.

The first of these imaginaries revolves around images of collapse, loss and extinction. We show how such images, paradoxically, can become a motivation for climate action and a source of what Cassegård (2024) has called ‘post-apocalyptic hope’. Episode II focuses on forms of political agency in what we understand as a struggle for the future. The question of visibility is central here: while some forms of protest are highly visible and become objects of social contestation, others focus on everyday, less visible actions at the core of activists’ work. The third episode, then, visually explores current conflicts over fossil resources. For the activists, the institutionalized violence they experience here becomes a glimpse into the future, when the destruction of the planet must be secured with increasingly repressive measures.

Episode I: The post-apocalyptic hope of climate activism

Climate change brings about irreversible losses such as species extinction, uninhabitable lands and the destruction of cultural heritage (Ripple et al., 2024; Solomon et al., 2009). Man-made changes to nature are visible in many places, for example, through open-cast mining. Once flourishing landscapes and lively villages are being transformed into apocalyptic wastelands. Confirming earlier research on apocalyptic imaginaries of climate activism (see Morris, 2023), many of our activists’ images express a sense of loss and related emotions such as grief and mourning. Our contribution adds nuance to these visual registers by exploring them through the eyes of involved activists, thereby highlighting the ambiguities of related emotional attachments from despair, to grief and hope.

Figure 2 shows sledge and skates at a ‘Die-In’ ² protest by XR. As ‘future objects’, (Esguerra, 2019), the sledge and skates on muddy ground anticipate a future in which some cultures and traditions are irreversibly lost, and triggered strong emotive reactions by some involved activists. They noted that sledge and skates are part of Dutch cultural heritage. But, as the winters of the last few years have not been cold enough, people were not able to use them. As a result, future generations might grow up without the memories of a winter full of snow. Activist T, mentioned ‘Elfstedentocht’, a famous long-distance skating event in the Netherlands, as an example. Covering approximately 200 kilometers, passing through 11 cities in the province of Friesland, the event only takes place when the natural ice is thick enough. Emphasizing that ice skating is a significant cultural tradition and part of Dutch national identity, people would continue to train for Elfstedentocht even though it has not occurred since 1997.

Figure 2.

‘Where did winter go?’ (Activist B, Groningen, The Netherlands, 6 February 2023).

Yet, climate change may not only mean the loss of traditions and customs, but even the collapse of public order. This fear was expressed by the activists in our discussion of Figure 3. The picture shows a person approaching an overflowing public garbage can – in our activists’ interpretation: a lone survivor searching for food in an abandoned city. Like post-apocalyptic films, the scene evokes an atmosphere of desolation and the collapse of social systems. In fact, the overflowing garbage cans were due to a strike by the city cleaning leading to a partial system failure. For many of the activists, the image highlights the fragility and unsustainability of the current system we live in. The iconic traffic sign would articulate a warning with the piled-up trash suggesting neglect and indifference.

Figure 3.

‘Strikes: Pollution participation’ (Activist L, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 5 February 2023).

In these and similar images, the future appears bleak, filled with anxiety and fear due to the consequences of climate change (Wray, 2023). Climate- or eco-anxiety is recognized as a psychological condition, affecting mental health and well-being (Barbosa and Fonseca, 2024; Thomas and Benoit, 2022). While some individuals cope by denying the problem, others find motivation, channeling emotions into activism and political engagement (Ritchie, 2024; Soloski, 2024; Weir, 2024). This also holds for the activists in our project, who depict post-apocalyptic environments in which catastrophic environmental change has already happened. As Cassegård (2024) stresses, imaginaries of ecological decline or even collapse do not necessarily lead to nihilism or despair but can be a catalyst for ‘post-apocalyptic hope’, such as building mutual support networks or confronting the public (see Garforth, 2018).

Activist N used two pictures shown in Figure 4 to narrate a story about a dying nature that has become a threat to humans and, at the same time, a source of hope. She was sitting under a tree in a forest near her hometown, feeling as if the tree and nature were collapsing around her. To express this feeling, she captured a picture of candles depicting burning trees. Thinking about climate futures would be depressing as nature falls apart and buries everything. At the same time, activist F highlighted that, despite the appearance of dead wood, nature finds a way to bring new life, here indicated by green leaves and other signs of life around the tree. While the picture may show death and destruction, it is also a symbol of resilience and vitality – and thus hope – as nature persists in one form or another. As Garforth (2006: 5–7) stresses, such representations of nonhuman nature are also bound up with utopian hopes of social transformation and progress – as will become more apparent in the following episode.

Figure 4.

‘Nature’s decay’ and ‘Forest fire’ (Activist N, Lüneburg, Germany, 27 April 2023).

Episode II: A struggle for the future

Images are not only a way of visualizing uncertain futures and thereby influencing current conflicts surrounding climate policy, but also a possibility to reflect and even exert agency in these struggles. The visibility of action is essential for maintaining the legitimacy and momentum of climate movements (Shim, 2024). The restrictions on public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic are a good example as they hindered activists’ ability to protest, leading to a decline in visibility and raising questions about their relevance. Climate strikes and protest action are significant visual events that produce iconic images for audiences around the world, which in turn help to sustain public support and engagement (Alfano and Guarino, 2025; León et al., 2022; Shim, 2024).

Figure 5 shows a protest action by Fridays for Future at the COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. It sparked discussions about the future of climate protest and climate justice in our group. The group discussed the restrictive conditions for civil society at COP27, where protest was confined to a designated parking lot next to the venue. The Egyptian government imposed strict protocols on what could be said or displayed during protests. Another concern was that the right to protest was reserved for privileged people with Western passports, creating further exclusions of people from climate-affected regions such as the Middle East and North Africa. In response to these restrictions, the activists decided to stage a protest with blank signs and a blank piece of fabric. They marked a small box on the ground (see the yellow lines), exaggerating the already limited protest area and drew their signs on the spot to avoid pre-approval.

Figure 5.

‘Don’t be scared’ (Activist F, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, 15 November 2022).

While images such as Figure 5 emphasize that ‘something can be done’ in the struggle for the future, Figure 6 is a self-reflection on the lack of agency in the activists’ efforts to shape climate futures. For them, the exposed position of the naked body expresses both the vulnerability of humans to the threat of climate change as well as the feeling of helplessness experienced by activists due to the indifference of politics and society to the destruction of the environment. According to our activist co-researchers, the picture reveals the all-pervasive and all-encompassing nature of the climate crisis that ‘surrounds us from every possible angle’ (Activist F). So, while the struggle against specific actors in specific places can have a strong mobilizing effect, climate activists at the same time fight a placeless, almost spectral enemy, which can also exert an opposite demobilizing effect.

Figure 6.

‘Black Despair’ (Activist N, Lüneburg, Germany, 4 March 2023).

However, other images transcend these dialectics of action and inaction, and instead point toward a mundane and often unseen part of activists’ struggle for the future. Figure 7 was taken during the blockade of the A12 highway by XR – a protest action to stop Dutch government subsidies for fossil fuel companies. Activist L submitted this picture because it would perfectly describe what climate activism would mostly feel like. While civil disobedience, such as the A12 blockade and the risk of getting arrested, might seem exciting, it involves long periods of sitting and waiting with only brief moments of walking or discussing with the police. As the main experience is spending time waiting, another activist suggests that waiting is an active process, necessitating remaining in the right place, here the A12, and not somewhere else. Waiting itself, then, becomes a meaningful act for future making: ‘we have to wait to get to the future’ (T). With its focus on slowness, patience and even boredom (see Anderson, 2023), Figure 7 complicates and nuances the public perception of climate activism and its emotional registers, which is often associated with urgency and fear.

Figure 7.

‘Readings during the A12 Blockade’ (Activist L, The Hague, The Netherlands, 11 March 2023).

Episode III: From future conflicts to conflicts over the future?

Clashing imaginaries of future states of the Earth can materialize in confrontational action and conflicts in the here-and-now. These conflicts between state-protected extractivist industries and climate activists is the subject of a third cluster of images and a crucial theme for our activist researchers. Climate activists are often accused of using violence to push their agenda, disrupting public order to draw attention to their cause, while at the same time encountering institutionalized forms violence by police and private security actors. These experiences also feed back into imaginaries of planetary futures as the following images and related interpretations show.

Figure 8 shows police forces at Lützerath, a hamlet in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In January 2023, Lützerath was demolished to make way for the opencast mining of Garzweiler II. The residents of the village had already been relocated a few years prior. One of our activist co-researchers, who was present at the protests, described the sheer size of the police force as overwhelming, especially during shift changes when hundreds of cars with blue lights filled the horizon. The image raised questions about what is being protected from insecure climate futures. As one activist asked: ‘They protect this last bit of a green field there, and in front of them is this great wasteland. So, it’s a general picture of: for whom will be the last part of the Earth, which is still so green?’

Figure 8.

‘RWE’s Legions’ (Activist T, Lützerath, Germany, 9 January 2023).

In academic literature, climate change is increasingly seen as a form of structural violence, exacerbating human suffering and limiting life chances, particularly for marginalized populations (Bonds, 2016; Hobbs-Morgan, 2015). However, structural violence resulting from anthropogenic environmental change is often hard to visualize, given its slow and diffuse nature (Nixon, 2013). Violent climate futures and societal conflicts around them are hence crucially related to questions of in/visibility. Which forms of violence are publicly acknowledged, which are considered legitimate and which are not? All these questions are, to a considerable degree, shaped by images and other visuals of the climate crisis.

Figure 9 shows a ‘Your coal stinks’ protest sign in the Garzweiler 2 opencast mine with a bucket wheel excavator in the background. This slogan has a double meaning in German, as ‘Kohle’ (coal) also refers to money, highlighting the profit-driven destruction of nature by energy companies. The brown coal excavator in the background, visible in a devastated landscape, is representative of the violence of humans against nature. Activist W shared a story of her older brother, who is a high-level engineer:

He is designing these kinds of big machines. I asked him once, ‘What is on your mind when you think about this machine that is powerful enough to destroy this land and the whole planet?’ And he looked at me as if I were crazy to ask this.

Figure 9.

‘We’re in deep shit’ (Activist F, Lützerath, Germany, 8 January 2023).

For activists, this epistemic and normative disconnect, which was repeatedly highlighted in our interviews, is a source of motivation, but also of frustration and social conflict. The broader public seems unwilling or unable to perceive the violence against nature that stems from technological progress and the compulsion to grow.

Figure 10 shows police flood lights, which illuminate the site of the evacuated protest camp in the former village of Lützerath. For the activists, the camp was more than a place of resistance; it was also a laboratory where alternative futures were prefigured and practiced. This confirms Demos (2023), who discusses how imaginaries of radical futures can emerge through a ‘solidarity of struggles’, for example in local protests against extractivist projects. This also explains why the destruction of the protest camp was experienced as such a strong act of state violence by the involved activists. One activist described the scene as sad, post-apocalyptic, with destroyed tree houses, buildings and everything left deserted and muddy. People were eating canned food, and the impression that everything was destroyed and some items left behind to scavenge was adding to the surreal atmosphere. Here, the destruction of the planet by multi-billion-dollar companies like RWE would be accompanied by the destruction of local villages. It would be ironic and twisted that, instead of the police preventing the company’s actions, they are protecting them. In the eyes of one involved activist: ‘This institution that should protect us acts as a structure to hold together something that is destroying us and that’s so weird. And disorienting.’ This photograph thus highlights the distorted and even absurd reality of the ecological crisis, where institutional roles are reversed and the true impact of environmental destruction is often hidden (see also Heinrichs, 2025: 5).

Figure 10.

‘Roaring lights of Lützerath’ (Activist J, Lützerath, Germany, 13 January 2023).

Conclusion

In this visual essay, we explored how climate activists from major European climate movements imagine insecure futures in the climate crisis. We showed how visual imaginaries of such futures are woven into political struggles and conflicts in the present. Through our participatory approach, we were able to add important nuances to the discussion surrounding climate protests and related conflicts. One of our contributions is to demonstrate that academic knowledge can be generated with, rather than about, communities. Making research a collaborative and visual practice can provide new insights and highlight alternative ways of knowledge production. For instance, while it is often assumed that climate movements are driven by fear of apocalyptic scenarios and spectacular violence, this visual essay paints a more nuanced picture. Many of our activists’ images are attentive to the everyday impacts of the climate crisis and structural and institutionalized forms of violence. The resulting alienation from and frustration with current policies to protect the climate on the part of the activists can become drivers of further conflict, which is why it is essential to engage with such experiences and related imaginaries. This visual essay represents one step in this direction.