Post-Fossil
Futures
Already Exist_
A collective imagination workshop that dares us to sow the seeds of other possible worlds in the cracks of this fossil fueled system.
For youth collectives and communities who want to imagine futures beyond fossil fuels, rooted in their own territory.
Tips and facilitation
guide.
This workshop doesn't need technical experts. Any person willing to hold a space where their community's collective imagination can take root and flourish is the perfect facilitator for this workshop. Feel free to adapt and host this workshop with your collective, your family, your friends, your neighbors, classmates or comrades. Tap each card to expand it for some useful tips.
How bodies are arranged in space is already a political decision. Try to form a circle — without tables in between if possible. Everyone at the same level. No one with their back to anyone else.
- If you are in a room with rows, rearrange the space before starting. It is worth the five minutes.
- If you are outdoors, even better. The territory also participates in the workshop.
- Place something at the center of the circle: a plant, a stone, a seed, an object from the territory. Something that anchors the conversation to the place.
- If you are using the device with the cards, one shared screen works better than everyone on their own phone — so the group breathes together.
The full workshop can last between 90 minutes and 3 hours. A possible structure:
- 15–20 min — Opening meditation on petroculture
- 30–40 min — Card round, part one
- 30–40 min — Card round, part two
- 15–20 min — Real seeds from Act III + collective wall
- 10 min — Closing and contest invitation
If time is short, prioritise the second part. Imagining the future is the heart of the workshop.
tap to close ×to your territory tap to open
The cards are starting points, not fixed truths. The most powerful moment is when the questions land in the specific place where you are.
- If you are in a coastal community, questions about energy and fishing carry a different weight than in a city. Use that.
- If there is a nearby extraction process — a mine, a well, a coal plant — name it. That is concrete and powerful.
- If the group speaks another language or has its own terms for land and water — invite them to respond from those words.
- You can modify any question, combine two, or invent a new one that speaks more directly to your group.
- If a conversation emerges that was not in any card but the circle wants to have — give it space. That is also the workshop.
welcome tap to open
Not everyone in the circle will imagine the same future. Not everyone will believe it is possible. That is fine — the knot gesture exists exactly for that.
- Do not force optimism. Anger, grief, scepticism are also valid ways of relating to the crisis.
- If someone says "that is impossible", do not contradict — ask: what would it take for it to be possible? What is preventing it today?
- The goal is not to reach consensus — it is to exercise the capacity to imagine together, even from different places.
The results of this workshop will travel to the first Conference for the Elimination of Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, in April 2026. That matters.
But from Otros Futuros (Other Futures) and La Chiva Climática (The Climate Chiva Colombia) and ANGRY Alliance, we believe, with deep conviction, that there is nothing more revolutionary than having these conversations here — in your neighbourhood, your village, your classroom, your crew.
International conferences are necessary. But the most lasting political transformation does not happen in negotiating rooms — it happens in the places where people look each other in the eyes, dare to imagine together, and leave different from how they arrived. Your community is the most powerful site of transformation there is. This conversation is already the change.
in Crisis naming petroculture
The Present in Crisis
naming petroculture
Before imagining another possible future, we have to see just how deep we are inside petroculture.
Fossil fuels are not just gasoline and coal: they are the invisible matter
of almost everything we touch, eat, wear and breathe.
Petroculture is defined as the set of habits, values and imaginaries built around oil that industrial capitalism has implanted worldwide. Petroculture goes hand in hand with the idea of infinite growth, infinite consumption and "no other alternative" frameworks that normalize car-centric mobility, single-use plastics and food that travels thousands of kilometers, among others.
Here are a few meditations you can take turns reading out loud and cards with questions you can invite the group to answer. This first section invites us to name what we normally do not see.
Before imagining another world,
let us see the one we live in.
60% of the world's textile fibres are synthetic — polyester, nylon, acrylic. All derived from oil. Every time we wash synthetic clothing, we release up to 700,000 plastic microfibres per wash cycle. Those fibres reach rivers, the sea, fish, and your plate.
Our bodies are the first point of arrival for everything we manufacture. The clothes that keep us warm connect us, thread by thread, to the planet's subsoil.
Plastic does not come from magic — it comes from the same subsoil as gasoline. It is oil that is moulded rather than burned. And it does not disappear. It fragments into ever smaller particles.
Microplastics have already been found in human blood, in breast milk, at the top of Everest, in the deepest trenches of the Pacific Ocean, in the lungs of people who have never been near a factory. A 2022 study detected microplastics in 76% of breast milk samples analysed. A baby born today already carries plastic in their first meal.
The burning of coal, gas and oil releases CO₂, methane, sulphur dioxide and fine PM2.5 particles — so small they pass through lung tissue and enter directly into the bloodstream.
The WHO estimates that air pollution causes 6.7 million premature deaths per year. A study published in The BMJ (2023) estimates that fossil fuel combustion alone causes 5.13 million avoidable deaths per year. 89% of those deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Pollution does not kill those who consume the most — it kills those who have the least choice.
El Cerrejón, in the Colombian department of La Guajira, is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in Latin America — 69,000 hectares in the hands of the multinational Glencore. Wayuu communities live alongside explosions that shake their homes every morning, black dust that covers the leaves of trees, the food, the bed sheets. The Ranchería river — the life source of the people — is contaminated. The mine consumes 24 million litres of water per day.
Researchers from the Universidad del Sinú and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul found in the blood of residents of neighbouring communities high concentrations of sulphur, chromium and bromine — elements that damage the body's cells. The Colombian Constitutional Court (Ruling T-614/19) documented that between 2012 and 2019, 160 people from the Provincial community were treated for bacterial pneumonia, asthma, laryngitis, skin lesions and skin tumours.
María Cristina Figueroa, a Wayuu leader from Provincial, denounces that the noise of the mine, present 24 hours a day, makes it impossible to dream. For the Wayuu people, dreaming is the only way to communicate with their ancestors. The mine does not only pollute the air — it interrupts the spirituality of a people.
The coal we burn today began forming 300 to 360 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period — when vast swamp forests covered the Earth, died, were buried and compressed under immense heat and pressure over geological eras. Research published in PNAS estimates that 90% of the coal we burn today was deposited in that period.
Oil and natural gas are between 66 and 252 million years old: they are the result of the decomposition of marine microorganisms — phytoplankton, zooplankton — that sank to the ocean floor in anoxic conditions during the Mesozoic era and were transformed by millions of years of heat and pressure.
What the Earth took 300 million years to store, fossil capitalism has consumed in less than 200 years. According to IPCC data (AR6, 2022), 42% of all accumulated CO₂ emissions since 1850 occurred after 1990 — that is, after science had already clearly warned what was happening, and the governments responsible had already been warned.
Fossil fuels are in gasoline, yes.
But also in the asphalt of the street, in the paint on the walls,
in the fertilisers on the fields, in the medicines at the pharmacy,
in the bags at the market, in the glue in your shoes,
in the screens we hold, in the mattresses where we sleep,
in the deodorant, in the shampoo, in the floor wax.
We live inside fossil fuels. And yet, other worlds already exist —
on the margins, in territories, in memories,
in the imagination of those already living the future.
Open your eyes. It is time to imagine together.
to the Future travelling to the future · 2060
What does that
other future look like?
Close your eyes. Leave behind the anxiety of the climate crisis, the smell of burnt fuel, the pain of a plundered territory, and the plastics drifting through the air. Years pass — a few, then many. Time is a river that flows — but you are the river. The past and the future unfold in spirals. You cross threshold after threshold of possible worlds within others. You open your eyes. That feeling of acceleration and imminent catastrophe has disappeared. There is no longer a climate crisis. The future is already Other. What does it look like?
Flip a card and respond in first person from 2060. In some cards you will find a native seed — touch it to discover that future already exists today.
Sow your
imagination
What image of a future beyond fossil fuels resonated most in your circle? Write it here — in a sentence, an image, an intuition of the world your community imagines. These ideas remain on the collective wall of the workshop.
I've been to the future
and we made it.
Complete this message from the year 2060. Your words will be broadcast at the great mobilisation in Santa Marta. There are no right answers — only yours.
I've been to the future and we made it. In our territory, the air smells like and in the street you can hear . Energy comes from , it is managed by with generosity and wisdom and we have never again had to worry about .
In the future, being a child is about , being an elder is about and caring for the commons means .
In the future we use the plastics left over from the age of fossil fuels to . We grow and our food is our medicine. The latest technology invented in our community is for . And our free time, which is plentiful, we use for .
Getting to this other future was not without challenges. There were moments when our ancestors in this territory had to face and resist . We know it was hard to live what they lived through in 2026 and we always give thanks and remember their efforts as brave and generous.
We proudly remember every time we see . Thank you to them and to all of you because even though you will never meet those who will harvest the fruits of your efforts, you keep planting. Thank you for imagining us so many years ago.
I've been to the future and before returning, my message to you is:
Your message will be broadcast at the great mobilisation in Santa Marta, April 2026.
Fill in these details so we can include you.
Your email will only be used to confirm receipt of your message. We will not share it with anyone.
Thank you for imagining the future with us.
Post-Fossil Futures
Imagination Open Call
Submit your art to be exhibited at the Santa Marta Beyond Fossil Fuels Conference.
Winning submissions will receive $100!
From 23 to 29 April 2026, the first global Conference for the Progressive Elimination of Fossil Fuels takes place in Santa Marta, Colombia.
Create an image or a song that represents a hopeful future for your territory in a world beyond fossil fuels —
and your work could travel there and be presented at the Conference.
Submit before 20 April 2026.
Image contest — Global. Open to all nationalities.
Song contest — Latin American. Open to people from across Abya Yala/Latin America.
Winning submissions will be selected based on: incorporation of specific elements from your territory; a contagious, interesting or hopeful imagination of the future ahead; and promotion of a just energy transition and/or the elimination of fossil fuels.
A post-fossil world is one that has left behind the burning of coal, oil and natural gas as energy sources — and has found fairer, cleaner ways to live together.
Fossil fuels are remains of living organisms — plants, algae, animals — that died millions of years ago and accumulated underground. Under heat and pressure, they transformed into coal, oil and natural gas.
We burn them to produce energy, but in doing so we release trapped carbon, heating the atmosphere. They are the main cause of the climate crisis.
It is the set of habits, values and imaginaries we have built around oil: car mobility, single-use plastics, food that travels thousands of kilometres, the idea that growth has no limits.
Petroculture runs so deep that we often cannot see it — it is the water we swim in. Naming it is the first step to imagining something else.