Imagining Change in Crisis: COVID-19 and Climate Activism

Crises have been seen as opportunities for change. The crisis brought about by COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. For example, the pandemic has brought about calls for rethinking how we organize our everyday lives and society. This presentation examines the ways in which climate activists have used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to envision, articulate and act on solutions to the climate crisis. Theoretically, it draws on critical approaches to crisis and the notion of climate imaginaries to capture the ways in which the COVID-19 and climate crises are articulated and collectively imagined, with implications for potential action. Empirically, it draws on tweets and Facebook events by Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace during the first periods of lockdown in Denmark during the pandemic (March 2020-September 2021). On the basis of this, we present a preliminary analysis of how the climate crisis is articulated as a larger looming crisis, which will eclipse the COVID-19 crisis. Nonetheless, the dystopian articulations of the climate crisis also express hope over despair and visions of solutions to dealing with the climate crisis rather than returning to business as usual.