Everyday laboratories: Collective speculation and energy futures

Growing public concern surrounding climate change has not always led to better public knowledge of what might constitute effective action, while growing knowledge does not always produce greater concern. We argue that this gap between knowledge and concern is reproduced by prevailing practices for anticipating energy futures – including those associated with top-down modelling and forecasting, and those attempting to imagine or infer alternative futures from the bottom up. In response, we develop a concept of ‘collective speculation’, inspired in particular by the work of Bruno Latour. Collective speculation, we argue, strives to create common futures by attending to diverse interests and affordances in order to cultivate connections between different forms of knowledge, political concerns, actors and worlds. We illustrate and unpack this concept by exploring our own practice as researchers working on a project using sensors and data visualization to explore collective responses to climate change. We trace practices of collective speculation within the workings of the team itself, as well as across our relations with a key partner and the everyday worlds of our participants, in order to show how collective speculation generates collectives animated by interconnected forms of concern and knowledge. • Despite growing public concern, public VS expert understandings of effective climate action differ. • These differences in understanding reveal a gap between concern and understanding. • Dominant practices for modelling or speculating about futures inadvertently reproduce this same gap. • This article theorizes a practice of ‘collective speculation’ that is capable of holding concern and understanding together. • Collective speculation is an everyday research-like practice, that can serve as a tool to create more sustainable futures.