Envisioning low-carbon futures: Exploring the relationship between individual lifestyle change and systemic transformation

Achieving a low-carbon future requires both systemic transformation and individual lifestyle changes, yet public perspectives on what is desirable and achievable remain underexplored. This paper uses deliberative visioning methods to actively engage people in imagining low-carbon futures, offering insights into how they perceive the intersection of individual and systems change. We conducted 14 deliberative visioning workshops with 97 participants in China, Sweden, and the UK - three countries with distinct cultural and economic contexts and climate mitigation trajectories. We structured discussions around 30 low-carbon lifestyle cards developed using the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework and used a backcasting approach to envision low-carbon futures for 2050. From these workshops, we identified (1) preferences for potentially radical lifestyle choices and (2) four systemic transition drivers of low-carbon living: community-centred living, physical and digital infrastructure change, robust governance, and supportive social norms. These transition drivers were consistently articulated across all three countries, highlighting their role as enabling conditions for low-carbon lifestyles rather than country-specific solutions. Our findings highlight the interconnectedness of individual lifestyles and systemic transformations, showing that participants viewed lifestyle change as feasible and desirable if embedded within supportive socio-technical systems. This paper contributes to futures and sustainability transition scholarship by demonstrating how deliberative, place-based visioning can connect bottom-up public imaginaries with top-down decarbonisation scenarios and policy pathways.