We've been using hope wrong.

You know it. I know it. Hope, in 2026, is what people put on a tote bag.These days, in the entanglements of the polycrisis, we keep our hope on the back burner. The more we grow up, the more we give up. Reality ≠ hopeful, so we dismiss it as naïveté. What if the story we are standing in is wrong?

Here is what we know.

89% of people on Earth want their governments doing more about climate change. The largest study ever conducted on climate willingness (130,000 people across 125 countries) asked three questions, and on every one, the global majority said YES.

The same people were asked what they thought their neighbours would say. Actual willingness: 69%. Guessed willingness: 43%. A 26-point gap. In every single country. No exceptions. That's pluralistic ignorance: a thing most people believe privately, while each one thinks they're the only one. So nobody says it. The majority stays quiet.

The minority sounds like consensus.

Source: Andre, Boneva, Chopra & Falk (2024), Nature Climate Change.

We’re in a room with people who are agreeing with us.

If people knew that they were not alone, significantly larger numbers would take action. The bottleneck is visibility. Humans are conditional cooperators. The research is unambiguous: for every 1-percentage-point increase in the share of fellow citizens you believe support climate action, your own willingness to act rises by nearly half a point. The gap is currently 26 points wide. If we correct the misperception, willingness compounds. We were never alone.

Why "radical"?

Radical not as in extreme, radical as in of the root. We dressed hope up in kids' clothing, because then it's allowed to fail. Hope untamed is hope you can build on, plan from, organise around. It survives contact with reality, because it isn't made of the soft stuff reality eats first. And this wild version? It works.

We're the majority.

Let’s find each other.