Climate Despair and Denial: How Critiques of Climate Despair Can Backfire

Climate despair (CD) has been recently attracting sustained attention, increasingly seen as apt vis-à-vis the climate crisis and, at once, an obstacle to the very mobilisation needed to address it. Against this backdrop, the paper analyses the prudential value of mainstream critical views of CD (as epistemically irrational, strategically irrational, and a ‘luxury’ emotion that only marginally climate-vulnerable individuals can afford). Drawing on sociological and psychoanalytic sources, the paper highlights how one typically neglected pathway from CD to climate inaction passes through non-(fully-)conscious processes of denial of the climate crisis, whose psychological function is protecting individuals from highly distressing emotions. Notably, rather than being an isolated, pathological reaction, living in denial of the seriousness of the crisis is a psychological response supported by a plethora of social forces. By showing how mainstream critiques of CD can also afford support to defensive processes of denial, the paper shows that there are pro tanto prudential reasons to refrain from circulating them as they can unwittingly lead to more withdrawal from, rather than engagement with, climate action.