Climate Pessimism and Human Nature

This article builds on scholarship that understands climate change not only as a geophysical phenomenon, but also complex idea. It argues for historicised analysis of what it terms “climate pessimism”: the belief catastrophic global heating cannot be prevented. Focusing especially nonfictional texts by Jonathan Franzen and Roy Scranton, suggests pessimism draws Western intellectual tradition takes sceptical view human capacities possibility progress. At same time, tends to evoke an idea atomised nature associated with capitalistic modernity. ideas from evolutionary psychology in rather simplistic way. more thinker, engages Buddhist thought philosophies Benedict Spinoza Arthur Schopenhauer. Although often criticised “doomer”, he sometimes moves towards epistemological pluralism sense potentiality. The concluding section brings concept pluriverse both corrective pessimism’s tendency Westerncentrism, point connection Scranton’s work.