Abstract
There is a growing evidence that emotions shape people's reactions to the climate crisis in profound but complex ways. Climate emotions are related to resilience, climate action, and psychological well-being and health. However, there is currently a lack of research about the array of various climate emotions. There is also a need for more integration with general research about emotions. This article conducts a preliminary exploration of the taxonomy of climate emotions, based on literature reviews and philosophical discussion. The term emotion is used here in a broad sense, as is common in climate emotion research. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis and the lack of previous research, this kind of exploration is aimed to be helpful for both practical climate work and for future research which would include more systematic reviews of the topic. Research items which discuss at least five different climate emotions, based on empirical observations, are used as major sources and a table about them is provided. Climate emotions are discussed on the basis of interdisciplinary research. The article considers many aspects of the phenomena of climate anxiety and climate grief.
Highlights
The Significance of Climate EmotionsThe climate crisis is rapidly growing more intense globally
Climate emotions are defined as affective phenomena which are significantly related to the climate crisis, even though there may be many kinds of factors influencing people’s emotions at a certain moment—such as the general situation in one’s life, one’s temperament, daily events, social dynamics, and climate change impacts
14 studies which discuss at least five different climate emotions with at least some empirical support were chosen as major sources
Summary
The Significance of Climate EmotionsThe climate crisis is rapidly growing more intense globally. In the 2000s, scholars have started to pay more attention to the complex ways in which emotions are related to the climate crisis This topic is sometimes called the affective dimension of climate change: broadly, it includes many kinds of affective phenomena which are called by different words in various disciplines, including feelings, emotions, affects, and moods (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014; Hamilton, 2020). Climate emotions have been found to be related to for example behavioral reactions (e.g., Nabi et al, 2018), psychological well-being and health (e.g., Berry et al, 2018), and to moral issues (e.g., McQueen, 2021) These kind of dynamics have been much discussed in general emotion research (see Barrett et al, 2016), and while research on climate emotions has started to draw from that research, more integration would be needed
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