1st Edition
Feeling Climate Change How Emotions Govern Our Responses to the Climate Emergency
Examining the social response to the mounting impacts of climate change, Feeling Climate Change illuminates what the pathways from emotions to social change look like – and how they work – so we can recognize and inform our collective attempts to avert further climate catastrophe.
Debra J. Davidson engages with how our actions are governed by a complex of rules, norms and predispositions, central among which operates our emotionality, to assess individual and collective responses to the climate crisis, applying a critical and constructive analysis of human social prospects for confronting the climate emergency in manners that minimize the damage and perhaps even enhance the prospects for meaningful collective living.
Providing a crucial understanding of our emotionality and its role in individual behavior, collective action, and ultimately in social change, this book offers researchers, policymakers and citizens essential insights to our personal and collective responses to the climate emergency.
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: why a book on emotions?
2. What lies ahead: the warnings from the climate sciences
3. Can we do this? Embarking on transformational social change
4. What are emotions and why should we care?
5. Scaling up emotions, from the individual, to social structures and back again
6. Inaction pathways, or why we don’t do the things we don’t do
7. Pathways to action, or doing the hard thing
8. Threading the needle from emotions to transformational social change
References
Biography
Debra J. Davidson is professor of environmental sociology at the University of Alberta. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Energy and Society (2018) and co-editor of Environment and Society (2018), as well as the author of numerous articles on sociology and the environment.
Debra J. Davidson gives us a hugely important lens through which to understand the crisis of climate change, and motive to do something about it. A highly important book.
Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild, Sociology, University of California-Berkeley, author of The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (2012), Strangers in Their Own Land (2016), and Stolen Pride (forthcoming).
Feeling Climate Change is a compelling account of the way emotions affect how individuals, institutions and societies respond to the climate emergency. Davidson offers a pragmatic and personal exploration of our collective capacity to better respond to climate change. Going beyond disciplinary boundaries, the book illuminates an in-depth understanding of the challenges we face. The main thesis is that while humanity may not emerge unscathed, there exists considerable potential to transform our relationship with the planet into one that is more mutually respectful. Davidson offers a thought-provoking exploration that empowers readers to play a vital role in shaping the future, offering hope and a roadmap to transform our current trajectory into one that is more sustainable and equitable.
Dr. Emily Huddart Kennedy, Sociology, University of British Columbia, author of Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment (2022, Princeton).
Reason, cognition, language, and facts still matter in Feeling Climate Change. But if we want to tackle something as complex and politicized as climate change, we need to also understand that these debates are as much about what we feel in our gut as what we know in our head. I highly recommend this book, as it helps cultivate our collective emotional intelligence.
Dr. Michael Carolan, Sociology, Colorado State University, author of Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues (2020, Routledge)
There have been many publications on climate change in the past two years. Feeling the Climate is certainly one of the most important. The emerging literature on emotions and climate change, to which Davidson has made key contributions, demonstrates emotions matter. Davidson here orchestrates a concerto, showing how the literature on emotions outside of environmental work can be used to better understand emotions around climate change. She also clarifies how emotions work in consort with other factors that have been more extensively studied around environment, such as identity, values, beliefs and norms. This is exactly the kind of synthetic work we need both to advance the science and to offer advice for practice.
Dr. Tom Dietz, Sociology and Environmental Science, Michigan State University, author of Decisions for Sustainability: Facts and Values (2023)
In Feeling Climate Change, Davidson draws from and integrates important areas of research on emotions from across various disciplines, ranging from sociology to neuroscience, and in doing so offers a compelling case for how an emotionality lens can help create meaningful strategies for climate action. Ultimately, this is a book about bottom-up solutions to the climate crisis. It is beautifully and accessibly written and will work very well in courses and seminars on climate, sustainability, social change, emotions, and other related topics.
Dr. Andrew Jorgenson, Sociology, University of British Columbia, co-author of Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions (2020).
Facing the climate emergency, how can we cultivate visionary collective action rather than apathy and denialism? In this remarkable, engaging, and accessible book, Davidson – one of the most high-profile environmental social scientists internationally – helps us understand the conditions for human agency. The author explains why and how our emotionality is both a blocker and opener for transformational change. After reading this book you will never again maintain that the future is already determined.
Dr. Magnus Boström, Sociology, Örebro University, co-author of Environmental Sociology and Social Transformation: Key Issues (2024, Routledge).
