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You are here: Home / Articles / Fear and anger: rational responses to extinction

Fear and anger: rational responses to extinction

April 15, 2019 by Quan Nguyen 4 Comments

Not everyone cheered for the school children striking against climate change.

In the US, democratic senator Dianne Feinstein accused them of “my way or the highway” thinking. German Liberal Democrats leader Christian Lindner said that the protesters don’t yet understand “what’s technically and economically possible”, and should leave that to experts instead. The UK’s prime minister, Theresa May, criticised the strikers for “wasting lesson time”.

These criticisms share a common accusation – that the striking children, while well-intentioned, are behaving counter-productively. Instead of having a rational response towards climate change, they let emotions like fear and anger cloud their judgement. In short, emotional responses to climate change are irrational and need to be tamed with reason.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – his moral philosophy had a lasting influence on how we view emotions and rationality. Johann Gottlieb Becker/Wikipedia

The view that emotions are intrusive and obscure rational thinking dates back to Aristotle and the Stoics – ancient Greek philosophers who believed that emotions stand in the way of finding happiness through virtue. Immanuel Kant – an 18th-century German philosopher – saw acting from emotions as not really agency at all.

Today, much of political debate is moderated with the understanding that emotions must be tamed for the sake of rational discourse. While this view stands in a long tradition of Western philosophy, it invites Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro to insist that “facts, reason and logic” can dismiss an emotional response to anything in debates.

However, the view that emotions aren’t part of rationality is false. There’s no clear way of separating emotions from rationality, and emotions can be rationally assessed just like beliefs and motivations.

Emotions can be rational

Imagine you’re walking in the woods, and a huge bear approaches you. Would it be rational for you to feel fear?

Emotions can be rational in the sense of being an appropriate response to a situation. It can be the correct kind of response to your environment to feel an emotion, an emotion might just fit a situation. Fear from a bear coming towards you is a rational response in this sense: you recognise the bear and the potential danger it represents to you, and you react with an appropriate emotional response. It could be said to be irrational not to feel fear as the bear walks towards you, as this wouldn’t be a correct emotional response to a dangerous situation.

Imagine you find out that a meteor will kill millions of people across the world, displace hundreds of millions more, and make life for the remainder of humanity much worse. The world’s governments neither put a defence system in place, nor do they evacuate the people threatened. Fear from the meteor, and anger at the inaction of governments, would be a rational response as they are an appropriate reaction to danger. And if you don’t feel fear and anger, you’re not appropriately responding to a dangerous situation.

As you’ve probably guessed, the meteor is climate change. The world’s governments aren’t addressing the causes of climate change or preparing to mitigate its impact. For the people of Mozambique, who are reeling from the devastation of Cyclone Idai, anger is entirely appropriate. Climate change is largely a product of economic development in richer countries, while the world’s poorest are bearing the brunt of its effects.

A woman and child take shelter in Beira City, Mozambique, after the passage of Cyclone Idai. EPA-EFE/TIAGO PETINGA

Are emotions counter productive?

Regardless of how fitting an emotional response is, it may sometimes be unhelpful for what a person wants to achieve. Theresa May makes this point about the school strike: understandable, but young people missing valuable lessons makes it harder for them to solve climate change. As others have already pointed out, climate change demands rapid action – waiting until some vague point in the future when the children are old enough to do something is relinquishing responsibility instead of meaningful action.

It is, however, hard to deny that fear and anger sometimes lead people to choices they regret. However, dismissing emotional responses on this basis is too quick. There are many examples where fear and anger have triggered the correct response and created a motivational push for change. As Amia Srinivasan, an Oxford philosopher working on the role of anger in politics, puts it,

Anger can be a motivating force for organisation and resistance; the fear of collective wrath, in both democratic and authoritarian societies, can also motivate those in power to change their ways.

Young people take part in a climate strike in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lauren McGlynn, Author provided (No reuse)

A lot of social change has happened because of anger against injustice, empowering the weak and oppressed, while causing those in power to fear they may be ousted leads to reforms and change. We do need scientific understanding of the climate crisis to solve it, but banning emotions from the debate and dismissing rational fear and anger about climate change may encourage people to do nothing.

So, not only are children, who are angry and scared about climate change, rational, they might be more so than the adults criticising them. Emotions play a bigger part in life beyond rationality – they mark values and indicate what people care about. Fear of the future and anger at inaction are ways young people can express their values. Their emotions are, in the words of feminist writer Audra Lorde, an invitation to the rest of society to speak.

Dismissing the emotions of school children not only invalidates their rational responses to a grave situation – it implicitly states that their values aren’t taken seriously, and that adults don’t want to reach out to them.

Featured image: Climate Angels by Takver at Extinction Rebellion Declaration Day in Melbourne, Australia. March 2019 CC BY-SA 2.0

This article was first published on The Conversation

Filed Under: Articles, Politics Tagged With: climate change, environment, Extinction Rebellion

About Quan Nguyen

Quan Nguyen is PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, and a member of Extinction Rebellion Scotland.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. William Ross says

    April 17, 2019 at 1:20 pm

    Quan

    Unfortunately, the children`s emotions are entirely misplaced and futile.

    You assert the meteor analogy as if it were holy writ but many, including many scientists, do not agree. If CO2 is the unique driver of the modest recent global warming why did we come out of the Little Ice Age long before industrialisation? Serious people need serious analysis.

    The World`s energy supply is made up of 85% fossil fuels and the rest is largely made up of nuclear and hydro. How are you going to replace our energy matrix? What happens when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine?

    Any attempt to radically re-order the World`s energy matrix will constitute a certain catastrophe but it is not happening.

    The children are being misled by middle class fantasists. Time to end the Children`s Crusade and grow up.

    Reply
    • Fay Young says

      April 20, 2019 at 3:24 pm

      ‘Business ignoring the risks of climate change will fail to exist’.

      A very grown up warning this week from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England along with François Villeroy de Galhau governor of the Bank of France. Along with David Attenborough. And the great majority of the world’s scientists. Together they warn we have little more than ten years to make the fundamental changes needed to avoid climate catastrophe.

      It’s not an easy message but we must listen. And adapt.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-47965284

      Reply
  2. William Ross says

    April 22, 2019 at 9:06 am

    Fay

    Thanks for your comment. What an odd quote from Carney! Businesses will “fail to exist”.
    I wonder what personal plans Mr Carney has in place to dramatically reduce his own life style so as to achieve net zero UK emissions by 2025? Will they be as realistic as his forecast that the UK would lose 500,000 jobs in the year after a Leave vote? Perhaps as the World is ending we will realise that we are actually £4000 worse off because we have left the EU???

    I have posted comments on various climate change articles asking why, if CO2 is the driver of climate ( as it must be to validate the thesis of the article above), did we come out of the Little Ice Age before industrialisation? Why was it possible to grow outdoor grapes in Hexham in Roman times? Why were the Vikings able to plough the fertile land of Greenland in the early middle ages? What happened to the Arctic ice in that much warmer era? No response. Never any response.

    I also ask how you think it is firstly technically and secondly economically possible to achieve zero emissions by 2025? Are you aware of the level of the economic collapse that would be necessary to even approach this goal? Are you aware that wind farms only work when the wind is blowing? There is no solar power at night? Would you want a fridge powered only by wind power? A hospital?

    The writer praises the importance of emotions in the climate change debate. Sorry, I think rationality is much more important.

    Macron thought he would virtue signal by introducing measures penalising diesel. He got the gilet jaunes instead.

    I am waiting for some answers but I will not hold my breath.

    William

    Reply
    • Fay Young says

      April 29, 2019 at 9:28 pm

      I also recommend our latest post, William, an article by Mike Rivinton, a Scottish scientist analysing and describing the risk of climate change. And our urgent need to take rapid, decisive action.

      Reply

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