Fighting Fire with Fire: Mobilizing Anger for Climate Justice

Philosophers are beginning to pay attention to climate emotions -- emotions experienced in the context of the climate crisis. Psychologists have been studying these emotions for longer than philosophers and have highlighted that they are among the most important predictors of climate change-related judgments and behaviors (see Brosch, 2021 for a review of this literature). A central debate in climate psychology and communication is whether it is most beneficial to induce positive or negative emotions regarding climate change (Brosch 2021). For example, while despair may be justified given the current state of affairs, it may lead to inaction because agents become unmotivated to act as they consider the battle to already be lost. On the other hand, while some hope may be justified, it can make agents complacent and overly optimistic that change will arise without much effort. One emotion that has received surprisingly little attention in this psychological literature is anger (Stanley et al. 2021; Sabherwal et al. 2021). In philosophy as well, eco-anger has been neglected -- the dominant climate emotions studied are hope and anxiety (Moellendorf, 2022; Mosquera & Jylhä, 2022). This is perhaps particularly surprising in the context of philosophical research as the climate crisis is often characterized as an issue of justice, and anger is seen as the paradigmatic response to injustice. Our two main aims in this paper are, (i) to establish that eco-anger is a justified response to climate injustice and (ii) to argue that eco-anger is beneficial to the fight for climate justice. To make this argument we first make clear what is meant by ‘climate emotions’, and by the rationality of these emotions, before arguing that anger is non-instrumentally justified, i.e., fitting (because the climate crisis involves injustices and anger is an apt response to injustice), and instrumentally rational (because it can lead to beneficial individual and collective actions). In so doing we identify targets at which eco-anger should be directed and highlight climate obstructionists as the most pressing target. We end with recommendations for how to mobilize anger for climate justice.