The Wages of Fear?: Toward Fearing Well About Climate Change
Abstract
What role, if any, should appeals to fear play in climate change communication? Moral and practical worries about fear appeals in the climate change debate have caused some to turn toward hope appeals. This chapter argues that fear can be a rational and motivationally powerful response to climate change. While there are good reasons to worry about the use of fear in politics, climate change fear appeals can be protected against the standard criticisms of political fear. Hope appeals, by contrast, seem vulnerable to serious motivational drawbacks in the case of climate change. We should not therefore abandon fear appeals in favor of hope appeals. Instead, we should take our bearings from Aristotle in an effort to cultivate fear more responsibly. Aristotle offers an appealing model of “civic fear” that preserves the best aspects of hope, elicits rather than extinguishes our sense of agency, and invites rather than forecloses deliberation.
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Climate anxiety can be connected to many emotions, including worry, fear, anger, grief, despair, guilt, and shame, as well as hope, although the presence of these vary between individuals.
“Climate anxiety can be connected to many emotions, including worry, 8 fear, 9 anger, 10 grief, despair, guilt, and shame, 11 as well as hope, 12 although the presence of these vary between individuals.”
From Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey (2021) · cites this paper as [9]
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- Authors
- McQueen, A.
- Corresponding author
- McQueen, Alison
- ORCID
- McQueen, Alison
- Venue
- Philosophy and Climate Change
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2021-04-01
- Pages
- 152-177
- OpenAlex
- W4242330328
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 29.05
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Keywords
- fear appeals, hope appeals, climate change communication, political fear, Aristotle, motivation, agency, deliberation, climate change
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