Volume 20, Issue 2, Fall 2023
Johanna Oksala
Pages 191-214
https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil2023919133
The Existential Threat of Climate Change
From Climate Anxiety to Post-Nihilist Politics
The article analyzes the experience of climate anxiety. The investigation is phenomenological in the sense that I will attempt to show that contemporary climate anxiety has a distinctive structure and philosophical meaning, which make it different from both psychological anxiety and existential anxiety, as commonly understood. I will also draw out the consequences of my phenomenological analysis for climate politics. My contention is that forms of prefigurative climate politics can respond to the profound disorientation and apathy regarding our future and help us face down the hyperbolic nihilism shadowing us.