How Climate Change Might Save the World

Abstract

We are faced with questions too big to fail and too big to answer. Most discussions on climate change are blocked; they are caught by catastrophism circulating in the horizon of the problem: what is climate change bad for? From a sociological point of view, because climate change is a threat to humanity, we can and should turn the question upside down and ask: what is climate change good for? The amazing thing is that if you firmly believe climate change is a fundamental threat to all of humanity, then that belief might bring a transformative, cosmopolitan turn in our contemporary life and the world might be changed for the better. This is what I call emancipatory catastrophism. The question then is: how might climate change save the world?