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Emotional Perspectives On Existential Threat: Evaluating The Rationality Of Climate Anxiety, Rachael Lange

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: Is climate anxiety a rational emotion? In order to arrive at an answer, several queries embedded in the main question must be addressed. This paper will outline a theory of emotion in order to define anxiety, assess climate change as a specific emotional object, and compare the rationality of anxiety using two evaluative standards. Climate anxiety is an emerging emotional phenomenon experienced in response to the perceived detrimental effects of a warming climate. Due to the novel identification of this contemporary emotional phenomenon with the established emotion of anxiety, there has thus …