Changement climatique, colère et rationalité. Réflexions à la lumière de l’économie comportementale et du pragmatisme de John Dewey

Abstract

Experimental and behavioural economic analysis has highlighted the ambivalent role of anger. If anger is too intense and poorly channelled, it can lead to retaliation and the blocking of exchanges. However, there is a threshold of intensity for anger at which it is rational and useful for the person who expresses it. In particular, anger leads the person who is the object of it to adopt more respectful and fair behaviour. The theory of emotions of the American philosopher John Dewey questions the scope and effectiveness of an emotion in terms of its quality and intensity. Based on his approach, the question we ask in this article is to know under what conditions anger can be an emotion that can be converted into an individual and collective action to fight global warming. The aim is therefore to analyse the potential of anger in climate mitigation. We show that this potential depends to a large extent, as the pragmatist approach suggests, on the quality of expression of this emotion and its intensity.

Keywords

• emotions
• anger
• global warming
• moral action
• collective action