Eco-emotions in climate deliberation: A deliberative mini-public on consumption and mobility in Spain

Abstract

Challenged by the climate crisis, transformations require critical conversations about our behaviours and underlying emotions. While literature is explicit on the need for closing the emissions gap, what is often left ambiguous is how to get there. Popular focus underlines the need for behavioural change, yet calls are either very specific, limited to the agency of the individual (e.g. eating less meat) or are bound by broad socio-cultural shifts taking place over extended periods of time (e.g. moving away from coal).

This paper explores how eco-emotions on the climate crisis, particularly on consumption and mobility, manifest in a deliberative mini-public (DMP) conducted in Spain by analysing a 12-h transcript of a collective setting. We argue that DMPs have the potential to disentangle the emotive and cognitive on why we do certain things and fail to act upon others. Through expressing, discussing and reflecting on emotions, such platforms help individuals process emotions, reflect on the functionality of emotions, elevate emotions from the individual to the collective (sociality of emotions), observe place-based experiences and emotions arising due to local and cultural particularities (spatiality of emotions), ultimately harnessing emotions and cognition to collectively mobilise toward transformative change.