ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the difficult task of matching historical scales of environmental change with cultural change. It is positioned to invite emotions theorists to encounter the incredible range and depth of social science research on feelings that are mediated in curious and overwhelming ways within climate change studies. In order to begin to map how idiosyncratic affect is macro-reflexively managed (Patulny & Olson, this volume, Chapter 1), it is instructive to examine the cultural politics that influence and are influenced by the psychology of the imagination – particularly as climate change and studies of concomitant ‘net effects’ of human action invest considerably in rhetorical tropes, metaphor and metonymy to make their case.
