ABSTRACT
Humans feel climatic and meteorological phenomena in multiple ways; for example, we might sweat during a heat wave or feel anxious when learning about rising sea levels. However, our feelings are rarely accepted or leveraged as a mode of engaging with climate change. More often, dispassionate scientific or disembodied cultural methods of knowing climate change are promoted. This is largely because dominant ways of understanding what climate is position humans as separate from climate, rather than beginning from recognition that humans are part of climate. Drawing on Indigenous philosophy, feminist posthumanism and multispecies studies, this introductory chapter makes the case that conceptualising climate as a process of living-with can enable more effective climate change engagement. Understanding climate as a set of affective and embodied more-than-human relations attunes to human enmeshment in the energetic flows of climate. It also foregrounds the existential distress engaging with climate change can generate. In order to respond to these emotional challenges, we will need to learn to live with climate change. Exploring what this might entail, and how it could be fostered, is the central focus of this book. This chapter outlines what the book offers in this regard. It includes an explanation of the methodology and an introduction to the case study discussed in Chapters 3, 4 and 5.
