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Roy ScrantonClimate Change and the Virtues of Pessimism
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 5:00–6:30pm
We are urged to remain optimistic about solving climate change, but does this really make any sense? There are good reasons for being pessimistic about our ongoing global ecological crisis. Pessimistic messaging can’t be dismissed on practical grounds, since evidence shows that it actually works. And despite the criticisms often lobbed against it, pessimism cannot be reasonably dismissed as nihilistic, fatalistic, or a counsel of despair. Finally, there is virtue in pessimism: it is not only an accurate and resilient way of thinking about our predicament, but it is also compassionate, democratic, inclusive, and responsible. Indeed, given the gravity of our situation, pessimism may be our only hope.
Registration for this event will open in late September.
This event is free and open to the public, and registration is recommended. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.
Roy Scranton is the author of Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress (Stanford University Press, 2025), as well as I ♥ Oklahoma! (Soho Press, 2019), Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2019), We’re Doomed. Now What? (Soho Press, 2018), War Porn (Soho Press, 2016), and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (City Lights, 2015). He has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Nation, the New Republic, The Baffler, Yale Review, Emergence, Boston Review, and elsewhere, and he co-edited What Future: The Year’s Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate & Reinvent Our Future (Unnamed Press, 2017) and Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (Da Capo, 2013). Scranton is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches creative writing and environmental humanities, and serves as director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative.
