In the face of environmental ruin at the hands of extractive, profit-led, consumption-driven practices, and human and non-human loss of life, there seems to be no other rational emotion to feel than rage.
In his book Earth Emotions, the philosopher Glenn Albrecht explores the range of emotions that arise within us in response to environmental breakdown. Of the seventeen new terms he coined, terrafurie describes the shared, extreme anger felt by those who witness the devastation around them and either feel unable to change the direction of that destruction or aim that anger at challenging the status quo and holding the leaders responsible for the damage to account.
Accelerating species loss and extinction is something to be mad about. Worsening air quality, especially in the poorest areas, is something to be mad about. Increasingly severe climate disasters- hurricanes, floods, forest fires are things to be mad about. Bearing witness to these atrocities whilst world leaders make decisions fuelled by power and profit while threatening people and planet…that’s for sure something to be mad about. Living through cultural and ecological breakdown, Solange’s words could not be more true: there’s a lot to be mad about.
Just this week, those of us in the UK have been met with the devastating reports that our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, may approve new oil and gas drilling at the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea. If approved, Jackdaw would emit as much carbon annually as the entire country of Ghana, and Rosebank would generate the equivalent of 70% of the UK’s annual emissions. Whilst Burnham has not confirmed approval of Rosebank or Jackdaw, it is unclear whether or not he will bow to the intense lobbying from the oil and gas industry as he steps into his new role and, and according to Labour deputy leader, Lucy Powell, the party is “absolutely clear that North Sea gas and oil is an important part” of the manifesto commitments and “achiev[ing] long term energy security and lower bills”.
Yet, as Tessa Khan, executive director of the renewable energy campaign group Uplift, makes clear in The Guardian:
“There is very little oil left in the North Sea and a field like Jackdaw would only make a 2% difference to how much we have to import to meet our gas demands…[and] as for our energy security…80% of the oil we produce in the North Sea ends up being exported…that’s not going into people’s cars or British industry”.
With 2700 excess heat-related deaths estimated across England and Wales alone in the recent UK heatwaves in May and June, the prospect of investing in climate-wrecking projects is positively enraging.
Potential and Precision
We have a lot to be mad about, and as long as our bodies tremble and hearts ache, we must resist the forces that manipulate and control, pushing us further away from that madness which keeps us in contact with our deep care for and love of the Earth. But, at a time when it seems as if every day brings new enraging news and announcements, how we channel our anger becomes an essential question.
As Audre Lorde says, our ‘well-stocked arsenal of anger [is] potentially useful against oppressions . . . focused with precision, it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change’. Rage is a fire, one that can enlighten and warm, yet burn and destroy in equal measure. So often, the rage we feel becomes corrosive, soul-sucking, even…competitive, our level of performed rage signalling the depth of our commitment. We have a right to rage, but how do we avoid righteous rage? Lorde reminds us of the ‘potential’ of rage to catalyse positive change, emphasising that this is not a given but something that requires care, thought and intention. We must be ‘precise’: in the ways we channel our rage, who we inflict it upon, how we harness it, and what underlying visions and meanings we attach to it.
What I have learned, through working in community in the face of destructive mineral extraction in Ghana, and through documenting the stories of rage and resistance of a wide range of marginalised communities in my first book Natural Connection, is that we can cultivate energising, purpose-holding rage that is not suppressed or left festering in the stomachs of individuals but tended to and transformed into sustained and joyful action.
Joy is the Sister of Rage
All too often, especially on social media, rage is not turned into action but cycles of doom through which our individual and collective vital energy is dissipated. In these times, it can feel not only impossible, but deeply shameful to feel that we can carve out spaces of joy when there is so much destruction unfolding around us. But rage practised without a vision or embedded ritual of joy becomes its own pollutant, fuelling disconnection and disillusionment. As I write in Natural Connection, joy is the sister of rage. Reflecting on these words now, I would go further and say that joy is an essential accomplice in transforming anger into action.
In March 2023, I had the pleasure of sitting on the pre- show panel of the stage adaptation of International Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead at the Barbican, exploring ‘the Ethics of Activism’. One of the many nuggets of wisdom I gained in that panel discussion came from Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide International. When talking about anger and the despair that drives so many of us to care about environmental issues, she made the crucial point that, though the emotion is valid, we cannot stay in anger. We cannot reside in it. That anger is necessary but must at some point be transformed into action. Action sustained by anger alone is quick to burn out. The flame burns bright but not for long. What then can we use to sustain our anger and transform it into action without losing the spark? Joy.
In the words of Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall-Kimmerer, “even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift”. That we need to think of joy as not only something we take from the world but also as something we are tasked to bring to it. With Kimmerer’s words, we see that an absence of joy is an act of violence on the Earth itself; it is to ignore the beauty that the world offers us every day, without fail, and despite destruction.
Environmental and social activism, in its myriad forms, is a lifelong commitment that will see intense peaks and troughs over our lifetimes and across generations, and so must we move through interconnected cycles of joy, rage, grief, awe, loss and hope. Rage is what enlivens us to the realities of destruction and our power to resist it, and joy is how we sustain our devotion. As the writer, poet and wildlife biologist J. Drew Lanham tells us, we must remember that:
“Joy is the justice we give ourselves”.
Actions for your Anger
For those based in the UK, here are some actions you can take now to channel your rage into collective action and oppose oil and gas development in the North Sea:
Support the ZeroHour Secure our Future, For Us Campaign calling on Andy Burnham to:
Meet the UK’s international climate and nature commitments
Pass the Nature + National Security Bill in this Parliament
Reject all new oil and gas licences, including Rosebank, and deliver a just transition
Formally register your disapproval of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields with the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning by emailing OPRED@energysecurity.gov.uk.
Songs to Crash Out To
Lastly, madness can’t be nurtured through the mind alone, but must be felt and processed through the body and heart too. Here’s a tracklist to soundtrack your transformation of rage into action:
Solange - Mad
David Axelrod - The Warnings Part II
Nia Archives - Ode 2 Maya Angelou
Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me
Death - Politicians In My Eyes
Public Enemy - Fight the Power
Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution
Jamiroquai - Emergency on Planet Earth
Pixies - Monkey Gone to Heaven
Queen Latifah - Just Another Day
Thank you for reading. With love and solidarity,
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