explore how to develop it. Given the likely awesome consequences of climate change and the increasingly dim prospects of averting disaster is despair not an appropriate response? Can one be both happy and aware of the terrible realities of climate change? Yes. Despair is an appropriate response, but it's important to see despair as part of the process of coming to terms with loss. It is no longer possible to believe that we will avert the catastrophic consequences of climate change and that is a terrible knowledge to absorb. It will produce in anyone who allows themselves to face it, the blackest, bleakest moments. However, to remain consumed by despair, to be despairing about everything, to insist on the primacy of this personal emotional response, is in the end to be in a narcissistic place. There has to be a process of coming through the rage at the idiocy of the politicians, the sadness at the destruction of the natural world, and the grief at what future generations will face, to the knowledge that there are still ethical decisions to be taken and responsible actions that matter. We cannot avert the consequences of climate change but we can still work for a world that faces those consequences equitably, justly and responsibly. And we should not punish ourselves for our failure to do more by refusing to take joy in a sunset, or delight in a child's first steps or laugh and crack jokes with friends. Freud is famously credited with