A perspective on emotion regulation and global anthropogenic climate change

Scientists have established consensus that humans are changing Earth’s climate and there will be negative consequences. Recent reviews describe emotion as a central component in human responses to climate change information, including decisions and actions that could be involved with climate change mitigation. Despite the burgeoning body of work on emotions related to climate change, we have only begun to understand how people manage those emotional responses, and the consequences of emotion regulation for mitigation. This brief perspective is intended to guide and promote work on emotion regulation and climate change mitigation. We apply the extended process model of emotion regulation to the climate change situation by considering climate change information as the initiator of emotion generative processes which can be influenced by emotion regulatory processes. We discuss emerging evidence on emotion regulation and climate change mitigation and consider directions for future research.