Hopelessness about the climate crisis threatens a new age of brutality

Doomism, despair and eco-xenophobia

At a lecture in 2018 in the preposterously unlikely setting of Ambleside, a twee tourist trap in the English Lake District, Prof Jem Bendell showed the power of his “doomist” ideology.  It could inspire and infuriate in equal measure. And tear the environmental movement apart in the process.

Skeena Rathor, who would become one of the leading voices in Ex…