Leaders are eager to fill us with positivity, but research shows people in distress are more likely to take collective action

If despair is the most unforgivable sin, then hope is surely the most abused virtue. That observation feels particularly apposite as we enter the Cop season, that time of United Nations megaconferences at the end of every year, when national leaders feel obliged to convince us the future will be better, despite growing evidence to the contrary.

Climate instability and nature extinction are making the Earth an uglier, riskier and more uncertain place, desiccating water supplies, driving up the price of food, displacing humans and non-humans, battering cities and ecosystems with ever fiercer storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and forest fires. Still worse could be in store as we approach or pass a series of dangerous tipping points for Amazon rainforest dieback, ocean circulation breakdown, ice-cap collapse and other unimaginably horrible, but ever more possible, catastrophes.