Fluid hope in a climate emergency : Lessons from an English citizens’ jury

Lewis, Pancho (2025) Fluid hope in a climate emergency : Lessons from an English citizens’ jury. Environmental Politics. pp. 1-22. ISSN 0964-4016

Abstract

What does it mean to build an authentic politics of hope in a climate crisis? Researchers have explored this question by examining the emergence of different forms of climate hope. This includes urgent, slow, and radical hope, each of which expresses different promises for the future. In this paper, I make the case for attending to ‘fluid hope’ to foreground how different forms of climate hope can be co-constitutive and are subject to being re-configured. I do so by drawing on a case study, that of the Copeland People’s Panel, a citizens’ jury in northern England, where people’s experiences of hope changed in and after the Panel. I conclude by explaining what possibilities the concept of fluid hope affords for empirical study and normative debate about hope in a climate emergency.