Moving Past Climate Doom

What if the problem with climate conversations isn't that we're not scared enough — but that we're too scared to think clearly?

Melting glaciers. Ticking clocks. Apocalyptic headlines. We've been told fear is what moves people to act. Professor François Gemenne isn't buying it. One of the sharpest minds in environmental geopolitics, he argues that catastrophe-driven messaging doesn't spur action — it breeds fatalism, anxiety and division, and it's why the climate debate has stalled.

In this Salon, Gemenne makes the case for a different conversation entirely: one rooted in human agency, not helplessness. He'll explore what it actually takes to make a sustainable future feel attractive, achievable, and fair and he’ll connect the dots, showing why climate action can't be treated as an isolated "green issue" when it's entangled with everything from agriculture to social justice.

Come talk about the hard things without the polarization. A shared, desirable vision of the future starts with better dialogue, not louder alarm bells.

*This Salon Talk is part of Brussels Ideas Festival hosted at Full Circle House from 20-22 November 2026.
*Full programme available on https://fullcircle.eu/ideasfestival/

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ABOUT The Speaker
françois Gemenne is a specialist of environmental geopolitics and the governance of migration, as well as a Fnrs senior research associate at the University of Liège, where he also directs the Hugo Observatory, and at the University of Versailles (CEARC). He also lectures on environmental and migration policies in various universities, including Sciences Po (Paris and Grenoble) and Ulb in Brussels. He has worked in particular with populations displaced by environmental changes, including natural disasters, and the policies of adaptation to climate change. He has conducted field studies in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, Tuvalu, China, Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives, Mauritius and Japan, after the Fukushima disaster. In 2010, he was awarded the Isdt-wernaers Prize for achievement in the communication of science to the general public.