Abstract 
Climate change is profoundly emotional. This emotionality is often framed in therapeutic terms—anxiety, solastalgia, grief—each carrying a strongly negative charge. Namibian pastoralists, however, use different words. They speak of ǃŪke-ai, a form of collective loneliness, and other shared affectivities that also contain a glimmer of hope. Drawing on people's vocabulary and neo-phenomenology, I theorise how affective relations between human and non-human bodies generate atmospheres that transcend their constituent elements. These atmospheres inevitably shift when elements such as rain, pasture or animals disappear due to climate change. As this loss becomes palpable, the landscape begins to haunt in an uncanny way. Yet for Namibian pastoralists, loss is never final. Their emotional responses demonstrate how hope can be cultivated, paving the way for alternative futures. Thus, the atmospheres of climate change haunt ambivalently: they wound by recalling what has vanished, yet they also vitalise through the promises they hold.
 

Bio
Michael Schnegg is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Hamburg. His ethnographic work aims to explore what it feels like to live a rural life in an increasingly urbanized and warming world. To this end, he is collaborating with philosophers to further the field of phenomenological anthropology.