**1. Introduction**

*So let us not talk falsely now The hour is getting late* All along the watchtower. Bob Dylan (1967).

Plato understood Eros as an intermediate between the human and the divine. Less metaphysically, and with differing emphases, the Freudian tradition sees Eros as representing the life force that generates the will to live. However voiced, Eros is the wellspring of purpose and delight, creativity and affinity. What is the chance this bounteous muse will live on in the presence of climate collapse?

In a future roiled by grief, in a context where there will be outlandish disorder and destruction, this a difficult question as it forces a brutal truth into view: it is predicted billions will die in a future structured by climate collapse. In the presence of this actuality, paired with the terrible knowledge that billions are currently, and will continue to, endure lives of suffering, there is a fact that, in and of itself, inevitably and horribly folds back into the psychic conditions within which we live.

In this landscape many will have, more or less, the physical resources to survive. A minority will be disproportionately privileged to such an extent that they will be able to live in material luxury. Physical variables acknowledged, all who are alive will live

within a common psychic condition: fear and despair with the latter especially lashing equanimity. Everybody will know. The good place we used to inhabit is gone. She is not coming back. Mother nature as we knew her, she is gone.

Sentenced to endless anguish and remorse, in a close-to-forsaken condition, can Eros' positive energy last and continue to nurture the human spirit? There will always be sex, but will we still be enlivened by the timeless frisson between play and actuality, imagination and action, that has long sustained us? This question is the destination focus of the present contribution.

Before Eros' future can be addressed, a prior question arises: why is it so difficult to recognize, and accept, the reality of climate collapse? In what follows this difficulty is argued to implicate (i) a formidable conceptual challenge, and (ii) a profoundly disturbing affective component. Who can come to terms with the idea that more frequent and intense fires, floods, droughts and extreme temperatures points to a progressively de-regulating environment?

Before considering the prospects for Eros two intermediate issues are attended to. The first of these examines the intra-psychic correlate of living with climate collapse. This consideration stimulated a general proposition: as climate collapse accelerates, and as the scale and timelessness of this disruption takes hold, experiences of guilt and loss, anger and despair, will tend to be amplified by pre-existing unconscious tropes, particularly the fantasy of the vengeful, all-powerful mother. This possibility is considered as a specific condition.

The second issue concerns the prospects for maintaining a degree of mental health in an environment that will be progressively totalized by climate collapse. However schematic, this sub-section argues there is some possibility private tumult might be held against, if not ever denied, in so much as, firstly, the militarization of the self is eschewed, and secondly, that collective rituals recognize loss and appropriately articulate contrition. These two intermediate interests examined, the destination focus is examined: might Eros still have a place in the long hard rain of climate collapse?

Before proceeding, a language use issue should be clarified. Throughout the paper the term 'climate collapse' is preferred to the terms 'climate crisis'. 'climate emergency' or 'climate change.' This may seem an extreme position given action to reverse emissions, and to mitigate the effects of climate change, are both necessary and possible. I absolutely agree that radical action to support the environment is required, and I also acknowledge that the terms 'climate crisis' and 'climate emergency' have a potentially important role to play in raising public awareness about the need to make fundamental, climate positive changes.

This clear, the decision to prefer the term 'climate collapse' was taken because the terms 'climate crisis' and 'climate emergency' incorrectly imply that there is a definite alternative to the world experiencing the effects of 200 years of climate vandalism. Unfortunately, the research is clear. Irrespective of what is done now and into the future, the progressive degradation that is already underway cannot be reversed. More, it remains uncertain if decisive progressive action will actually be taken. Given these two facts, the current purpose is served by envisaging that, to a marked extent, climate collapse is an inevitability [1].
