The accelerating climate crisis and its effects on eco systems, economies and societies constitutes a challenging aspect of reality. Yet, the imminent threat and concrete consequences seem strangely absent in daily lives and future imaginaries in the global north. Rather, different forms of affective evasion – or, unfeeling – structure social life and protect it from the crisis’ disruptive force. According to Freud, the labour of mourning is the condition under which a sense for reality can be accessed again after an experience of catastrophe or loss. How can a thorough examination of the deep “structures of unfeeling” (Berlant) and a practice of mourning reconfigure the “respect for reality” (Freud) that appears weakened?