Artigo Científico

Resumo: Discourse on hypocrisy is plentiful in the climate politics of the Global North. A specific form of climate hypocrisy critique, the fossil hypocrisy charge, contends that climate activists’ demands for system change and phaseout of fossil fuels are hypocritical because their everyday living is thoroughly based on fossil fuels. The individualistic fossil hypocrisy charge, wielded by climate obstructionists, has been refuted in research. However, a fundamental kernel of truth underlying the charge, and the broader obstructionist ‘narrative of necessity’ of fossil fuels, remains unresolved: Contemporary life is constitutively entangled with fossil fuels. While avoiding individual hypocrisy, we show how researchers and climate advocates might remain subject to an adjacent problem, fossil complacency, if they disregard the kernel in their agendas of system change. By drawing from interdisciplinary energy research, we show how critique of fossil complacency helps in reorienting climate hypocrisy and system change debates to overcome obstructionist ‘climate realism’. © 2025 The Authors