Abstract
In this response to R & oslash;kenes and Jornet as part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, we celebrate the contributions they make as they analyze Norwegian teenagers grappling with hope and hopelessness as part of a disciplinary unit on environmental sustainability. We discuss various ways of treating hope and hopelessness as emotional configurations and sensemaking tools. We draw on alternate theorizations of hope, including hope as a discipline, active hope, and critical hope, to argue for politicized understandings of hopelessness as an often-necessary part of climate education. We argue that if hope is a learning target for science education, critical science educators must teach and practice social movement repertoires that build power, giving young people a taste of meaningful social action and embedding them in politicized relations of solidarity.