Aristotle's account of tragedy, in the Poetics, suggests that the most powerful tragic experience is aroused when a playwright properly manages two transformations: peripateia and anagnorisis. Peripateia is an irreversible change in the course of events, from good to bad. Anagnorisis is the change, in the tragic hero's mind, from ignorance to knowledge. The proper management of the action of the play, to maximize this tragic experience, is for the second to come after the first: for the main character to suddenly learn something (that could have helped) only after it cannot help any more. This is how a philosopher's mind approaches literature, but it's a powerful literary insight. (Has proved illuminating and valid to centuries of readers, I mean). And a psychological insight, I think. What could be a worse psychological state than knowing things are going bad, and being hopeless to change that?
The paradigmatic case is Oedipus, who learns that he has taken horrible actions (killing his father and having children with his mother) only after he can't do anything to reverse them. The maximally terrible situation to be in, according to Aristotle.
It came to mind that humanity is effectively in the circumstance of a tragic hero right now, regarding climate change.
We know that we have wrecked our planet, but that knowledge has only become certain after we have effectively done so and now can't do anything to fix it.
This came to me in part as a result of the "How Can we Cheer Up the English?" thread, but also a RL conversation about why Americans feel so miserable of late. We're all carrying, as a psychological burden, what Aristotle identified centuries ago as the maximally terrible situation to inhabit.