The five stages of transition grief

The energy transition is terminally ill. Its "parents" are grieving. But they won't be the ones paying for the funeral.

The first time I encountered the concept of the five stages of grief was in my teens, when I studied A-level psychology. Like most of the things we learned on that subject, I was fascinated by the idea that most of us react to grief in basically the same way.

Later, when life made sure I experienced grief first-hand, I had a chance, more than once, to verify the truth in those five stages, even if I did not go through all of them, which I attribute to the wise way in which my now late parents brought me up, and which included, from an early age, the absorption of the fact that nobody lives forever. Nobody.

Yet, as many of you would know, the five stages of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross defined, were not originally conceived of as stages of grief. They were conceived of as stages of terminally ill people’s mental preparation for death. They were called the five stages of death originally.

But because grief can be caused by so many things, from losing a loved one to seeing the work of your life collapse into a heap of chaos, the concept of the five stages of grief lends itself to many different contexts.

The energy transition is one such context and the way pro-transition politicians and unelected officials of international pro-transition organisations are reacting to the latest trends in that transition suggests they are already in the denial stage. The grief party is in full swing.