Entropy and the death drive.Why can humanity stop destroying itself?

Keynote Speaker
Roger Hallam: Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil

Friday 30th January 2026
6PM–8PM
Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ

Book tickets here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/entropy-and-the-death-drive-why-humanity-cant-stop-destroying-itself-tickets-1858260460059?

There is no later. This is later.”Cormac McCarthy, The Road*

We know the planet is burning. We know capitalism devours everything. We know war, genocide, and ecological collapse demand action. Yet collectively we persist in the very behaviors that guarantee our destruction.

Why?

Psychoanalysis has long understood that the drive toward destruction operates not only externally but within us—in our institutions, our politics, our psychic economies. Roger Hallam’s activism embodies the urgent conviction that catastrophe is already here, and only collective courage offers hope.

In this discussion, Hallam joins psychoanalysts David Morgan, Anna Harvey, and Hilary Lester to explore how the death instinct and psychic entropy manifest in climate collapse, political paralysis, and late capitalism’s compulsion to consume its own future.

What forms of protest, mourning, or radical solidarity might resist this drift toward planetary extinction?

Roger Hallam is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. A former organic farmer driven to activism by climate-related crop failures, he completed a PhD at King’s College London on civil disobedience and social change, becoming a leading strategist for non-violent direct action.

Dr Anna Harvey is a Senior Lecturer whose work bridges ecology and psychoanalysis.

Dr David Morgan*m is a Training Analyst (BPA, BPF), psychoanalyst, and convenor of Political Mind Seminars.

Hilary Lester (Chair) is a Training Analyst for the Society of Analytical Psychology and supporter of justice for Palestine.