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Never too soon, always too late: Reflections on climate temporality
Author(s) -
Garrard Greg
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: climate change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.678
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1757-7799
pISSN - 1757-7780
DOI - 10.1002/wcc.605
Subject(s) - temporality , agency (philosophy) , rhetoric , democracy , politics , the arts , action (physics) , interpretation (philosophy) , discipline , sociology , epistemology , environmental ethics , political science , aesthetics , social science , philosophy , law , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
The “scientisation” of climate change, which placed the issue beyond democratic debate by declaring it a matter for the scientific expertise of the IPCC, has not provoked the required political and economic action to resolve it. “Tipping point” rhetoric and apocalyptic fictions, conveying increased urgency and shaming the present‐day, appear also to yield diminishing returns. Instead of representing the present as a binary choice—catastrophe or salvation—a Humanities‐informed viewpoint would represent past, present, and future in terms of unknowability, frailty, unavoidable interpretation, and limited agency. This article is categorized under: Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts