Never too soon, always too late: Reflections on climate temporality

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 Rock Creek, Kettle River, British Columbia. Image copyright Andreas Rutkauskas 2019. Used with kind permission of the artist.