How do we know when there is a climate emergency?

The overall question addressed by the project is how a number of key concepts relating to climate emergency have circulated in various contexts, impacting our understanding of action on climate over time.

The relationship between climate and time has a major impact on how the climate crisis is perceived, and also greatly influences what is considered feasible and morally right by individuals and in the political sphere. Over the past 20 years that relationship has been the subject of renegotiation and reinterpretation, both in scientific and in political contexts, as well as the media.

Numerous concepts or metaphors are in circulation. These support or weaken differing views on how urgent it is to manage or prevent climate change. Examples of such concepts are tipping points, abrupt climate change, carbon budget, climate debt and exceeding emission limits. 

These terms are often ambiguous and are sometime construed as arguments for resolute action to prevent climate change, or as arguments to do nothing. A key premise for the project is that these concepts impact both society and climate policy, and ultimately the action that is taken.

The purpose of the study is therefore to analyze how different understandings of the relationship between climate and time have developed discursively, and what those understandings say about civilization’s evaluation of existing risks, scientific knowledge and uncertainties, as well as the moral responsibility to act.

The project is divided into five sub-projects, including a synthesis of the first four sub-projects:

• A genealogical, or historical, analysis of how some relationships between climate and time have been addressed in UN climate panel reports from the 1990s to the present day.
• The approach to those climate-time relationships in research in the fields of climate economics, earth systems science and climate policy.
• A study of debates in the international media and digital social media.
• Interviews with key decision makers in the field, along with analyses of political documents, primarily from the EU.

The examination of how different perceptions are created as to the urgency of addressing climate change will help both laymen and politicians to adopt a critical approach to climate science and policy. The researchers believe it will also pave the way for more inclusive and constructive participation.

A further premise is the necessity of gaining a deeper understanding of the central concepts on which arguments for and against action of various kinds are based, and the fact there is currently no research studying the most central contexts in which relationships between climate and time are shaped and negotiated, not least from an historical perspective, and also how this occurs in interaction between the different contexts.