Abstract
This article examines the rhetorical figuration of “our children” in climate change discourse. Based on an analysis of James Hansen’s book, Storms of my Grandchildren (2009), Barack Obama’s speech at the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015, and a newspaper article about the Norwegian environmental organization, The Grandparents’ Climate Campaign, it argues that the uses of “our children” reflect a notion of a family-timed future. The trope implies a “we” working as the active subject in the texts, while “our children” simply represents a future to be saved. This structure also authorizes “the parent” as a position of enunciation in climate change discourse. The article argues that the authority of this position is based on a heteronormative reproductive futurism.
Highlights
This article examines the rhetorical figuration of “our children” in climate change discourse
His speech concerned the bilateral relationship between the USA and France, in the past, present and future. He argued for the importance of international climate agreements, with an implicit critique of the USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. He further emphasized the importance of finding “a smooth transition to a low-carbon economy,” and proclaimed: “What is the meaning of our lives, really, if we work and live, destroying the planet while sacrificing the future of our children?” And he added: “I believe in building a better future for our children, which requires offering them a planet still habitable in twenty-five years.”2 A year later, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg spoke in the British Houses of Parliament
The temporal aspects of the Anthropocene have been widely discussed during the last decade
Summary
This article examines the rhetorical figuration of “our children” in climate change discourse. The trope implies a “we” working as the active subject in the texts, while “our children” represents a future to be saved This structure authorizes “the parent” as a position of enunciation in climate change discourse. I will ask why a climate-changed future so often is articulated in terms of the future of “our children”, and what the uses of this trope tell us about notions of time and temporality. This article will explore the intertwining of values, experiences and temporal structures of the trope “our children”, by examining how “our children” configures the relationship between the present and the future, and how the uses of “our children” authorize a certain position of enunciation in climate change discourse. It will argue that narrative approaches must be taken into consideration in the study of climate change temporality
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