Climate Crisis or Climate Emergency? Tracing Differing Temporal, Spatial, and Felt Constellations in Youth Climate Rhetorics

Amid the surge of youth climate activism, youth have been invited to speak in international political forums as representations of the human dimension of climate impacts. Expanding scholarship on rhetorical constellations, or patterns of meaning-making across texts, I turn to youth political forum speeches and analyze how youth foreground intergenerational justice through crisis and emergency temporal, spatial, and felt constellations. Through grappling with these different constellations and the way they conceptualize vulnerability, responsibility, privilege, and solidarity underlying just climate action, I consider how youth navigate political spaces and how emergency and crisis are particularized by youth to emphasize the temporal, spatial, and felt dimensions of climate justice. I contend rhetorical constellations offer a valuable lens for environmental communication scholars to interrogate temporality, spatiality, and feeling as important sites of struggle for climate justice.