Framing Time in Climate Change Litigation

Abstract

Time is of the essence in relation to climate change. However, there have been few studies of how time features as a frame in legal mobilization against climate change. The current article explores temporal framing in a number of high profile climate litigation cases, including Urgenda, Kivalina, Kingsnorth, and the current US Our Children’s Trust proceedings. I argue that there is a tension between a future-looking scientific framing of time and both an environmentalist policy framing of time and a present-based scientific time frame. Under future-looking scientific framing, the effects of dangerous climate change have not yet occurred and remain some way off in the ‘modelled’ future. Under an environmentalist policy time frame, action is needed immediately, now in the present, and with a present scientific time frame climate harm is already happening or is imminent.