Responding before responseability: the delayed realisation of climate change as discrepant discourse formation

Abstract

This article situates public statements by governments and political leaders in a contingent process of building the capacity to respond to rapid climate change. How do these statements work and how do they contribute to an adequate response to this overwhelming existential problem in the future? How is this done before the capacity to respond has been achieved, and to what effect? The article outlines the stages of these pre-response responses, reconstructing the emergence of climate policy, climate law, and a global climate regime, as well as the multiple struggles and inevitable gaps along the way. I use a question-response pairing drawn from the work of Harvey Sacks to capture the asynchronicity of climate discourse, including climate knowledge and governance, and the pull factors that evolve with each preliminary response. The thickening of accountability plays a central role in this tortuous course, increasingly employing and judging governance at the same time.