Social Theory and Practice

published on September 23, 2023

Climate Resistance and the Far Future

This paper argues that climate injustice will be compounded in the future as a result of the deferred nature of many climate impacts. My claim is that the temporal disconnect between emissions and climate harm threatens future people’s ability to access what I call “resistance goods,” which rely on forms of address, often realised in oppositional political action. I identify three resistance goods—self-assertion, solidarity and testimony—and show that each is threatened by the temporality of climate change. A compound of climate injustice is that it will be experienced as demeaning, isolating and silencing by many future people.