ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to connect the rhetoric of environmental crisis to a set of conceptualized topoi from the field of apocalyptic rhetorical studies. It conceptualizes and describes an alternative topos of place, as both emergent and needed in the further evolution of climate change discourse. Communication about climate change, for instance, is very much contingent on data and scientific modeling, just as proponents of impending financial meltdown would support their argument with economic statistics and analyses. A rhetor wishing to make an argument about the critical state of the global climate and its impact on human civilization is thus confronted with the dual task of relating the topos of evil to our timely existence and providing an authoritative timetable for the predicted disaster. The chapter demonstrates the different workings of the topos of time and the topos of place within the representation of the climate crisis.
