ABSTRACT
Based on a two-year rhetorical field study, which included qualitative interviews and participant observations, this chapter explores public rhetoric surrounding the implementation of a Minnesota suburban city’s ambitious climate action plan. Using research gathered around temporal rhetorics at this site, this chapter explores the concept of futurity in climate action. The writer considers for future generations to be a commonplace of local climate action and argues that this commonplace, while it has value in motivating climate policy, can limit the types and beneficiaries of action taken up. Employing this commonplace regularly at the site steered action in specific ways, ways that led to ambitious emissions targets but lacked attention to important cobenefits that would ensure salient, equitable action. The chapter ends by calling readers to temper concerns about the future with a critical eye toward our present and the uneven distribution of pollution, wealth, and resources in order to act equitably on climate.
