Climate change articulations: Co-optive, instrumental, and transformative modalities

With the fracturing of the global order, and as climate negotiations and agreements are increasingly weakened, ignored, or strategically undermined by powerful nations, corporations, and geopolitical actors, we are witnessing a renewed and troubling return to fossil fuel extractivism at the center of global discourse. In this moment of regression and uncertainty, there is an urgent need to rethink not only climate policy but also how climate change itself has been articulated, understood, and mobilized over time. We show how a mapping of diverse climate articulations allows us to analytically consider the varied ways in which climate concerns manifest across science, policy, and public discourse. These articulations, which we identify as co-optive, instrumental, and transformative, are not neutral; they are constructed, contested, and deployed by actors with varying degrees of power to shape priorities, allocate resources, and define responsibility across scales. The analysis situates climate action within institutional logics, geopolitical hierarchies, and sociopolitical conditions to move beyond binaries and recognize the plurality of ways that climate is articulated, how it comes to matter, and the dynamic, unstable, and uneven ways these articulations materialize over time. We argue that climate articulations are not merely interpretive, but constitutive of the political economy of climate governance, thereby opening up possibilities for both the reproduction of existing inequalities and the emergence of transformative and more just climate futures oriented towards equity, accountability, and systemic change.