Through my own formative influences and reflections, I am now convinced that if we want to deal with climate change we need a kind of figure/ground reversal. For decades now climate campaigners have often talked as if the world’s other issues have to be held constant in the background (“We don’t have time to deal with all that”, they say) and climate change must become the key variable in the foreground (“We just have to act! Now!”, they say). This is the framing behind calls for the declaration of climate emergency, which are understandable, but too generic and shrill to shift systemic inertia. Climate change is far more interesting than merely being an emergency, and it deserves better.