Climate emergency declarations occupy a legally ambiguous space between emergency measure and political rhetoric. Their uncertain status in public law provides a unique opportunity to illuminate latent assumptions about emergencies and how they are regulated in law. This article analyzes climate emergency declarations in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. It argues that these climate emergency declarations reflect back a set of paradoxes about the legal regulation of emergencies – paradoxes about defining the emergency, how time regulates and contains emergency power, and who gets to respond to the emergency and how. These paradoxes challenge long-held and over-simplified assumptions about emergencies and allow us to see the complex ways in which public law regulates emergencies – a necessity in a climate-disrupted world.

气候紧急状态声明在紧急措施和政治言论之间占据了法律上模棱两可的空间。它们在公法中的不确定地位提供了一个独特的机会来阐明关于紧急情况的潜在假设以及它们如何在法律中受到监管。本文分析了加拿大、英国、澳大利亚和奥特阿罗/新西兰的气候紧急状态声明。它认为，这些气候紧急声明反映了一系列关于紧急情况法律监管的悖论——关于定义紧急情况、时间如何监管和包含紧急权力、谁来应对紧急情况以及如何应对的悖论。