“Climate Change” is the term used most frequently in broadcast media and in our personal conversations to describe seemingly relentless increases in global temperatures and the catastrophic results of these increases: melting glaciers and polar ice; rising CO2 and sea levels; severe superstorms; massive wildfires; floods, droughts, etc.
“Climate Change” is a euphemism.
“Climate Change” is chicken-hearted self-deception.
“Climate Change” plays directly into the hands and selfishness of those who deny categorically that human activity, especially the combustion of fossil fuels, has anything to do with CO2, floods, forest fires, heat waves, sea levels, or superstorms.
“Climate Change” is a bland and ambiguous term that must be replaced. It does not describe the seriousness, urgency, or the who, what, when, where, why, and how behind the gathering threat to the survival of our species on this planet. We must not continue to deceive ourselves by hiding the truth in holiday wrapping paper. To do so is to negate a primary reason for human verbal communication.
The noun “change’ could refer to day-to-day, seasonal, or geographic alterations in the weather, or to events or styles of clothing that differ from what they were in the past. Is such change beneficial or detrimental? We do not know because “change” is a general, lukewarm, middle-of-the-road word. The trouble is, of course, we live in a time that demands accuracy and understanding, not blandness and ambiguity. We are not lounging in period of gradual climate change, but rather, hurtling
toward a worldwide environmental catastrophe. In the media and in our conversations, we must use terminology that reflects accurately the acuteness and the dangerousness of our situation. We must call it what it is: a crisis.
In the term “Climate Change,” the adjective “climate” is just as evasive as the noun it modifies. The climate in Mexico differs from the climate in Nova Scotia. If the climate where you live is sunny today, it will be changed if it rains tomorrow. To paraphrase those who deny that current alterations in the atmosphere of planet Earth differ from those in the past: “What’s the big deal?” “The climate has always been changing.” “Fossil fuels have nothing to do with change in the climate.”
To summarize, we need a brief new term to describe accurately the magnitude, urgency, and cause of the environmental challenge which now confronts us. Human language develops when people create and use new words, phrases, or expressions to describe new situations or to describe pre-existing situations in a new way. If these new words or expressions are picked up and repeated with frequency by other people, they become new expressions of communication. As a beginning to this process, I suggest we move the term “Climate Change” into attic storage. We must replace it with a new term which describes more accurately and expresses more urgently the threat before us.
“Global Pollution Crisis” is my suggestion to begin the replacement process. “Crisis” expresses the urgency (the “Why” and “When”) that “Change” evades. “Global” better defines the worldwide extent (the “Where”) of this challenge than does “Climate.” To these two words, we must add “Pollution” (the “Who,” “What,” and “How”), identifying the causal factors heating our planet. We must be honest and admit that consuming ever-increasing amounts of industrial products results in increasing emissions in the atmosphere, more plastics and pesticides in our rivers and seas, and more refuse buried in our lands. By adding “Pollution,” we take responsibility for rising temperatures, Co2 and sea levels, etc.
“Global Pollution Crisis,” however, is only my proposal. I hope to receive from my readers many better suggestions. Please send them to me at: DrJosef@strengthforlife.com.
Next week: “What each of us can do now to confront the “Global Pollution Crisis”
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