Deadly climate destruction – or how to talk about climate change?
Scientists have been warning the public about the risks of climate change for decades, but a breakthrough is yet to happen. Although much progress has been made in terms of regulations, politicians have been too slow and too conservative in their reactions. A communication gap seems to have emerged between climate scientists, the public and policy makers, says habil. associate professor Bálint Forgács from PPK who, in his recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Climate, recommends some ways to bridge this gap.
When communicating their scientific findings, researchers often use metaphorical expressions to make their discoveries more intelligible to peers and laymen alike. However, Bálint Forgács argues
that metaphors are not always adequate for the purposes of scientific communication:
they can lead to misunderstandings and sometimes, for example in the discourse around climate, they can be downright harmful.
One crucial problem is that many of the most common climate change-related words have a positive emotional charge (like “warm”, “green”, “environmentally friendly”), so they do not effectively encourage the transformation of the current life-threatening way of operating and working. Instead of the positively charged term “warming”, Bálint Forgács suggests the words “global burning” or “overheating”.
In addition, terms that diminish the scale of the threat, such as “climate neutrality” or “net zero emissions”, do not help in finding a solution. Moreover, these softened terms are often used by companies that are otherwise responsible for a significant share of harmful emissions.
The words “catastrophe”, “crisis” and “collapse” all have a passive tone: they suggest helplessness in the face of the forces of nature. In contrast, using active terms could lend the impression of taking both responsibility and action back into our hands: we should switch to using words like “climate suicide” or “climate destruction” because we have control over our own behaviour, the researcher concludes.
A central metaphor in climate discourse is the “greenhouse”: a fragile, sophisticated building designed to retain heat. It shelters plants and provides food for people living in cold climates; if you connect this concept of the greenhouse to the climate change that threatens wildlife, it can understandably cause some confusion. This metaphor can also – falsely – suggest that reversing overheating is as easy as opening a greenhouse window. The study suggests that a term like “furnace effect”, for instance, would be more difficult to neutralise, even for deliberate commercial reasons.
Moreover, with the increasing prevalence of climate anxiety, discussing worst-case scenarios related to climate change will often be dismissed on the grounds of alarmism and fearmongering. To avoid this, Bálint Forgács suggests using medical language: within such a framework, the mention of emergencies would not be considered as fearmongering but rather as a life-saving intervention. If someone develops a fever, doctors try to reduce their body temperature before it becomes uncontrollable; they never wait until it reaches fatal levels. The same procedure should be followed with regard to the rising temperature of the Earth. When making medical decisions, we tend to be more personally involved and can think about the issue with a long-term view in mind.
The aim is not, therefore, to abandon the use of metaphors that are useful for condensing scientific findings, but to ensure that our expressions reflect the gravity of the existential threat.
The way we talk about climate change affects the way we think about it.
This is why scientists and journalists should replace euphemistic terms with new, strong and clear terms with a negative emotional charge and an active tone. Such a transformation of public discourse could lead not only to honest social debate, but also to the life-saving political decisions and new legislations that we have all been waiting for.