“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
Words matter — and so does wording.
A starving, disoriented polar bear wanders into a town in Siberia, hundreds of miles from where it should be at this time of year.
A new survey reports the glacial ice cap in the Himalayas is melting twice as quickly as climate scientists predicted just 10 years ago.
Other climate scientists are startled to find Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted.
The term “climate change” no longer suffices, The Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner decided earlier this year. From now on, she announced, the Guardian would use more pointed, up-to-date terminology.
Semantics? Possibly, but in a sit-down this past week with Guardian readers editor Paul Chadwick, Viner elaborated on the reasons for her five changes to the Guardian’s in-house style guide. The old terms are not banned, she stressed: It’s simply that the new terms are preferred, wherever possible.
Only the most hardened climate denier, after all, would argue that the climate crisis hasn’t precipitated a conversation crucial to our future.
On the use of climate emergency, crisis or breakdown for climate change, for example, Viner noted that immediate action is needed to combat carbon emissions — right now — and yet emissions continue to grow. “That’s an emergency or crisis,” she said. “Extreme weather is increasing; and climate patterns established (over) millennia are changing. (That’s) breakdown.”
Global heating is more accurate than global
warming. “Global heating is more scientifically accurate . . . Greenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back into space.”
The use of “wildlife” is preferred to biodiversity. “Biodiversity is not a common or well-understood term, and is a bit clinical when you’re talking about all the creatures that share our planet.”
“Fish populations” are preferred to fish stock. “Fish do not exist solely to be harvested by humans — they play a vital role in the natural health of the oceans.”
“Climate sceptics” — the word “sceptic” gives them too much credit when confronted with empirical evidence that we can all see with our own eyes: The ice caps are melting, and polar bears are starving. The more scientifically accurate handle, Viner says, is “climate-science denier” or the shorter, simpler “climate denier.”
Said Viner: “Very few experts are, in good faith, truly sceptical of climate science, or of the necessity for strong climate action.”
Those who argue that the climate crisis isn’t a crisis, are flying in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Much like the climate, language is in constant state of flux and constantly evolving, whether, as Chadwick pointed out, it’s language as description or language as exhortation.
Language in the service of a greater good is about harnessing the power of words to focus minds on an urgent global issue.
Semper fidelis, semper vera.