Do we need to talk about climate change differently?
This past year, we have been reminded of the vulnerability of the planet to climate change and of its immense cost to people. From deadly forest fires in Australia followed by a mouse plague, the recent flooding in Belgium, Germany, and Henan Province, China, heatwaves in Western Canada and the US; deadly yearly droughts leaving more than 1.14 million people food insecure in Southern Madagascar, and experts fearing that the temperatures of the Pakistan city of Jacobabad are unliveable for the human body.
These events are reminders of the magnitude of the climate and ensuing social crisis. Yet despite the stark evidence of a need to act, there can be a sense of being disempowered and overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge.
Although these disasters have such severe consequences for both people and the planet, perhaps underexplored is the role that language plays in how we feel about the crisis and how this might frame our responses to climate change. We might feel powerless to demand change on a global and inter-governmental level when the terms of reference are militaristic emphasising scale, death tolls, loss, and fluctuating between hope and hopelessness. These responses omit a sense of personal agency needed to bring about individual responsibility to act. The language that we use affects our ability to conceptualise global social and climate justice. It affects our agency and affects our ability to realign hopelessness with action. Language has the power to shift how we conceive of our individual responsibility to confront the realities of climate change and thereby demand better from the governments, corporations and agencies.
Dr Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Founder of Climate Interactive and an expert on solutions that address climate change whilst improving equity, recently asked: “What would be different if we were to see ourselves healing climate change rather than fighting it?”
“Fighting,” Dr Sawin said, “is more of the same. Healing (when history has been all about fighting) is transformation and change.” This framing of our current environmental crisis really resonates with us. It communicates the urgency, delays, denial and refusal to act, but by reintroducing the notion of compassion we are forced to take accountability and confront the root causes of the climate disaster. For example, one way to heal climate change would be to honour Indigenous land rights, holding nation’s accountable for the “planned epistemic violence of the imperialist project,” to use Gayatri Spivak’s phrase, whilst also protecting biodiversity, bodies of water and carbon sinks.
Moving away from language that evokes a violent, militarized masculinity towards a lexicon that vows to protect human and planetary well-being is invaluable for current and future generations. Dr Sarah Myhre has also pointed out that frames of combat “perpetuate and normalize ineffective leadership”, giving “agency to the people we need to remove from power.” To effectively change our climate trajectory, we must divest from military metaphors and reconcile our relationship with one another and with nature itself.
At present there is an overarching reliance on voluntarism governmentally, internationally and corporately. Slow rates of change centre on the best interests of a global economic system as opposed to healing and justice. Through carefully considering how we talk about climate and social justice, thinking collaboratively, communicating urgency underpinned through evidence of human and environmental costs, we believe that together we may be better placed to prompt greater governmental and corporate transparency, accountability and a realignment of responsibility to people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by the climate crisis.
Written by Amirkaur and Caitlin - Conscience Collective
