How we lost the battle for human survival by calling global warming “climate change”

I remember the first time I understood what “Greenhouse effect” was. It was 1990, and I was a third student in Doug Selwyn’s class at Greenlake elementary school in Seattle. Chemicals in our atmosphere trap the sun’s heat, we were told. Cars, planes and factories that burn gasoline were warming our entire planet, and it was threatening all life as we know it.

Even then, the idea was simple. Anyone who stood by a car’s exhaust pipe knew the smell of burnt fuel. That those fumes could be deadly was hardly a logical stretch.

The Greenhouse Effect Becomes Global Warming

Years later — I don’t know how many — I remember the greenhouse effect being referred to as “global warming.” Over time our planet’s surface temperature has risen because of trapped carbon emissions. The ozone hole over Antarctica, and what we were going to do about it, was a matter of international urgency.

We could do something about global warming. We were launching satellites to explore Jupiter, and the outer reaches of our solar system. Science was making new breakthroughs every day. Most of all, we are Americans. If anyone was going to solve global warming, it would be us!

What is Climate Change?

It’s been 26 years since I first learned about the greenhouse effect. Today we call it “climate change,” our most significant effort thus far to tackle the threat.

Climate change is a weasel word. The name doesn’t tell us whether the climate is changing for better or for worse. Climate change was given to us by science deniers, who knew for decades that the fossil fuel industry was killing the planet, yet they chose to keep making money at humanity’s expense.

Safeguard Your Language

Climate change, as a word, and as an existential threat, is an example of why principles matter so much in this word. When we surrendered the language of crisis to people who deny science, we gave the doubters more influence than scientists.

Change is constant. It’s a fact of life. Climate is huge, unfathomable, and changes from one reason to another. Together the words “climate” + “change” seem more like an idea that might or not be real. Exactly why people don’t take it seriously, which is why it’s crucially important to safeguard your language. If you don’t protect the language of your cause, someone else will use it against you to frame the agenda, and leave you reacting. It’s that easy to lose the game.

We don’t have the luxury of getting this one wrong.