Rethinking our climate vocabulary: The fossil connection

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In our fight against climate change, one of the most powerful tools we have is language.

The words we use shape our understanding of the world and our actions. It’s time we rethink how we talk about climate-related events, to better reflect their true nature and origins.

Traditionally, terms like ‘wild weather’, ‘tornadoes’, and ‘natural disasters’ have been used to describe climate phenomena. However, these terms often mask the underlying human contributions, particularly the role of fossil fuels. By renaming these events with a direct reference to their causes, we can change how society perceives and reacts to them.

Consider the term “fossil crisis” instead of “climate crisis”. This subtle shift in language highlights the chaos and devastation induced by burning fossil fuels.

Similarly, “fossil disaster” instead of “natural disaster” reminds us that many of these extreme events are not purely natural occurrences, but are exacerbated by human actions, especially our reliance on fossil fuels.

Here are some other suggested terms:

  • Extreme fossil weather for extreme weather or wild weather
  • Fossil flooding instead of flooding or flash flooding
  • Fossil emergency for climate emergency
  • Fossil gas instead of gas or ‘natural gas’
  • Fossil fires for bush fires, wild fires or forest fires
  • Fossil twister for tornado
  • Fossil cyclone instead of cyclone
  • Carbon chaos or Fossil chaos for climate chaos
  • Fossil havoc for climate havoc
  • Carbon catastrophe or Fossil catastrophe for catastrophic events
  • Fossil conflict for conflicts over fossil fuel resources
  • …and the list goes on
Headline in The New Daily’s newsletter on 17 january 2024.
“Freak storm”? No, The New Daily, we have known for a long time that these storms would be coming. They are Fossil storms.

The goal of this new vocabulary is not just to rename, but to reshape our understanding and provoke action. By consistently linking climate events to their fossil fuel origins, we aim to create a more informed public, one that recognises the urgency of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Reframing “gas” as “fossil gas” directly ties it to its origin and reminds people of its environmental impact. This simple change in terminology can be a powerful tool in raising awareness about the fossil fuel’s role in climate change. It’s straightforward yet effective.

Headline in The New Daily’s newsletter on 22 January 2024.

Cyclone, ’50-degree’-heat and floods
as fossil weather whammy hits in two states

A new ‘fossil’ terminology could play a vital role in changing public perception and fostering a sense of urgency about addressing the climate emergency.

“Fossil” directly references fossil fuels, which are a major source of carbon emissions and climate change. The term “fossil” also has a sense of antiquity, suggesting something outdated or obsolete, which can be powerful in this context.

“Carbon” is a broader term that can be used in a wide range of contexts, not just limited to fossil fuels. It’s also a scientific term that might appeal to a different audience.

Both “fossil” and “carbon” send a strong and clear message about the origin and the source of the problem with extreme weather events, floods, droughts, bushfires and hurricanes.

Language is a mirror of our thoughts and intentions. Let’s use it wisely to reflect the reality of climate change and to foster a more sustainable future.

What do you think? Do you have other contexts or terms in mind where this approach could be applied?
You can share your ideas or a comment below.

The image on top of this page was created by Mik Aidt using ChatGPT

The press hardly links climate change with the related disasters

• Report linking heatwaves to climate change totally ignored

• Stories more likely to mention cricket than climate change

• About 9 per cent of the 528 articles about heatwaves across Australia in February referred to climate change.

The vast majority of the 172 stories about the WA heatwaves mentioned neither climate change nor heat-related health problem. In comparison, about half of stories about the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires mentioned climate change.

→ ABC News – 18 March 2024:
WA had its hottest summer ever, but climate change and heat-related health problems barely made the news
“Stories more likely to mention cricket than climate change.”

“Between fossil and life, we choose the side of life.”

Speaking of language…

Here’s an article that explores the loophole language used by Big Oil to distract from climate action. Beneath the conflict of interests and the lobbying, lies a minefield of strategic language, misleading messaging and false narratives.

→ Independent Australia – 31 July 2022:
Don’t be fooled by fossil fuel industry’s ‘green’ word salads
“PR companies working for the fossil fuel industry are appropriating language from within the climate movement, using it to perpetuate climate denial, writes Stella Levantesi.”

→ The Guardian – 13 January 2024:
Storms should be named after fossil fuel companies
“Instead of giving storms innocuous-sounding first names, making direct links between the polluters and the impact they cause would be a step forward, writes John Uden.”

→ Atmos – 11 January 2024:
Why We Need New Words for Nature
“The way we talk about the natural world can shape our relationship to it. In a time of environmental crisis, should we be paying more attention to the language we use?”

It’s like calling an invading army “unexpected visitors”

“One of the problems we face in persuading people to love and protect the living world is the language in which this love is expressed. Few of the terms we use vividly describe either the planet we are trying to defend or the threats it faces. Take “the environment”: a cold, abstract and distancing term that creates no pictures in the mind. Have you ever seen an “environment”? Or “climate change”, such a mild and neutral term to describe an existential catastrophe. It’s like calling an invading army “unexpected visitors”.

I’ve been pressing for more effective language for a long time, and I was delighted when, in 2019, the Guardian started changing the way it talks about our crisis, using terms such as “living planet” or “natural world” instead of “the environment”, replacing “climate change” with “climate breakdown”. I’m even happier to see how the Guardian’s shift has triggered a wider change.

But there is one term in particular that still niggles. It might seem an odd one to contest, because it’s pretty graphic: mass extinction.

It is used to describe the catastrophic events (there have so far been five since animals with hard body parts evolved) that wiped out many of the planet’s lifeforms. We are now in the midst of the sixth of these events. So what’s my problem?

Well, I think the term reflects what palaeontologists call “taphonomic bias”: a mistaken view of the past caused by what happens, or doesn’t happen, to be preserved. We call these events “mass extinctions” because it is easy to see the disappearance of large numbers of species from the fossil record. The rocks also reveal the deeper issue, but this is less immediately visible. Mass extinction, horrendous as it is, is one outcome of something even bigger: Earth systems collapse. This, I feel, is what we should call the thing we are facing. We are in the midst of the sixth Earth systems collapse.

In other words, human activities are not causing a biodiversity crisis, or a climate crisis, or a freshwater crisis, or a forests crisis, or a soils crisis, or an oceans crisis. We are creating an everything-crisis. While compartmentalising this omni-crisis helps us to study it and report on it, nature recognises no such boxes. All these systems are intimately connected and mutually dependent. There are no hard boundaries between them. If one fails, it threatens to bring down the rest. That is what happened in the previous five Earth systems collapses. We need, as much as we are able, to understand the whole.

Our omni-crisis is also a political and economic crisis. It is driven, above all, by a few immensely powerful oligarchs and corporations: the pollutocrats. It is a crisis of power: the power they wield over us and over Earth systems; their ability to block the progressive change we need; to ensure that business as usual, which has granted them their power, is sustained.

This is an existential crisis for them too. As the signs of gathering collapse become ever less deniable, their industries – fossil fuels, meat production, cars, roads, planes, mining, logging, fishing – are exposed to public scrutiny as never before. So they must fight harder than ever before.

They are pouring money into politics, funding and directing political parties, demanding ever more draconian laws against protesters, paying lobby groups (so-called thinktanks) to publish misleading claims, and funding troll farms to flood social media. The billionaire media, representing the same interests, crank out ever wilder misinformation about even the mildest policies (net zero, low emissions zones, 15-minute cities) which might help to arrest the slide towards destruction. Their strategies are omnicidal.

Our survival now depends on defending and expanding islands of resistance: places from which we can explain and debate the Earth systems crisis we face. The Guardian is one of these islands. By refusing to succumb to the pollutocrats’ full-spectrum assault on people and the planet, by investigating the strategies they use and the power they wield, by holding the governments they have captured to account, and by doggedly seeking to tell the truth about the crises we face, it develops some of the tools required to fight back. We need your help to be as effective as possible.

Nothing here is easy. Time is short, the powers arrayed against us are great. But we know that, just as ecosystems have tipping points, so do social systems, and history shows that these often turn out to be much closer than we imagine. The quest now is to reach the social tipping points before the ecological ones.

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Thank you,

George Monbiot
Guardian Columnist
Guardian News and Media”

~ Reposted by Michael Solomon on Linkedin.com, who commented:

“I think this is brilliant writing. So much so, that I would like to refer to it in an upcoming opinion piece for Pioneers Post. But there was no link in the email that said CLICK HERE TO READ IN YOUR BROWSER, or similar. So I contacted the help desk and chatted with Judith and she suggested I shared this on social media and thus created the link I’m after. Good thinking, Judith, thank you!

I am particularly moved by the paragraph starting: “Our omni-crisis is also a political and economic crisis. It is driven, above all, by a few immensely powerful oligarchs and corporations…”.

I just like to slightly revise it, to suggest that this appalling “business as usual” IS THE CRISIS. One driven by a system that rewards financial profit over all. BAU permits the destruction of nature, the disintegration of social cohesion, the externalisation of costs, and the exploitation of everything in the relentless pursuit of profit. The tiny few who benefit from BAU, as George writes, wield the power to block the progressive change we need.

Rupert Read told me earlier today that Nate Hagens says that the identification The Problem is the critical first step in imagining and creating the solutions we need. Well, for me, its BAU. Do you agree?”

‘Systems collapse’ instead of ‘climate breakdown’

Emil Schuldt-Jensen commented:

“I like ‘systems collapse’ a lot better than ‘climate breakdown’.

First of all, ‘climate’ is far too mild a word. Generally, we talk about climates in terms of mildness, or that “this West Coast-climate is too dry and doesn’t suit me”.

Second of all, the climate won’t experience a ‘breakdown’. It’ll change. The climate can – per definition – not ‘break down’, in the same way that temperature can’t ‘break down’. ‘Breakdown’ implies a structure, usually one on which a function is predicated. ‘Climate’ is an abstraction that describes a state of the biosphere, or part of the biosphere. In it is included things like air temperature, humidity, sunlight hours, and so on. None of those factors can ‘break down’, they can only change.

What’s happening, rather, is similar to life support systems on a spaceship failing. Oxygen levels can’t break down, but the system which maintains oxygen levels can. Temperature can’t break down, but the system which regulates it can. As a result of those systems breaking down, the spaceship loses its ability to support human life – i.e., the humans on board die.

That is what we are facing. Gradually, but surely, if we continue along our current course – straight towards the sun.”

“Jaw-dropping”? Really?

Deputy Premier Cameron Dick said what was unfolding up north had never been seen before. “But the problem is the rain is going to continue,” he said on ABC, adding the rainfall totals were “jaw-dropping”.

But of course not a single word about the role our unabated and unregulated burning of fossil fuels play in this…

→ The New Daily – 17 December 2023:
‘Record flooding’ emergency after two-metre deluge — and more to come
“Homes have been inundated, people rescued from roofs and planes are under water as far north Queensland bears the aftermath of Cyclone Jasper, which is causing record flooding.”

One comment

  1. If I write the phrase “climate change”, I nearly always preface it with “fossil fueled”:
    hence “fossil fueled climate change”.

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