Climate Change Vs Global Warming. Dem’s fightin’ words..

There’s much to be said, excuse the pun, for the power packed punch that a wee wedge of wordsmithing can wield. Say that ten times very fast. Actually don’t, but consider instead how renaming the ‘Death Tax’ to ‘Estate Duty’ suddenly made the same concept vastly more acceptable to American citizens.

While here in Australia it seems a ‘levy’ is being imposed on some of our higher earners, but apparently that’s not a tax.

the words Climate Change failed to inspire as much concern, sense of urgency or negative emotion than the words Global Warming.

A recent Yale study of a thousand US citizens found the words Climate Change failed to inspire as much concern, sense of urgency or negative emotion than the words Global Warming, and that the beliefs and emotions that the term ‘Global Warming’ engender are considerably more aligned with the downside of droughts, storms and fatal natural disasters than the notion of Climate Change and overly flatulent cattle.

This piece in the Smithsonian sums it up quite nicely.

For now, some succinct words of advice: If you want to work on embedding a viewpoint that we need to do more to protect our fragile environment then make sure you use the term Global Warming and not Climate Change. You can go a small step further, when you hear someone say “Climate change” feel free to give them the option. If they’re not a denier, yes they do still exist (and you’ll notice that they do seem to refer to the phenomenon as climate change.. how peculiar) let them know, if the use the term “Global Warming” instead it may well help the cause. It certainly worked in American politics

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