We should call the coming cataclysm not global warming, not climate change, but “deteriorating atmosphere,” according to a study released yesterday by the non-profit public relations firm EcoAmerica. What then, should we call the people who refute it: skeptics? deniers? delayers?
Global warming promises to be a hot topic for the rest of 2009, but with key debates still around the corner, the likely pitchers are warming up by writing about how we should write about warming.
EcoAmerica’s study prematurely made a splash a month ago when a participant leaked some of its survey materials to the media. The media focused on whether it was better or worse to refer to the coming cataclysm as “global warming” or “climate change.” Much snark followed, but all for naught, because in the final report, both terms get the thumbs-down:
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For climate change, leading with global warming, climate crisis or climate change tends to polarize and weaken the message. The language itself is especially problematic among swing voters. We should speak of deteriorating atmosphere and only after establishing connections with Americans’ other values first.”
Deteriorating atmosphere just doesn’t have much of a ring to it, much urgency about it, or much imagery within it. But EcoAmerica tested the terms in focus groups and telephone surveys. And their results reflect the influence of Barack Obama, urging two of features of his rhetoric on environmental policy: couching environmental issues as energy issues and wrapping them in values.
Voters are more energized around the energy debate than the climate change debate, but they can become engaged in climate to the extent that they see it as part of energy or pollution, or related to other values and concerns. Messaging on both energy and climate change is much stronger when it uses values-oriented language rather than a technical or policy-oriented approach or when we debate science.
See also
Doomsday event
Flood myth
Types of volcanic eruptions
(source:trueslant.com)
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