It's A Climate & Extinction Crisis, Not 'Change'

As global warming and destructive agriculture wipe out entire species and ecosystems 100 times faster than all previous natural extinction events, we must properly name this disaster a crisis..

image by NOAA

It is vital that we use terms like Climate Crisis, Climate Emergency, Climate Disruption, Climate Destabilization, Global Warming, and Global Heating (not the Republican PR spin term “Climate Change”).

How A PR Hack Twisted Discussion Of The Crisis, Into A Chatty Day At The Beach

Widespread use of the term “Climate Change” originated in 2003 when Republican PR spin-meister Frank Luntz (a brilliant corporate propagandist) circulated a memo that got the Bush Administration to replace the properly alarming and accurate term “Global Warming” with the much more benign sounding term “Climate Change” in order to essentially disappear the problem in the public mind. Once Bush started saying “Climate Change” in speeches, all mainstream media adopted it. That insidious shift in the narrative proved to be a master stroke by Luntz, which is still undermining environmental progress to this day.

Here is the link to a 2003 report about that memo in the UK Guardian.

“Memo exposes Bush’s new green strategy”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

Luntz’s Gambit Hijacks The Future Of Climate Discussion On Corporate Media

Very shortly after Bush started dumbing down the narrative to “Climate Change” activists like myself and Ralph Nader, immediately began countering Luntz’s bullshit spin by pointing out that “Climate Crisis” is a far better term which fits the gravity of the emergency we are facing.

And while the discussion has evolved and the word ‘crisis’ is finally gaining more traction, Luntz’s gambit was pervasive enough that far too many people still fall into the trap of using the weak-tea term that he popularized.

Continued constant use of ‘change’ (even by many environmentalists and scientists) drives a milquetoast corporate media narrative, which enables fossil fuel industry funded climate crisis deniers to more easily obscure reality.

Messaging Expert Explains How & Why It’s So Important To Call It A Crisis

Just below, is the link to a 2004 interview with lefty messaging guru George Lakoff, in Sierra Magazine. Lakoff explains the way words trigger images in the human mind, and unpacks how Luntz’s cynical maneuver used that mechanism to trick us. Lakoff specifically recommends using the accurate and properly alarming term “Climate Crisis” to describe what is happening to our planet in order to kick Luntz’s deceptive messaging to the curb where it belongs.

“Winning Words: George Lakoff says environmentalists need to watch their language”
https://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200407/words.asp

Grasping How Dangerous & Immediate The Crisis Is, Helps Us Nail The Terms

In order to nail concise terms which trigger real and powerful images in people’s mind eye, we first need to fix those images clearly in our own mind, by skipping the daily headlines about ‘change’ and digging deeper into the actual details of the crisis, details that are rarely, and sometimes never covered, even in independent media.

For example, see this substack I published in late 2022, which lays out what is arguably the most serious and immediate danger being posed by the destructive confluence of greenhouse gas emissions and forest destroying animal agriculture - specifically, the danger of algae blooms collapsing all ocean life worldwide, within our lifetimes.

“Nature Is Giving Humanity Our Final Extinction Crisis Warning”
https://ericbrooks.substack.com/nature-is-giving-humanity-our-final

Given evidence like this, we can clearly see that what is happening to our world right now is a crisis, an emergency, not a ‘change’. And if we want to reverse the crisis, our first step must be to call it one.

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Eric Brooks is a full time grassroots organizer specializing in the interplay of global capitalist economics and war, with energy policy, the climate and extinction crisis, and environmental justice.