{"id":9798,"date":"2023-08-14T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=9798"},"modified":"2023-08-03T15:53:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T15:53:02","slug":"do-phrases-like-global-boiling-help-or-hinder-climate-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/do-phrases-like-global-boiling-help-or-hinder-climate-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Do phrases like \u2018global boiling\u2019 help or hinder climate action?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n \n
\n \n Shutterstock<\/span><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nNoel Castree<\/a>, University of Technology Sydney<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Last week, United Nations General Secretary Ant\u00f3nio Guterres coined an arresting new term. The era of global warming has ended, he declared dramatically<\/a>, and the era of \u201cglobal boiling\u201d has arrived.<\/p>\n\n

You can see why he said it. July was the hottest month on record globally. Searing temperatures and intense wildfires have raged<\/a> across the Northern Hemisphere. Marine heatwaves are devastating<\/a> the world\u2019s third-largest coral reef, off Florida. And as greenhouse emissions keep rising, it means many even hotter summers await us. <\/p>\n\n

But critics and climate sceptics have heaped scorn<\/a> on the phrase. Taken literally, they\u2019re correct \u2013 nowhere on Earth is near the boiling point of water. <\/p>\n\n

Is Guterres\u2019 phrase hyperbolic or an accurate warning? Do phrases like this actually help drive us towards faster and more effective climate action? Or do they risk making us prone to climate doomism<\/a>, and risk prompting a backlash? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rhetoric and reality<\/h2>\n\n

Guterres is rhetorically adept. He uses the moral authority of his position to vividly depict the climate crisis. For instance, he told attendees at last year\u2019s COP27 climate summit in Egypt we are on \u201ca highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator\u201d. In many ways, it\u2019s one of the only tools he has, given the UN has global influence but limited real power. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cGlobal boiling\u201d ups the verbal ante. It\u2019s designed to sound the alarm and trigger more radical action to stave off the worst of climate change. <\/p>\n\n

Guterres chooses his words carefully. But does he choose them wisely?<\/p>\n\n

At one level, \u201cglobal boiling\u201d is clearly an exaggeration, despite the extreme summer heat and fire during the northern summer. <\/p>\n\n

But then again, \u201cglobal warming\u201d is now far too tame a descriptor. Prominent climate scientists have pushed<\/a> for the term \u201cglobal heating\u201d to be used in preference. <\/p>\n\n

Similarly, phrases such as \u201cthe climate crisis\u201d haven\u2019t gained traction with either elites or the ordinary public. That\u2019s because many of us still feel we haven\u2019t seen this crisis with our own eyes. <\/p>\n\n

But that is changing. In the past few years, extreme weather and related events have struck many countries \u2013 even those who may have thought themselves immune. Australia\u2019s Black Summer brought bushfires that burned an area the size of the United Kingdom. Germany suffered lethal flooding<\/a> in 2021. The unprecedented 2022 deluge in Pakistan flooded large tracts<\/a> of the country. China has seen both drought<\/a> and floods. Savage multi-year droughts<\/a> have hit the Horn of Africa. India has banned rice exports<\/a> due to damage from heavy rain. <\/p>\n\n

Once-abstract phrases are now having real-world purchase \u2013\u00a0in developed and developing nations alike. <\/p>\n\n

Climate scepticism has also dropped away. Fewer doubters are trying to discredit the fundamental science than during the long period<\/a> of manufactured scepticism in Western nations. <\/p>\n\n

In this context, we can see \u201cglobal boiling\u201d as an expression of humanitarian concern backed by rigorous science showing the situation continues to worsen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hazards of theatrical language<\/h2>\n\n

There are risks in warning of catastrophe. People who don\u2019t pay close attention to the news may switch off if the predicted disaster doesn\u2019t eventuate. Or the warnings can add to climate anxiety and make people feel there\u2019s no hope and therefore no point in acting. <\/p>\n\n

There\u2019s another risk, too. Catastrophic language often has moral overtones \u2013 and, as we all know, we don\u2019t like being told what to do. When we hear a phrase like \u201cglobal boiling\u201d in the context of a prominent official exhorting us to do more, faster, it can raise the hackles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see this in the emerging greenlash<\/a>, whereby populist-right figures scorn solar and wind farms. Even struggling mainstream leaders like UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can pivot this way, as evidenced by his recent positioning as pro-car<\/a> and pro-oil extraction<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Opponents of climate action \u2013\u00a0who tend to be on the right of politics \u2013\u00a0often complain about what they see as the overuse of \u201ccrisis talk\u201d. If everything is a crisis, nothing is a crisis. This view has some merit. <\/p>\n\n

But even critics such as Danish controversialist Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg, author of False Alarm<\/a>, may have more in common with Guterres than one might think. In admittedly different ways, they pursue similar ends: a world where people can live free from harm, with dignity, and with reasonable prospects of a fulfilling life pursued sustainably. The question, as always, is how to get there. <\/p>\n\n

Hot language can motivate us, just as quieter, process-heavy, technocratic language can. It can be folded into a discourse of hope and aspiration for the future, rather than of fear and trembling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rethinking calamity<\/h2>\n\n

Climate writer David Wallace-Wells has written<\/a> that the future will be \u201ccontested and combative, combining suffering and flourishing \u2014 though not in equal measure for every group\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

As the critics Frederick Buell<\/a> and Rob Nixon remind us, a hotter Earth will worsen existing human vulnerabilities as well as creating new ones. The poor and marginalised, both authors observe, are already living through crises, year-in and year-out. They suffer what Nixon dubs<\/a> \u201cslow violence\u201d, punctuated by dramatic environmental events such as landslides and failed harvests.<\/p>\n\n

Are there better phrases to capture this? Possibly. Take the challenge yourself: can you think up a pithy, accurate phrase to cover intensifying local and regional-scale droughts, fires, typhoons and floods; damage to crops and food insecurity; water shortages; existential threats to coral reefs and low-lying communities? You can see how hard it is. <\/p>\n\n

When Guterres uses highly charged phrases, he\u2019s not inviting to us to imagine a Hollywood-style apocalypse. What he\u2019s hoping is to make people listen \u2013\u00a0and act \u2013 now we can see what climate change looks like. <\/p>\n\n

What happens if we write off his comments as overblown rhetoric? The risk is it becomes another form of denial. Climate change, global warming, global heating, the climate crisis, global boiling \u2013\u00a0whatever the phrase, it is now undeniable that it\u2019s upon us. \"The<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noel Castree<\/a>, Professor of Society & Environment, University of Technology Sydney<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shutterstock Noel Castree, University of Technology Sydney Last week, United Nations General Secretary Ant\u00f3nio Guterres coined an arresting…\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":9772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[120,913,173,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-9798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-earth","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-global-boiling","10":"tag-global-warming","11":"tag-the-conversation","12":"cs-entry","13":"cs-video-wrap"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9801,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9798\/revisions\/9801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}