Writing Climate Change (35)
The Fight for the Climate – Language, Metaphors, and Imagery
This is part of a series on writing climate change for fiction
Climate change is about more than just raw data. Human beings live in a world of rhetoric, persuasion, emotion, metaphor, and words. So deeply do we live within language, that we can become lost within worlds of words.
Next in this series we will be diving into the particular characters fighting over our world. Each of these characters has their own voice. Each has their own bag of rhetorical tricks. Each of them cloaks the world in a different set of symbols and metaphors. We need to recognize that language as language, metaphor as metaphor, to distinguish the clothing from the reality.
To ease us into this world of existential conflict, today we will look at the language alone. Something very strange is happening with the language of climate change.
Something very strange indeed.
As artists we too must choose our words, and choose well.
LANGUAGE AND THE ABILITY TO THINK
The primary reason for examining language is to allow for clear thought. We’ve seen this repeatedly in this series. A claim can appear to be a simple statement of fact, only to be instead, for example, a metaphor lifted directly from the Bible. This abuse of language is a problem as old as politics.
We’ll take our lead from George Orwell.
If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.
What are the bad habits he’s complaining about? He is against anything that removes or obscures meaning. Stale metaphors, vagueness, passive voice, enacting the utilization of hypertrophied verbal structures which are not unexceptional in regard to the phenomena mutatis mutandis wherefore waffling waffle-waffle. Words without meaning are merely noise – an absence of thought.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
- Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946
Vast amounts of the language on climate change suffers that same problem as in Orwell’s day. Words regurgitated to deny thought. Words spoken to obscure our actions. We need to watch our own words, or those same blank words will flood our own blank pages.
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them.
- Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946
LANGUAGE AND THE INABILITY TO THINK
Let’s consider some examples of meaningless climate communications.
In this regard, restoring natural capital, accelerating nature based solutions, and leveraging the circular bio economy will be vital to our efforts. As we tackle this crisis, our efforts cannot be a series of independent initiatives running in parallel. The scale and scope of the threat we face call for a global systems level solution based on radically transforming our current fossil fuel based economy to one that is genuinely renewable and sustainable.
Make sense? This is typical of most official language around climate change. It’s also meaningless.
His Majesty appears to have read Orwell, and applied the lessons in reverse. Do you actually know what any of those words he’s using mean? Do you? Really? His Majesty’s speech gives the illusion of meaning, only because each listener is free to fill in the blanks with their own imagination.
That’s what sustainability means for us – managing our business in a way that creates value for our stakeholders, not just for the next quarter or the next year, but for the long run. In creating value, we ensure our efforts will be genuinely sustainable.
Do you see what’s happening here? Value is vague abstract word that implies things like love and happiness, but actually just means money. Sustainable also implies goodness, but actually just means they want a viable business. ExxonMobil is promising to make money forever, selling fossil fuels.
That’s genuine sustainability!
All the big words in climate change are vulnerable to meaninglessness. Nature-based solutions. Circular bio-economies. Radical transformations. Leveraging global systems. The words mean whatever you want them to mean. Fill in the blank.
Please don’t fall into mere cynicism here. Please don’t reject technical terms, just because you dislike the speaker. We’re talking about words whose definitions are too broad to be meaningful, not words you simply don’t understand. Indeed, the very problem is that you think you understood something. Everyone comes away thinking they know what it all means.
WORK-SHOPPED WORDS AND EMBEDDED BIAS
Climate change is caught up in a propaganda war. Much of the language around this subject has been carefully fed into the spin-machine to create terminology which is optimally biased. Both sides of the war are doing this.
The most obvious case is the debate over what we should call it. Global warming? Climate change? Climate emergency? Crisis? Disaster?
"The terminology in the upcoming environmental debate needs refinement, starting with “global warming” and ending with “environmentalism.” It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation".
"“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.” As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge."
I’ve used the term “climate change” because that has been the scientific term for over seventy years (Frank Luntz was picking between existing terms). Global warming causes climate change. That’s about as neutral a description as you can get. Even so, propaganda pressure is being applied to every major term around climate change, even the most benign.
Some work-shopped words are fairly obvious when in context. Much more insidious is embedded bias. In this case the entire framing that language puts around the issue leads to a biased conclusion. Some of this is an accidental outgrowth of pre-existing worldviews. Other times this is a deliberate propaganda move.
To pick a random example, take the term, Nature-based solutions. To say Nature-based solutions implies the existence of non-nature-based solutions. Human actions are assumed to be possible independent of nature, and for this to still be a solution somehow. But can you really do anything on Earth which doesn’t involve nature? Is that even a choice?
Be aware of the words you read. People wish to lead you places you may not wish to go.
CLIMATE METAPHORS
Climate change is big and abstract. We struggle to grasp climate in the solid terms necessary for clear thought. When people escape from the techno-jargon-waffle they soon commit the same sins with metaphor.
For example, I’ve called this section “The Fight for the Climate” because I believe that’s an accurate description. People are fighting. Some of them have guns.
However, most people would have said, “Fighting Climate Change”. That’s a metaphor. That’s also waffle, obscuring what is actually happening – real people fighting each other, some of them with guns.
When it comes to fiction, these metaphors can end up in the plot, driving the entire message of the story. Metaphors are good when they capture an essential truth. Problems arise in the gap between metaphor and reality. That gap can be big.
Here’s a few common climate metaphors.
War
This might be the most common metaphor of all. Doing something about climate change is fighting climate change. We need to mobilize like in World War Two. Fighting and Doing become synonyms. We use this war metaphor for many subjects (e.g. “Sally lost her battle with cancer.”). The same problems arise regardless of the subject.
Essential Truth:
Yes, fights are hard. Doing something hard is hard. To that extent the metaphor works.
Problems:
The opponent in this fight is usually left unspoken. We are vaguely fighting... the atmosphere? Ourselves? We just nebulously fight in general (Orwell would like to see you now).
Because Doing is reduced to Fighting, we also lose sight of all the actions which are not aggressive and active. As we saw with Covid lockdowns, one of the best things we could all do is chill out and take a month off work. Relax. But that’s not fighting.
Suggestion:
If you do bring up actual opponents, this ceases to be metaphorical. Your thinking will become much clearer too. You can fight the fossil fuel industry. You cannot fight warm air.
Gaia vs the Virus
This is an extension of an ancient metaphor of Universe-as-body. The metaphor is very common. Ecosystem health. Forests are the lungs of the planet. Mother Earth. Turtle Island.
Climate change means the body is ill.
In explicit forms of the metaphor, humanity is a virus. A disease. A sickness to be cured. Nature is sick with humans. In implicit forms of the metaphor, sickness is referenced, but the cause is left unspoken. Earth has a fever (from what?). In fiction this metaphor makes it into the plot. Nature fights humanity. The planet is literally alive and consciously seeks out humans to destroy them.
Essential Truth:
The Universe-as-body metaphor does help us to see the unity of nature. Oceans and forests do interact. The entire planet is a single system. Human beings are “out of balance” with this system.
Problems:
Nature is not truly a body. Bring up the Gaia hypothesis to a scientist and you risk being laughed out of the room (I’ve tried). The body-metaphor erases the actual motivations of real living things. Animals are just trying to live their lives, not cure ecological cancer. Mother Earth is not a real person.
Likewise, humans are not foreign to Earth. We are Earth. No animal has ever needed to care about global ecology before. Our behaviours are both natural to Earth, and foolish at global scale.
Suggestion:
Make it clear that humanity is part of nature, and that we too have a fever. Humans are ill. Nature is ill. Then be very clear what the disease actually is. Otherwise you risk recommending mass murder as a cure.
Deadlines
Time is running out. We are on a train headed for a cliff. The clock is ticking. It’s like an incoming asteroid. This is a beloved metaphor of activists and news headlines
Essential Truth:
Yes, we do have deadlines to met – to the extent we give them to ourselves. Those deadlines are a value judgement.
Problems:
When we forget that we set the deadlines ourselves, the metaphor quickly leads to apocalyptic thinking. We generalize it as a deadline for doomsday.
Suggestion:
Be specific about what the deadline is for. The 2°C target? Carbon budgets? Survival of the Great Barrier reef? Be specific about what happens if we miss the deadline. Without specificity you’re just saying, “The End is Nigh!”
We Are On Fire
The house is on fire. We are the frog in the slow boiling pot. We’re boiling the oceans. We’re cooking the world. If you’re panicking, this is the metaphor for you.
Essential Truth:
Yes climate change is bad, and involves heat. Being on fire is also bad, and involves heat.
Problems:
The metaphor tends towards exaggeration. People have to explain how we can be on fire and also not notice, which is when they bring in the frog.
Suggestion:
If you say this about wildfires, it becomes literal. Likewise with heatstroke, or anything else directly caused by heat that has lethal effects. e.g. “Heat waves are cooking old people in their houses.”
Earth the Island/Ship
This one might go back a few centuries. Earth is like an island or a boat with limited space. Humanity is like bacteria in a petri-dish. Spaceship Earth. Planetary boundaries. All variants emphasize Earth’s limits and unity, and carry an undertone of warning.
Essential Truth:
Earth is a mostly closed system for matter (but not energy). The Earth is a single system (some things are more connected than others). The emphasis on cooperation is appropriate.
Problems:
Ask yourself, “Do I agree with Malthus?” People are not rabbits or bacteria. The island metaphor is also likely why people fixate on Easter Island and fantasies of collapse. A spaceship’s life-support can fail, killing all onboard. Earth is vastly bigger and more complex than any ship which will ever exist.
Suggestion:
Use with care, or you’ll end up recommending eugenics, population control, and totalitarianism.
Monsters
This one is rare, but does show up in fiction. Jeff Vandermeer uses it in Borne. People used it for nuclear war (e.g. Godzilla). All the fear and destruction gets condensed and personified into a single being. It probably has really big legs and stomps on people.
Essential Truth:
Climate change is scary and destructive. You also get to play with all the stuff we looked at in The Weird. Lots of fun!
Problems:
A monster is limited in time and space, unlike climate change which is diffuse and permeates everything. If you scale up the monster you risk turning Gaia into the monster. We usually fight monsters, so you’re back the war metaphor. The standard trope is to both create the monster with science and then defeat it with science - you risk advocating stuff like geo-engineering. You might defeat a monster, but you can’t really defeat climate change. In the long run climate change simply becomes our new home.
Suggestion:
Be prepared to have a complicated and ambiguous relationship to your monster. Consider using the monster metaphor for the causes of climate change, rather than the changing climate itself.
Blankets, Greenhouses, and Traps
“Greenhouses gases trap heat like a blanket.”
The above sentence sounds like science, but is 100% metaphor. Think about it: you don’t pump your greenhouse full of methane gas. When have you ever trapped anything with a blanket?
Even scientific terms can be metaphors. The problems with science metaphors are typically minor. This mostly just demonstrates how much metaphors pervade our thought.
Balance
One of the deepest metaphors for nature is balance - as if nature were a gymnast or see-saw. This one goes very deep. Balance becomes scientific in words like equilibrium and homeostasis. Ideas of physical objects in motion pop up everywhere (get it? Pop up!).
For climate change, the biggest balance metaphor is Tipping Points. Think about it. Siberian permafrost cannot “tip over”. It’s soil. It’s already flat on the ground.
Essential Truth:
Some aspects of nature do “seek balance”, broadly speaking. In very abstract mathematical terms, a pole tipping over is the same as an icesheet collapsing. Humanity can be said to be “out of balance” in the sense we got big fast compared to the rest of the planet.
Problems:
Deep metaphors like this can seriously cloud our thought. Balance suggests goodness (who wants to be imbalanced?). Balance also suggests stability. Therefore stability is good. Nature is balanced. Therefore nature is stable. That stability is good. Therefore nature is supposed to remain unchanging.
This is nonsense.
Suggestion:
The balance metaphor, and motion metaphors more generally, are impossible to escape. Be aware that nature is constantly changing, often at random. Cyclical changes are often normal and necessary. Try to catch yourself if the metaphor takes you too far.
IMAGERY
The question of imagery is similar to metaphor. When you think of climate change, what images come to mind?
A person? A place? An animal? (Is it Greta with a polar bear on an iceberg on fire? Is it?)
These images stand in as symbols of the larger issue. To get technical, we’re talking about metonyms and synecdoche (e.g. soldiers are “boots on the ground”). All stories about climate change necessarily use synecdoche. You have to limit the scope. In fiction these symbols end up central to the plot. The symbols focus our attention down to a particular thing. This focus is both grounding and limiting. You’ve escaped vague bamboozlement, but you’ve left out 99% of reality.
Let’s consider some of common imagery.
I’m getting these from visual imagery (photos etc), but similar stuff shows up in all mediums. It’s both sad and hilarious how repetitive this gets. Just do an image search. The results are 100% cliché.
Polar Animals & Ice
Penguins and polar bears are everywhere. Ice is everywhere. Glaciers. Icebergs. The Arctic.
The Good: The Arctic is warming very fast. Impacts do show up there soonest.
The Bad: Focusing on the Poles makes climate change distant to regular people.
Drought and Parched Soil
A common image is a world of greenery on one side, and parched soil on the other. People can’t resist the pull of a Mad Max apocalypse.
The Good: Droughts will become more common in some places.
The Bad: Some arid areas may actually turn green from climate. Biomes are shifting in general, not universal drying.
Wildfires
Lots of charred ruined vistas. Look out for kangaroos and flames, or hazy orange skies over cities.
The Good: Fires are becoming more common, and can be terrifying.
The Bad: Because fires looks like Medieval visions of Hell, this feeds into our apocalyptic fantasies. Plenty of forests burn naturally. They grow back.
Sea Level Rise
People fixate on sea level rise to an extent that doesn’t make sense. I suspect this due to how easy it is to make flood maps with GIS software. Hence we get flooded with flood maps. They look terrifying.
The Good: Yes. Sea levels are rising.
The Bad: The time scales are measured in centuries.
Hurricanes
I get it. You live in the Eastern United States and this keeps happening to you. People love images of hurricanes from space. They look so cool and huge.
The Good: Yes, this is happening more often.
The Bad: It’s just one of the things. God is not punishing you. We will not experience permanent hurricanes as our one type of weather.
Poor Africans & Asians
I suspect this is because the UN handles climate change, and we are so used to the whole do-gooder thing being about very particular groups of poor people. Look out for Africans in parched fields, or Asians in flooded villages.
The Good: Yes, they (still) have (more) problems.
The Bad: Like with Polar animals, this makes climate distant for people who don’t live there.
Earth From Space
An image of Earth will often get combined with other metaphors or metonyms. Earth on fire, in a frying pan, with a medical thermometer, surrounded by parched soil.
The Good: Yes, it’s global.
The Bad: At a global scale stuff gets vague and sloppy, hence why this is often layered with other mixed metaphors.
Smoke Stacks VS Solar-panels
Fossil fuels and parched soils on one side. Renewable tech and happy children on the other. Yay!
The Good: Climate change is ultimately about the energy system.
The Bad: The focus on smokestacks misses where large amounts of emissions actually come from. Likewise, the focus on solar-panels misses where most emissions reductions come from. Not wrong, just limited.
Protests (& Greta)
What would climate change be without a bunch of teenagers with signs?
The Good: Street protests are one important form of political action.
The Bad: Street protests are just one limited form of the political action.
Pastoralism
This one shows up in the solutions imagery. Green fields, lettuces, mud. People have been having this fantasy since Arcadia and the Garden of Eden. Utopia is a labour-free farm.
The Good: rural communes may be great for some people.
The Bad: climate solutions mostly involve retrofitting the existing world. Our world is densely populated and urban.
Shiny White Buildings
Forget the farm, the answer is a hyper-tech city of 100% white walls and green plants. All the lettuces are now grown by robots in skyscrapers.
The Good: some limited situations may call for a shiny white building.
The Bad: climate solutions mostly involve retrofitting, rather than bulldozing and replacing everything.
Our Limited Range of Symbols
The visual vocabulary of climate change is surprisingly limited. We have a handful of disasters, typically portrayed as apocalyptic. The victims are far away poor people and exotic animals. The solutions are technology, street marches, and getting in touch with nature. That’s our cliché view of climate change.
As Orwell was saying, overused imagery eventually becomes meaningless.
ICEBERG DEBATES
The frustrating thing about climate debates is how they are:
A) Devoid of meaning
B) Never end
If people are not actually saying anything, then what the hell are they talking about?
The world is full of what I’m going to call “Iceberg Debates”. These are debates which seem to be about one subject, but which are actually about another submerged subject. The conversation is mostly obfuscation, intended to prevent anyone seeing the body of the iceberg.
Iceberg debates happen when people are unaware of, or unwilling to admit, their underlying position. Iceberg debates are proxy-wars. Climate change is an iceberg debate, because the underlying issues are so ugly and divisive. Rich vs poor. Capitalism vs socialism. Comfort for the few vs death for the many.
Here’s some signs of an iceberg debate.
The Ick Factor: The whole thing feels icky. Uncomfortable. Off. We get Ad Hominin attacks, polemics, cherry picked data, conspiracy theories. The usual standards of rational discussion got lost somewhere. Bad faith and logical fallacies become the dominant mode of argument. This is because evidence doesn’t matter when the real debate is elsewhere.
Excessive Emotional Investment: People care far more than the issue would seem to warrant. That emotion comes from the real issue.
Disingenuous Concern: If the underlying issue changes, their concern vanishes.
Zombie Debates: The debate never seems to die, regardless of the evidence. The iceberg just floats back up.
Zombie Arguments: The same talking points keep coming back, again and again and again, regardless of the evidence.
Links to Deeper Values too Taboo to Speak: This can be difficult to spot, but it’s what ultimately drives the debate. The debate is triggering some deeper belief. It is likely too ugly to be expressed, hence why it remains obscured. When pushed hard enough the truth may come out, but is soon hidden again.
Here’s the thing – if you fail to recognize that a debate is actually an iceberg debate, you are going to get very confused. The arguments aren’t about the arguments. The words don’t mean what the words mean.
Everything is subtext.
CONCLUSION
Every single word in the climate change arena has been subject to a multi-decade, well funded, intensive psychological warfare campaign. Language has been a key battleground. We’ll touch on this more when we look at the history climate obstruction. Here we’ve simply touched on the net effect of this psychological warfare: to suck all meaning out of the entire debate, and leave it trapped within a narrow set of clichés.
Your task is to break free.
The first step in writing about climate change is often research. When doing research you will be attacked by phrases such as, “We need a rapid transformation towards nature-based circular bio-economies for genuine sustainability.”
Such phrases can only be understood by hallucinating. The more knowledgeable you are, the more detailed your hallucinations. Your hallucinations may be full of meaning, but the phrase that inspired you was meaningless. People have opposite hallucinations. To mean nothing and everything is the point of such meaningless phrases. Vagueness exists to obscure.
The escape from obscurity is specificity. Consider the same phrase, now with actual meaning: “In the next five years we need to plant all marginal farmland in trees and use the timber for building and the sawdust for fuel.” Meaning comes from grounding yourself in reality. Actual concrete details.
When you reach for details you will end up in the world of imagery. Here you will be attacked by an armada of clichés. These too serve to obscure meaning through sheer repetition of a narrow set of possibilities. You will be invited to imagine polar bears in a parched field.
To escape from cliché you must ground yourself in a different way. Refuse ready-made imagery. What are the images that arise from the subject itself, from your own observation?
As you search for imagery you will also be drawn to metaphor. The subject is too vast to encompass without metaphor. Here too you will be attacked by cliché. These too serve to narrow your thought into predetermined channels. You will be invited to call us to war to fight the human virus before the deadline runs out and Earth falls out of balance.
To escape from metaphor you must search for new metaphors, and use existing ones with care. Refuse ready-made metaphors. Search out the essence you wish to share, and choose the metaphor to match.
Above all, ground yourself in reality. The aim is to break the illusion of words. Break the game.
Next in the series we’ll look at climate activism and the characters who show up there.
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Another clarification:
Climate change vs global warming - people know what it means either way. People aren't that dumb.
Yes! The words that control issue framing are a much bigger problem than the labeling. Stay tuned. We are going to see a lot of propaganda in a future post. Oh boy... oh boy... this was just an easy warm up!
When we look at propaganda more closely it will be very important to remember that propaganda moves don't always work (and can even backfire). The problem here is that our language has been contaminated with the stuff. They've been working at it for 100 years.
A clarification based on a comment from a subscriber elsewhere (so you can all see the reply!):
Comment: Isn't sea level happening right now, rather than over centuries?
Answer: Yes! The science isn't the point here, the symbolism is.
Our focus here is how sea level (and polar bears etc) have become symbolic of climate change, in a way that overrides their actual importance (regardless of the precise rate of sea level). In a particular location sea level (or drought/polar bears/etc) may be important, or they might not. It depends. You have to pay attention to that location - the actual concrete reality.
However, when it comes to climate communication, people will automatically focus on sea level rise (or polar bears) simply because this is a symbol of climate change. We get lost in symbols and lose sight of the reality. Thus people tend to fixate on floods/fires/polar bears/etc, while overlooking a vast range of other possible stories. Our thinking gets narrowed before we even begin.