In 1998, President Bill Clinton tried to sidestep responsibility for his affair by parrying with words. In defense of his character in front of the grand jury, Clinton smugly used the infamous line ""it depends on what your definition of ‘is,' is."" Clinton was always known for his slick demeanor, and during the Monica Lewinsky trials he did not disappoint.
The truth is, the argument still stands. What's in a word? Well, everything—even in a word as short and incidental as ""is.""
Words are memory banks of culture and communication, the human ""meme,"" to borrow from Richard Dawkins. We empty out so much of ourselves into words and they come to stand for so much. Clinton wasn't really abusing the English language. Rather, he was using it to frame a philosophical idea. But there are times when the misuse of words leads to serious misunderstandings. This issue is most apparent in environmental politics because of the debate's ""us and them"" nature.
Currently, the most egregious case of lexical abuse is the use of ""climate change.""
What does ""climate change"" even mean? It is an innocuous term for an urgent problem. The term takes a real threat and sterilizes it, wiping it clean of any bigger implications.
By changing the name to fight off common arguments like ""we've had so much snow in Wisconsin this year,"" or ""summer just wasn't that warm,"" scientists and the media have given credence to these oddball theories on global climatology.
Under any name, global warming is occurring, and it is occurring at a rate we can no longer accurately model. Because our models have failed, we're seeing things we couldn't possibly predict, which accounts for cool weather anomalies amidst a planet awash in warming. We're also blurring the lines between natural and man-made causes. Our poor terminology only exacerbates the situation.
When asked about the term ""climate change"" and Thomas Friedman's utterly inane term ""global weirding,"" Whyfiles.com staff writer David Tenenbaum offered the term ""climate disturbance"" as a viable alternative.
""Something has changed the climate, and we are that something. It has a negative connotation, which is accurate,"" Tenenbaum said.
We need a name that doesn't conjure up ambiguity over what is really occurring. The current global warming trends are man-made. A term like climate change implies what is happening could be due to natural events, and to survive global warming humans just need to ride out the storm.
Again, what's in a word? How do we construct a better term to deal with the global warming threat? Politicians need to stop pandering these neutral terms for image points. This tactic degrades the science of the situation, and it is the science that matters.
More importantly, we need a term that means a lot of things to a lot of people. A diverse country has myriad reasons to abate global warming, and we need a term that hits on these different levels. We need to create a desire to curtail global warming, and ""climate change"" only appeals to the centrist viewpoint and gives validity to global-warming denial.
Tenenbaum pointed out that nomenclature issues happen at smaller scales too. In Madison, there is much aversion to the use of ""sewage sludge"" as a fertilizer. Sewage sludge is an awful name for a gross thing (it is actually mostly excrement, nutrient rich excrement, which makes it a great fertilizer), so most people refer to the fertilizer as ""biosolids."" And farmers love biosolids.
The same thing is occurring with the proposed manure digesters throughout Wisconsin. They are being referred to rather politely as ""biodigesters."" These are both instances where the new term appropriately fills the uncertainty and makes the repugnant product acceptable for consumption. Both terms retain the products integrity while making it easier for the public to accept.
Nomenclature matters. The term ""climate change"" doesn't capture the urgency of the situation. It takes a clear science and muddies it to account for exceptions. ""Climate change"" is ignorable, whereas ""climate disturbance"" is not. We can no longer afford to keep ignoring climate disturbance.
Anthony Cefali is a senior majoring in biology and English. We welcome all feedback. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
