Should we say something other than climate change?

I hear it quite frequently in my professional world. People all over want to change the terms related to things like climate change. I’ve been more resistant to change. I appreciated the change from environmentalism to sustainability in my own work because sustainability supports a broader conception that includes social, cultural, and economic concerns. But, in relation to climate change I tend to stick with climate change, and avoid global warming, over terms like climate emergency or climate justice. It’s not that I don’t think these are relevant and perhaps more accurate. But I’ve found them both less well understood and, despite the intention for climate emergency in particular to inspire more urgency, they seem to create confusion and therefore slower responses. To me the confusion seems to be associated with a disconnect between what an individual experiences and what climate emergency implies. Where I live, people aren’t seeing climate change as an emergency most of the time, but they are now seeing climate changes.

So how does this match up with research? Bruine de Bruin and colleagues (2024) studied people’s responses to different terms and found that climate change and global warming were both more recognizable and more concerning than terms like climate emergency and climate justice. There was a political bias in terms of the concern and level of threat with Democrats scoring higher on both than Republicans. However, the order of recognition and concern triggered by the terms did not change order with climate justice scoring lowest for both groups. In terms of willingness to make lifestyle changes, there was a weaker association with the different terms. Political affiliation showed higher relevance.

This definitely matches my own experience and lends some support for the terminology choices that I make. But I also wonder if the solution isn’t to just not use those terms but to provide context in appropriate situations so that the terms and their associated implications do become more familiar and perhaps can become a source of action in the future