A Better Term (I Think)
to describe what we are doing to the climate of Earth
So far, in almost all cases one of two terms has been used to describe what is happening with the climate of Earth: ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’. I have no objection to either term, but given that neither is doing a good enough job of galvanizing people to react to the emerging climatological crisis, perhaps some other term could be of some help.
In this essay I’ll be nominating ‘climate destabilization’ for that role. It is a term that is already occasionally encountered, but to my mind it needs to replace completely those other terms.
Of course, it shouldn’t come down to terminology. Whether one believes in the Bible or accepts the theory of evolution, we humans are imbued with a rational capacity. At this point, to deny that we humans are changing the climate of the planet is irrational. (Of course, those who for political reasons deny it have gone from denying its existence to denying that we humans are causing it to denying that it is actually that big of a problem — so I guess progress, too slowly, is being made.)
There are religious people who seem to have some idea that exercising our rational capacity is somehow disrespectful of God, but why would God give us a rational capacity if it isn’t to help us to survive? Indeed, according to the Bible, it could not be clearer that God wants for us humans to thrive as a group. Our rationality can lead to things that cause problems, but it also provides us the means to solve those problems — if we face them rationally.
[That rationality can be suspect largely comes from the story of the “Tree of Knowledge.” It is amazing how many people who ‘believe in the Bible’ don’t know that the full name of the “Tree of Knowledge,” the source of our “fall from grace,” where we ‘turned from God’, is “Tree of Knowledge of Right and Wrong.” That has nothing to do with rationality, even for an atheist: right and wrong are moral terms, and all morality is based on belief, whether sacral or secular (such as, re. the latter, a secular belief in an equal moral worth for all people).]
So there is a need for a term that might do a better job of getting people to start acting with the alacrity that the situation demands. I know: the term “climate destabilization” has a lot of syllables. That the number of syllables can be an issue tells us, sadly, all about the challenge we are facing.
Still, “destabilization” is not a term with which anyone is unfamiliar. Sure, it’s a big word, but it is one that is a common part of our public discourse. That this or that would be ‘destabilizing’ for one thing or another is a very common criticism levelled at many a political proposal.
“Destabilization” of the climate is better for being more specific. Both “change” and “warming” are very general, if not to say vague.
Moreover, both “change” and “warming” suggest a process that may or may not be such a bad thing. Indeed, ‘warm’ is a term we humans cherish, such as ‘warm and fuzzy feeling’.
People say things like, “We’ll just grow oranges further north.” If “climate change” and “global warming” were smooth, linear processes, that would be largely true: we could simply shift agriculture to accommodate different general weather patterns (which is all climate is).
That those terms suggest that the process could possibly unfold that way is a weakness. It will not be that way. Earth will one day get to a new climate that is stable for at least thousands of years, but that day will be way in the future. In the meantime, ‘wildly erratic’ are the words that will (increasingly) best describe weather all over the planet. It is in precisely that way that “destabilization” gets to the heart of the matter.
That mention of “grow oranges” gets us on the right conceptual path. The existence of civilization depends on agriculture, and agriculture depends on a stable climate: reasonably dependable patterns of weather.
One thing that people do, who refuse to acknowledge the whole truth about what we are doing to the climate, is to point to the variations in climate over time in Earth’s history (even people who claim to believe that, in accordance with the Bible, Earth was created several thousand years ago). For the whole history of agriculture/civilization, though, the climate of Earth has been as stable as it has ever been. Of course, over the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed (according to science) that is less than the blink of an eye. Even so, it is the stability of the climate over the last few thousand years that has allowed for agriculture and civilization to develop. (By the way, there is no disagreement between scientists and the Bible regarding how long agriculture and civilization have been around.)
That brings us to another point. “Civilization” means, most technically, ‘the existence of cities’, and rural folk can be, let’s say ambivalent about the fate of, say, New York or London.
For one thing, if civilization collapses those urban hordes are going to be flooding out of the cities and overrunning the countryside. Any farmer who thinks that a mass of starving humanity could be successfully withstood with a gun — even lots of guns — is whistling on the way to the graveyard.
Moreover, in this context a city is a community of people who do not grow enough food to feed themselves, much less anyone else. I have lived in communities of a few hundred people that were in that sense ‘cities’. In other words, it is those farmers’ neighbors who would be the first to come for what they had.
Anyway, that’s how I see it: we need to emphasize that we are destabilizing the climate that humanity has experienced for as long as agriculture and civilization have existed.