Blog Action Day 2009: How Semantics Might Save the Planet

When I signed up to take part in Blog Action Day 2009, I thought, surely by the time I wrote the post, I would have something insightful to share about climate change. A personal story. A moment of enlightenment. A freakin’ antidote!

But in time I could research climate change and draw from my own experiences, I found that the most compelling challenge might simply be that others in this world don’t recognize what ‘climate change’ is.

It’s all semantics.

Back in the 1990s, I can remember studying ‘global warming.’ I waited in anticipation some years later when I head that former vice president Al Gore was lecturing about it around the county, and acutely watched when – less than 10 years from the time I was taught about global warming in high school – that Mr. Gore’s presentation was made into a documentary that won an Oscar and ultimately led to him sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But people still seem stuck on the name of what it is that’s happening to our planet. Is it global warming? If so, why was winter so rough for so many around the globe?

Note that I use the term ‘global warming,’ not ‘climate change.’

Perhaps it’s just me, my family and my friends that seem, even now, confused that what Al Gore was talking about was the climate changing in drastic and damaging ways before their very eyes. So much so, that I’ve seen eyes roll in my own home about what is happening to our world and what politicians are trying to do to make a difference.

Has history taught us nothing? (if you need a comedic take on what I mean, make sure to catch “In the Loop” on DVD or OnDemand)

Words have power.

Use them to educate your neighbor, your friends, your family. It’s not about the world getting hot. It’s about the climate changing. And here, it’s not a change we can believe in.