I’ve heard a few people use this specific framing of greenhouse gas emissions when talking about climate change, but it hasn’t become a real habit for me. This is a quick note for me to refer back to later.
There is a now lots and lots of peer reviewed research, and advice from communications professionals on how to talk about climate change in a way that people can relate to.
One of the simplest things to remember, is that when talking about the greenhouse gas effect, and how increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere make our world more dangerous to live in, it is really easy to default to the term “carbon emissions”, or “greenhouse gas emissions” when talking about what is driving these changes.
That may be true from a scientific point of view, but for most people who are not full-time scientists, the term “carbon pollution” is likely a more effective term to use, because it gets to the core of the problem, and instinctively people know that pollution is not a good thing to have more of.
There’s some good research from Yale Programme on Climate Change communication from 2023 to refer to if you want a more academic basis for this argument.
You need more than just good choice of words
If I’m going to write about how we talk about climate change, then I should probably talk about the information environment we are in as well. David Roberts is consistently good on this, but there is also a new open access book, Climate Obstruction – A Global Assessment, which has loads of meticulously detailed information to dive into. From the Climate Social Science Network website:
In Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment, a new book from Brown University’s global Climate Social Science Network, a team of more than 100 scholars explore who’s blocking action on climate change and how they’re doing it.
This book will explore the various industries involved, the socio-political factors at play, and the people who are working to bring attention to these mis-/dis-information campaigns.
That CSSN website has the free PDF download of the book, and because it’s 400 pages long, a shorter 19 page summary as well.