Environmental and Ethical Journalist, Writer, Communicator and Content Creator

You will find a common thread through many of my articles here on Substack - if you want people to care about nature, pollution, the climate and related issues, then making them aware is only half the battle.

We need to communicate in a way that they are familiar with, using language that allows us to genuinely connect.

Once we connect, then we can nurture an understanding, a following, and loyalty, even.

As an environmental and ethical journalist, my mission has always been to put the work of planet-friendly people, businesses and organisations in the spotlight.

I don’t do it for anyone else. Seriously. I’m a greenwash detector, though - I only want to work with organisations and people who are genuinely a force for good. It’s just who I am. It’s important to me.

So, if you fit the description, and you’re looking for a very experienced environmental writer and content creator, to assist with a project or more, then I would be positively delighted to help…

How Can I Help?

I work remotely for worthy causes across the world. I can assist you with services including:

• Website content

• Blog articles

• Press releases and media pitches

• Social media content

• LinkedIn management

• Newsletters

• Case studies

• Reports

• Campaign messaging

• Award writing

• FAQs and explainer content

• Op-eds and thought pieces

One of my recent longer-term projects was as freelance communications manager for solar and battery smartgrid operators, SNRG:

“Mark has played an important role in supporting the business - particularly across our media announcements, award submissions and wins for key projects, and the coordination of our case study and LinkedIn content. Thank you for the impact you’ve had across the business. We look forward to continuing to work together.”

Alec Hussain, Co-Founder, SNRG SmartGrids

I Offer a Unique Service

I believe that eco-conscious businesses and organisations are torchbearers - they lead the way in environmental and ethical practices. They are an example to all.

I’m 100% on your side, and I know that ethical enterprises often don’t have the time, budget, or capacity to handle any of the important needs mentioned above.

I can make things easier for you.

As a journalist, I bring something a bit different from standard marketing or social media support. I’m used to finding the story, asking the right questions, and writing in a way that makes people trust what they’re reading.

That means I can help you sound like experts in your field without sounding stiff, salesy, or even worse - like AI wrote it.

You may have noticed that there is a real pushback against low-quality AI content right now, and a desire for human authenticity.

Quality editorial content is a powerful tool to gain trust. Here on the Substack platform, I often spend time listed among the top rising Climate and Environment writers in the world.

What To Do Next

My services can be called on as and when required. I’m offering peace of mind that, when you need a boost, you can turn to a communications expert who is also green at heart.

If you want to get the ball rolling, please email myself, Mark Campbell, at action@ethicaldisruption.earth

How Much Will It Cost?

I try to be ethical in my approach to this, as well. I am an experienced journalist and content creator, and this carries worth and value, but I’d prefer to chat with you about what your needs are, and what your budget is - and we can then come to an arrangement that suits everyone.

Thank you for reading….

I look forward to working with you!

Mark Campbell

More about me…

The mainstream media won’t change. Stop trying to make it do so.

Stop blaming the media for spreading hate, division and climate crisis denial.

You’re wasting your breath and needlessly losing skin from the tips of your fingers every time you angrily fire off another post.

You’re usually preaching to the converted, anyway. Stop it.

I tell you this as a journalist. I have more than 35 years’ experience in the game. and even working on the inside, I have struggled to get my educational, ethical and environmental stories on to the public-facing pages.

Which is why I packed my trunk and left the media circus, to send out those important messages on my own terms, as a freelance journalist and publisher.

You should do the same. Whatever your line of work.

What’s The Problem?

I always believed that my job as a journalist was to inform, educate and entertain. This very principle was established in the 1920s by the BBC’s first Director-General, Lord Reith.

Sadly, the ‘inform’ and ‘educate’ pillars have largely collapsed in many mansions of the media. These are often set on foundations of bias and misinformation.

A real journalist investigates and gathers information from all sides of a story, then presents the facts for the reader to form an opinion.

This still tends to happen in local journalism. It is straight reporting. Incompetent and error-strewn, sometimes, but nevertheless untainted by higher influence.

The major TV and print channels you’ll be most familiar with - the ‘mainstream media’ - don’t follow the basic principles of journalism training.

Instead, their stories are viewed through the lens of the media owners - the vast majority of them right-wing billionaires.

This article won’t go through who owns what - that information is out there in abundance, and you’ll be more than aware of the political bias of various publications and channels.

You’ll also no doubt be aware of the major players in the media world, from Murdoch to Musk to Marshall, from Bezos to Rothermere. Their agendas are well documented.

What frustrates me these days is not that the media constantly fails to deliver on balance and accuracy - it’s the surrender of the left to this fact.

I am sick and tired of reading articles and social media posts from left-leaning politicians, climate and equality campaigners, attacking the media for failing to tell the world about their own point of view, or the facts that have been ignored.

STOP MOANING AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

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The Alternative Media

There are better examples. There are journalists and entrepreneurs who have already realised the scale of the problems and taken positive action in launching their own publications and channels.

I just worry that they, too, are preaching to the converted.

Let’s give them some deserved credit first. Check out Babelfish, Better Future Media, Carbon Brief, Grist, DeSmog, Inside Climate News, The Narwhal, Byline Times, Novara Media, Mother Jones, The Canary and The Tyee, as examples of media outliers and disruptors.

This very publication of mine, Ethical Disruption, is hosted on the Substack platform, and I’m a frequent visitor to the Top 15 rising climate and environment writers in the world.

I am in illustrious company - many excellent, experienced journalists report each week on crucial environmental and ethical issues.

But is it just noise, adding to more noise?

I have already written about the urgent need for environmental communicators to wake up to the fact that the needle is still not being moved towards true progress:

So What Do We Do?

First, we have to recognise that voting for a political party is among the most important actions we can take - in favour, or to the detriment of, our environment and quality of life.

Connecting with people who vote for the planet-wreckers across the world is the most important mission we can now undertake.

If you’re sceptical about that, let’s just remind ourselves of the actions of just one man in the first stages of just one political term - Donald Trump in his current reign of chaos.

Trump has launched a sweeping, accelerated rollback of US environmental protections and an assault on air, water, wildlife and climate laws.

At the same time, Trump has promoted increased fossil fuel production and accelerated extraction on public lands, and in the oceans.

The oil and gas industry spent about $450 million to influence Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election cycle, including direct donations, lobbying and advertising.

See a pattern emerging?

In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned, as this is written. The Conservatives and Reform immediately called for a General Election, being up-front about policies to resume drilling for oil in the North Sea, but lying about the impact this would have in the short term on energy bills.

Reform UK and their even more racist cousins, Restore Britain, are full-on climate crisis deniers. Funded by fossil fuel interests, of course.

Encouragingly, the Green Party have made impressive advances this past year in the UK, but they have done this by relegating from the public conversation their usual main topic of environmental destruction.

New leader Zack Polanski has concentrated on inequality, the cost of living and political corruption - and The Green Party are now serious contenders to hold a share of power in a probable future hung UK parliament.

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Make a Connection

So is that what we have to do? Sneak in by the back door and then make everything better while we’re in?

Of course not. We have to talk frankly and openly about the quite frightening scenarios we face in all our lifetimes, however old we are.

But we have to connect with people while we do this. We have to talk the language of the audience we need to connect with most. They have to believe us, at the end of the day.

All environmental writers should ask themselves these questions when they write a new article / newsletter:

Who am I writing this for?

Could it change the bigger picture?

If it’s yet another report about our planetary woes, that will be consumed by people who are already aware of the facts, then it’s worthy, but just more noise.

We need strong voices to move the dial, shift the needle, disrupt the narrative.

What Can We Learn From The Right?

There is one clear obstacle to effective communication that always gets in the way. Money.

The fossil fuel lobby, tech bros and other billionaires influence public discussion by funding and lobbying influential politicians, and flooding social media with misinformation bots.

They can afford to bankroll TV stations like GB News, which record huge losses every year, but act as an important mouthpiece to a growing audience.

This is difficult to counter.

There are more subtle methods, however.

Ever wondered why so many of the older generation buy Conservative-leaning newspapers? The news narratives permeate their brains like microplastics, without them even realising - I’ve seen it happen in my own family.

But the boomers weren’t pulled in by politics. It was the TV guide. The puzzles section. The sports pages. The celebrity gossip. The competitions.

It’s a clever way to radicalise people.

Meanwhile, the left have caught up with the right in the blossoming world of podcasts. Politicians (like Zack Polanski) have launched their own, to bypass the media and get their messages out to the masses.

But does this really happen? Or does it just reach those who are already sympathetic to those views?

We Need a Plan

For my own part, I’m available to chat through ideas with subscribers of Ethical Disruption, and anyone else who cares to get involved with the mission of connecting.

This is not an easy task. But it is one we have to master. And quickly.

I also share your disappointment in journalists.

We expect more from my industry colleagues than they are ever likely to deliver.

Most of them are generalists, which means they need to know a little about a lot.

So don’t expect them to understand everything about the climate crisis or biodiversity emergency - they need educating, too. And you can connect with them individually, personally, to offer your support in this.

The thing that really gets to me is that journalists are ALL about getting the big story, the big scoop, the front page, the lead article.

Yet so many are failing to understand that they are sitting on the biggest story EVER to have occurred in the whole of human existence.

The facts are there to back it up; the data, the actual measurements, it’s so easy to report. But their news sense is so off-radar, they can’t see it.

What a time to be alive! They could be reporting on the biggest story ever! The extinction of the human race and most other life on earth!

Instead, YOU can do this. We need an army of green, ethical, environmental communicators.

Choose your weapons - Substack, YouTube, Facebook, Podcasts… wherever and whenever, you have the power to influence people.

You need a strong, attention-grabbing message, delivered in the right way, to the right audience - and that means turning up on the right platforms, where they all hang out.

Forget the media. BE THE MEDIA.

As a journalist writing on environmental and ethical matters, I believed, until very recently, that my job was to educate larger audiences about the climate, nature and pollution crisis.

I launched Ethical Disruption on Substack, and on other platforms, to communicate the crucial messaging in ways that perhaps hadn’t been tried before.

And then it hit me. I was just adding to the noise. Environmental awareness isn’t the problem. It hasn’t been the problem for a long time.

There is no lack of awareness of the planet’s nature, climate and pollution crisis. Thousands of environmentally-conscious groups, activists, charities, campaigns and businesses share beautifully-crafted, emotion-triggering content daily.

People watch, people share, and people genuinely feel something.

And then they go and vote for a party that will license that new oil field, block the solar farm, build the new road, destroy the ancient woodland and approve the new runway.

We are suffering a crisis of effective communication, and a crisis of connection.

Awareness Isn’t Bringing Change

Those thousands of environmental warriors I mentioned - they are enjoying meaningful victories all the time, and they do make a difference.

But they’re still not moving the overarching dial.

The Earth is getting warmer, the weather is becoming more unstable, the sea levels are rising, the ice is melting, wildlife is disappearing, more land is being given over to animal farming, the microplastics are everywhere outside and inside us…

There is no connection between what people feel when they watch a destructive wildfire or dying coral reef, and what they do when they stand in a booth at election time.

Sure, there are other considerations when people cast their vote. But is anything bigger than the climate, nature and pollution emergency? Not when you consider how many lives are, and will be affected.

That knowledge gap is where the crisis lives. It is too easy to blame the people receiving the message - the real failure lies in how the message is being delivered.

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What Ethical Disruption is Here For

This is not designed to be another channel adding to the noise. Not any more. The crisis of nature, climate and pollution will not be resolved simply through more awareness. It will only improve when communication gets better at joining the dots between what people know and feel, and what they actually do.

I used to be encouraged by surveys revealing that, despite all the climate crisis-denying nonsense, more than 75% of people globally wanted action. I don’t feel confident with such statistics any longer. They don’t play out in reality.

We need to be honest about what isn’t working. About why extraordinary content produces likes and shares, but not change. We need to have serious conversations about this, now.

The Hardest Question

Another uncomfortable truth is this: even when people understand what is happening, many still do not change what they do.

This is not stupidity, and people calling out voters of Reform, Restore, Republicans, Conservatives, need to be smarter about this.

Yes, there is often a lack of education, but also, it is human nature. We are not wired for the kinds of threat we are warning about.

The human brain evolved to respond to what is immediate, visible, and personal. That’s where the dots need to be joined up.

There is also the role of denial - sticking our heads in the sand. Psychologists tell us we can hold only so much anxiety before the mind begins to protect itself, not by solving the problem, but by managing the feeling and finding reasons that the threat is exaggerated, or false.

And people just want to enjoy life. There are so many pressures today relating to conflicts, the cost of living, distrust of others… being told to take action to save all future life on Earth seems like a big, complicated problem that most people want nothing to do with.

What Success Looks Like

If awareness is not enough, and denial is hardwired and human, what does communication that actually works look like?

It is the question Ethical Disruption is genuinely trying to answer, led by a journalist’s instinct, but hopefully powered by a community keen to find the solutions, too.

If that question interests you, then you’d be very welcome to subscribe and join the conversation.

David Attenborough has just turned one hundred. He was rightly celebrated across the world for his impact on nature and climate awareness. And yet on the same day, Britain woke to a sea of turquoise as millions had voted Reform in regional elections.

Each vote was a stab in the heart for one of the greatest climate communicators we have ever known.

This article is not criticising your personal political choices, by the way - it’s a hard stare in the face of nature and climate communication everywhere.

I met David once, at Humphrey Head nature reserve in Cumbria, the home of the last English wolf. That meeting was about 30 years ago, David was already in advanced years and his mere presence filled everyone around him with hope for a more empathetic, nature-friendly future.

Attenborough has given hundreds of millions of people the capacity to feel something real about creatures they would never meet, in places they would never go, facing threats they could not see from where they were standing.

It has been one of the largest single acts of environmental communication in human history.

But in Attenborough’s UK, mirroring events around the world, the country went to the polls. And voted, in significant and growing numbers, for a party that would scrap net zero, halt the renewable transition, repeal the hunting ban, and dismantle, Trump-like, the science-led structure of key policies.

So Happy Birthday, Sir David, from the bottom of my heart. I am so sorry that your nation chose to dishonour you in this way.

An Emotional Connection

Let’s take a moment to give the great man the tribute he deserves. He did not just make popular television. He altered the emotional connections with nature of entire generations.

I am one of the millions who can name him as a key influence in my lifelong love of the natural world, and my career in journalism specialising in climate, nature and pollution education.

My children have a deep love of nature as a result. My 11-year-old son is currently, without any prompting, working his way through all the Attenborough TV epic documentary series.

Attenborough’s landmark series Blue Planet II did not just win awards. It shifted public attitudes toward single-use plastic in a way that years of campaigning had failed to do.

A Life on Our Planet - released in 2020, when he was 94 - was more a political statement than a nature documentary. A witness account of a man standing in the ruins of places he had filmed in their fullness, saying plainly: I watched this happen. We did it. Here is what we have to do now.

It was the most direct and urgent communication of his career, and it arrived because he had read the data and understood that beautiful filmmaking alone was no longer enough.

Even he knew. Even this great environmental communicator looked at the results of his life’s work and decided he needed to say it more plainly.

He wasn’t accused of being woke. He wasn’t met with laughing emojis. His country hangs on his every word.

That’s what makes the latest political results all the more devastating.

You cannot be both a Reform voter, and also a person who names David Attenborough as a British legend.

To be completely fair, the same goes for Conservative voters, with their own anti-climate and nature policies, and Labour’s growth agenda has also sent the message that our natural world comes second to the economy.

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So Who’s Fault Is This?

Should we just attack all the Reform voters for their actions? Of course not. There is another crisis at play. A crisis of communication.

If you showed most Reform voters footage of a dying coral reef, they would no doubt find it sad. A world away from what Jacques Cousteau and Finding Nemo showed us.

If you played them the sequence from Blue Planet II, where the albatross chick is fed plastic by its mother, a significant number of them would feel something real.

And yet those same people voted for a party that has pledged to undo all the policies that are designed to protect the things that Attenborough made them feel sad about.

This is the state of environmental politics in 2026. You can seemingly love nature as something beautiful, something worth grieving over, but without connecting this to politics.

You can weep at a dying whale on a Tuesday and vote for net zero abolition on a Thursday, and experience no internal contradiction whatsoever, because no one is explaining the connection well enough.

The Green Party has cleverly pivoted, and tripled its membership as a result, by speaking to the issues of inequality that Reform has built its foundations on - only the Greens target the billionaires, while Reform punch down and blame the immigrants.

But this also means the Greens have toned down their climate and nature stance considerably. It still exists, but they realised that talking about it was turning voters away.

So now no politician is talking about it.

The UK regional election results tell us that the environmental movement - for all the genuine progress it has made - has not solved the problem of reaching the people who are not already persuaded.

I used to think that didn’t matter. I took solace from surveys revealing that more than 80% of people did care about the climate and nature, and wanted their government to do more to protect it.

But giving power to Reform, and indeed the Conservatives, at local level, puts them in charge of planning decisions which will turn down solar and wind farms, and approve the destructive, nonsensical act of fracking - which in the United States has only led to more oil and gas extraction.

Reform Are Funded By Fossil Fuel Giants

Reform have been very open about the environmental destruction they would unleash on the country.

Leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly voiced his support for barbaric fox hunting and so-called country sports, and the party have aligned themselves closely with pro-hunting and shooting interests.

Reform actively ridicule net-zero policies, despite the fact that this simply addresses the need to reduce emissions, and protect all life on this planet.

But that’s hardly a surprise.

DeSmog, the home of specialist climate accountability journalism, revealed that since December 2019, Reform UK received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers - amounting to 92% of the party’s donations.

What Comes Next?

As David Attenborough is forced to reflect on his life (he famously doesn’t like the fuss), the man himself will no doubt be looking forwards instead.

The communication challenge of the next decade cannot be solved by a new Attenborough - though I hope he still has a few offerings in the tank yet!

The footage and the explanation has never been clearer. David Attenborough showed the world how to do this. But it is not moving the needle nearly enough.

This has driven me to launch Ethical Disruption, to enter the online territories where the Reform voters live. To make the issues personal. To use humour, irreverence, and the unexpected as vehicles for the most serious content.

To connect a vote on a ballot paper to serious changes in life which are just around the corner. That’s what I’ll be doing in the coming months and years.

David Attenborough spent his career proving that people are capable of responding to a crisis, when someone takes the trouble to show them. But he couldn’t do it all by himself.

That has to be Attenborough’s legacy, to fire up the passion in a new generation of effective climate communicators, to protect all life on this stunningly beautiful, dumb planet.

The words we use to talk about the most important issue of our time, might be the very reason not enough people are listening.

Words matter. And even staples like climate, environment and sustainability are killing progress.

Change Your Language Of Doom

Communication of the perils facing planet Earth is still - STILL - not landing in sufficient numbers - and that puts the natural world, and all of us crisis-denying humans, at existential risk.

To communicate that better - it looks like we’re screwed unless we change our ways really, really quickly.

As a journalist myself, my job has been to communicate often complex information in a form that can be understood by an audience of all educational abilities and levels of knowledge.

In short, keep it simple. Then dive in deeper. That’s what this very article does.

In January 2025, I wrote an article here which garnered a lot of feedback, and it urged people to stop talking so much about climate change, when talking about climate change.

Now I’m returning to the subject with further thinking, updated reports and an explanation of the 25 words and phrases that really ought to be replaced, or at the very least explained better, to get more people onside with reality.

Why Don’t People Engage With Scientific Language?

Judging by recent surveys, most people seem to accept that climate change is real, and want action taken to tackle it. But huge proportions don’t feel any urgency about it.

That gap between belief and understanding - and between concern and action - is a failure of communication.

The 2024 Peoples’ Climate Vote, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was the world’s largest standalone survey on climate change, covering 77 countries representing 87% of the global population.

It found that 56% of people think about climate change daily or weekly, and 53% were more worried about it than a year earlier.

For the biggest, most worrying story in the world (yes, it will prove even more damaging than wars), these aren’t great figures.

Four out of five people globally do want their governments to take stronger climate action, more encouragingly, but it’s interesting the break that down into countries: 91% of Chinese respondents, 73% of Britons, 70% of Europeans and just 60% of Americans.

People listen to politicians over scientists when it comes to climate change. That depressing reality was confirmed in a study published in the journal BioScience in early 2026.

Researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Oregon took the world scientists’ 2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth, one of the most urgent and compelling climate documents produced in recent years, and tested whether exposure to its language genuinely moved readers.

The short answer was: not really.

If the most authoritative voices in climate science are struggling to reach people through their words, what does that tell us about the words - and the whole approach to communication - that the environmental movement has been relying on?

Back in 2002, Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised President Bush to swap “global warming” for the “less frightening” and “less emotional” term “climate change” - a deliberate attempt to reduce public concern.

The green movement fought back by escalating the language. In 2019, The Guardian instructed its reporters to use “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” - a year after campaigning group Extinction Rebellion was formed, its name a direct pointer to what lay ahead.

But research suggests that neither the escalators or de-escalators really won.

We now have more scientific evidence, more data, more alarming reports than at any point in human history. We have documentaries, summits, school strikes, and even celebrities shouting from the rooftops.

But if we keep talking to people in a language they don’t speak, the message won’t land. And it isn’t landing.

So first, let’s go through those 25 very commonly-used words and phrases that I believe are getting in the way, and are failing to move people. And I want to suggest something better for each one.

Because the goal isn’t to be scientifically correct. The goal is to be understood. Only then will action and fury follow.

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1 Environment

Let’s start with perhaps the biggest offender of all.

It’s so broad it means everything and nothing at the same time.

“Protect the environment” - what does that actually conjure up? Some vague sense that you should probably recycle more? Maybe don’t leave the tap running?

Try instead: The natural world. Or maybe, our surroundings.

Make it about the river near where you grew up, the park your kids play in, and the coastline you drive to in summer.

2 Climate

Another biggie. And this word has had a rough ride.

Every time it snows heavily somewhere, you can set your watch by the social media response (certain politicians included): ”Hey, so much for global warming!”

Wow. I mean. it’s frustrating, but it also tells us something we need to hear - the word ‘climate’ is not connecting.

Part of the problem is that climate refers to patterns over decades. It’s not something you can feel on your skin or see out of your window.

But, the weather is. And that’s exactly what we should be talking about more. Extreme weather.

Enough of the climate projections for the year 2100. Instead focus on the wildfires tearing through places you’ve been on holiday - even your own locality.

Or the flooding that keeps returning to towns that never used to flood. The droughts, the heatwaves arriving earlier, and lasting longer.

Climate change, at its core, is an alarming increase in extreme weather. That’s the story, so we should always lead with that.

3 Global Warming

A lot of people think being warmer doesn’t sound so bad. Nicer summers, fewer grey days, maybe the British growing their own olives. Who’s going to march in the streets against that?

So take a moment to explain what warmer actually means.

A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour. More water vapour means heavier rainfall. That leads to flash flooding, bigger storms. more volatile, unpredictable, dangerous weather.

Warm might sound cosy, but the reality is chaos.

4 Biodiversity

This one sounds like it belongs in a school biology revision guide.

Say instead: All life on Earth. Or: The extraordinary variety of plants, animals and living things we share this planet with.

The biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis are deeply, dangerously intertwined. But it’s impossible to feel urgency about words you don’t fully understand.

5 Sustainability

One of the most overused words of the last decade. Ask 10 people what it means and you’ll probably get 10 different answers.

Say instead: Living in a way that protects our natural resources. Or: Living within our means, for the sake of the future.

6 Carbon Footprint

This one has become a political football, wrapped up in arguments about personal versus corporate responsibility.

It’s worth saying that the term was actually popularised by BP in a 2004 advertising campaign - we’ll look at that a bit later on. BP wanted to keep the focus on individuals, not corporations - but that doesn’t mean each and every one of us is excused.

Explain carbon footprint by saying: Our impact on the planet.

7 Greenhouse Gases

The greenhouse analogy actually works, because a greenhouse traps heat, which is exactly what these gases do.

But it’s better to explain that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are heat-trapping gases.

The more we release, the more heat gets locked into the atmosphere.

8 Fossil Fuels

Not a terrible term, most people have a reasonable grasp of it.

But ‘coal, oil and gas’ is more specific, harder to dismiss, and harder to hide behind.

9 Renewable Energy

“Renewable” sounds appealing, but only if you already know what it means. Try: Endless energy sources.

Sun and wind don’t run out, and they also offer energy security - the strongest argument of all for many people, watching their bills rise on the back of the latest pointless war.

10 Net Zero

Politicians love this one, which means the public trusts it about as far as they can throw a solar panel.

What does it actually mean? It’s achieving a balance between the heat-trapping gases we release, and the amount we remove from the atmosphere.

It’s about achieving a balance, and saving lives while doing so - worth explaining…

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11 Deforestation

For such a devastating action, that’s emotionally vacant as a word.

Say instead: Cutting down forests, and explain that this is for animal farming, logging, and development.

And then describe what that means for wildlife, for the climate, and for the communities living alongside those forests.

12 Desertification

This sounds either like a dessert or a holiday destination. It’s neither.

It means land turning into desert because of human-caused climate change.

So explain that, because crops will fail, and communities will collapse.

13 Habitat Loss

The word “habitat” makes it feel like a David Attenborough documentary, rather than an emergency.

This is about animals losing their homes, species being wiped out, and the destruction of the natural world.

“Loss” doesn’t begin to cover that tragedy.

14 Coral Bleaching

Bleaching sounds like a spa treatment - this is coral reefs dying — mostly because the water around them is getting too warm.

15 Carbon Sequestration

Nobody needs to say this. ‘Carbon capture’ is fine, but ‘storing carbon underground’ is probably better.

And distinguish between the industrial process and the natural draw-down to trees, peat bogs, mangroves and other carbon-storing natural features.

16 Bioplastics

This word sounds nearly identical to regular plastics, but these are actually plastics made from plants, so talk up the difference.

17 Just Transition

This is a fair and important concept, but it has a deeply confusing name.

This is simply about a fair shift to green jobs - making sure workers and communities aren’t abandoned as we move away from fossil fuels.

It’s about people, over policy, so lead with the people.

18 Rewilding

Actually, one of the better terms, though the media loves to make it sound terrifying.

Wolves! In your garden! Eating your children!

In reality, it’s simply bringing back nature, and letting ecosystems recover.

19 Circular Economy

An economic model based on reusing and reducing waste. A worthy concept, but a terrible name.

Just say: The importance of recycling and reusing everything, so nothing ends up as waste.

20 Sustainable Fashion

“Sustainable” is already vague;, and “fashion” makes it sound like it only applies to people who attend Paris runway shows.

Be more specific, say “eco-friendly clothing,” and crucially determine whether the clothing is plastic-free.

A lot of so-called sustainable fashion contains plastics like recycled polyester or elastane, which shed microplastics when you wash them, which end up in our rivers and oceans.

If something is genuinely plastic-free, say so loudly. Or go to our plastic-free clothing store!

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21 Desalination

The process of removing salt from seawater to make it drinkable. It’s vitally important, but how many people know what the word means?

Don’t say ‘desalination’ without saying what it does: It makes seawater drinkable, and it could save lives in regions where clean water is running out.

22 Carbon Neutral

This means not adding more heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, than you take away. Simple.

23 Tipping Points

When the damage reaches a level we can no longer stop, we hit the point of no return.

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet. permafrost thaw, dieback of the Amazon rainforest, are all on the precipice.

Once you cross these lines, the consequences unfold whether we act or not.

24 Nature-Based Solutions

This is using nature to fix problems, such as planting trees, restoring wetlands and protecting coastlines. Be specific.

25 Adaptation

Say: Adjusting to changes that are already happening, and preparing for those still to come.

This is one of the most important, and underdiscussed, parts of the whole conversation.

Why Are These 25 Words and Phrases Important?

Whether you’re a teacher, a journalist, a scientist, an activist, or just someone who cares about the world you live in, the language you use is crucially important.

Using simpler words is not dumbing things down. It is the smartest thing you can do if you actually want change to happen.

Because the problem has never been a lack of evidence. It’s been a gap between the people who understand what’s happening and the people who need to.

Words can close that gap. Let’s start using better ones.

The Language of Crisis

When we talk about confusing environmental language, it’s tempting to put it down to the habits of academics.

But some of this language was designed to confuse.

Take “carbon footprint.” As previously mentioned, the term was popularised - indeed invented as a public relations exercise - by oil giant BP, as part of a major advertising campaign in the early 2000s.

The campaign included a “carbon footprint calculator” that allowed individuals to measure their personal impact on the planet.

This took a crisis that is fundamentally the product of industrial systems, corporate decisions, and governmental policy failures - and it relocated responsibility onto individuals.

It asked us to calculate our footprint. Not Exxon’s. Not the aviation industry’s. Ours.

But I’m not one of these people that leaps to the conclusion that BP’s PR campaign excuses individual behaviour. Personal choices are not meaningless.

We are the ones who choose to buy all these damaging products, and we can choose not to.

Developing a ‘green mindset’ translates to buying better and voting for politicians who give a damn.

Nevertheless, carbon footprint became embedded in our language, and the calculator was so complicated, mass movements of people were never going to be engaged.

“Sustainability,” meanwhile, became a corporate buzzword, with real enthusiasm. A company can claim to be “committed to sustainability” but ultimately unaccountable for the damage it is doing.

The word has been stretched so far it seems to cover everything - and therefore means nothing.

Why Does Abstract Language Fail?

There’s a substantial body of research on this.

Human beings are wired for immediate, personal threats that are visible and close.

The climate crisis presents almost the opposite. It is gradual (even though it is accelerating). It is wrapped in statistics, expressed in ranges and parts per million.

For much of the world’s population - particularly in the wealthy nations most responsible for historical emissions - its most devastating immediate effects are still largely happening to other people, in other places.

Which bothers me, and hopefully you - but not the majority of people.

This is sometimes called the “psychological distance” problem. When something feels distant in time, in geography, or in personal relevance, we mentally file it as a concern to be noted, and set aside.

Abstract vocabulary makes all of this worse. “Biodiversity loss” doesn’t activate the same neural alarm systems as “animals going extinct.” “Desertification” doesn’t hit the way “land turning to dust, crops failing, families leaving” does.

The more abstract the language, the greater the psychological distance - and the less likely anyone is to feel that urgent, personal pull towards taking action.

This is why it matters to be specific. The 25 examples given earlier may have seemed simplistic, or dumbed-down, but the alternatives given simply hit harder.

Making the issues more local and immediate translates to “the river in your town is flooding more often,” and “the insect populations that pollinate the crops in the fields near your city are collapsing.”

There’s also what psychologists call “solution aversion” - the tendency for people to resist acknowledging a problem when they perceive the solutions as threatening to their identity, lifestyle, or economic interests.

It probably won’t come as a surprise, but studies have found that conservatives are significantly more likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change when the solutions presented are market-based rather than regulatory — not because the science changes, but because the solutions feel less threatening.

This has implications for how we talk about the transition away from fossil fuels. “Just Transition” - one of the terrible 25 - is a term that will mean little to a coal worker. But ”making sure no community gets left behind when we change how we power our world” is a human promise, and might actually land.

The Media’s Role in Muddying the Water

As a journalist myself, one who has for YEARS attempted to communicate the urgency of the nature and climate crises, it pains me to bring this to attention.

But for the same decades, the doctrine of “balance” in journalism has led to a distortion of the scientific consensus. Stories about climate science have been routinely “balanced” with the views of industry-funded sceptics, creating a false equivalence between the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists and a small, well-funded fringe.

And incredibly, this still happens, especially in the United States. “Now let’s bring in someone who says it’s all a woke hoax….”

Many people still believe the science is “disputed” when, on the fundamental questions, it emphatically is not.

The media has also struggled with the language problem. But journalists are regular people like the rest of us, you know - they’re not necessarily any more intelligent or informed in this area. Although I believe they should be, if they were doing their jobs properly.

Reporting the gloom and doom of the situation doesn’t tick all the boxes, however. Research from the field of environmental communication suggests that coverage dominated “everything is catastrophic and you are powerless” tends to produce disengagement and despair - not action. People just switch off when they feel overwhelmed and helpless.

The most effective communication combines honest urgency with realistic agency. This is a difficult balance to achieve, but using more understood language certainly helps.

What The 25 Words List Didn’t Say

It’s worth going into a little more detail about some of the 25. Tipping points deserves special attention because the concept is one of the most important and least understood aspects of the whole crisis.

The word “tipping” sounds gentle, like tipping a teapot to pour the tea. It certainly doesn’t convey the irreversible, cascading consequences, or the stakes involved.

For example, when the Greenland ice sheet crosses its tipping point, we’re not looking at a gradual, manageable rise in sea levels; we’re looking at metres of eventual rise.

Yes, it will take place over decades, over centuries - but it’s locked in from the moment the threshold is crossed. That will affect our children, our grandchildren, and generations to come.

When the Amazon crosses its tipping point - and current estimates suggest we may be disturbingly close - the consequences extend far beyond South America. The Amazon is a rain-generating system for a continent. Its dieback would affect rainfall patterns across the world.

A report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warned in 2025 that one tipping point had indeed already been reached - warm water coral reefs are now facing a long-term decline, also risking the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.

The language of “tipping points” doesn’t carry the urgency, nor the tragedy. The language of ”points of no return” certainly comes closer.

Adaptation is a term that will become increasingly central in communication from now on.

For most of the history of the climate movement, the focus has been on mitigation - reducing emissions to prevent the worst outcomes. Now we have failed so spectacularly with this, that we are focused on adaptation - adjusting to changes that are already happening and those now locked in.

It’s not conceding defeat, but it’s real life. A significant amount of warming is already baked in, as is sea level rise and increased frequency of extreme weather.

Communities, cities and nations need to start adapting NOW - and the reluctance to talk about adaptation has left many communities underprepared.

The Vital Importance of Communication

Communication is not a bit-part player on the periphery of the climate and nature crisis. It is central to it. It’s what drives me personally. I believe this job I do as a communicator is incredibly important.

The scientific work is outstanding, but what has consistently lagged behind - assisted by misinformation via politicians and sections of the media - is the public’s understanding, and the cultural shift that would allow progress to accelerate.

Language is a lever that can move things along. And language is entirely within our control.

We can change it today. Right now, in the next conversation. Please play your part.