Stop Talking About Climate Change
25 Words To Avoid To Save The 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.
Please watch this video - I’d be grateful if you could also subscribe - and then we’ll look at the issues in more detail….
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 that Ethical Disruption is also a video channel, I’m returning to the subject with further thinking, updated reports and the YouTube 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.
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…
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!
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.
If you found this useful, share it with someone who talks about this subject. The more of us who get this right, the better.
All content on this website, which is hosted on the Substack platform, is free of charge to read, view and listen to.
But it does cost money to keep this vital mission going, so please, if you are able, have a look at the ways in which you can help out, by following the link below.
By simply reading this article, you have already shown your interest and intention to play your part, so thank you.
Besides using some of these words when communicating to other people, some of them feel so diluted now, when every company and their aunt are using them. Sustainability is so wrongly overused, it has lost all its meaning.
I’m a big believer in plain language but had never really stopped to think about how many sustainability related terms we use that few people really understand. Thanks for inspiring me to do better!