Foreword for "The role of language in the climate change debate" (ed. Kjersti Flottum) (original) (raw)

In March 2015 the BBC screened a 90 minute TV documentary titled 'Climate Change by Numbers'. The programme aimed to improve public understanding of climate change by focusing on " just three key numbers that clarify all the important questions about climate change ". The three numbers were 0.85 (the degrees Celsius of warming the planet has undergone since 1880), 95 (the percent confidence climate scientists have that at least half this warming is human-caused) and 1,000,000,000,000 (tonnes of carbon it is estimated humans can burn to avoid 'dangerous climate change'). But there are other languages beyond numbers and mathematics that matter for public debates about climate change. Understanding the public meanings of climate change, and therefore the basis for Ban Ki-Moon’s demanded “action”, requires more than just numbers or scientific knowledge. Studying the ways in which climate change is talked and written about through semantic, visual and embodied languages, and in different vernaculars, is necessary if the multiple meanings of climate change are to be excavated. And only through the construction and articulation of meaning is personal and collective political action on climate change possible. Science or numbers alone is never enough.