In recent years, the language seems to be changing faster than ever - including on the topic of climate. Is it better to call the processes taking place in the world today "global warming", "climate change" or "climate crisis"? Is the gas in the Mediterranean "natural" or "mineral"? And why is this debate more important than we think?
At the end of January 2019, the Midwest of the United States experienced an unusual cold wave. The temperature in Chicago dropped to minus 49 degrees Celsius, in Canada it was minus 51 degrees, and the cold temperatures took a heavy toll - 22 people killed. The US president at the time, Donald Trump, did not remain indifferent to the extraordinary climate andTweeted on his Twitter account: "What the hell is going on with global warming? Please come back quickly, we need you!”
But despite Trump's words, "global warming" did not disappear for a moment. in fact, very likely, she - or the climate crisis, to be more precise - what led to the rare cold wave, due Migration of mighty eddies of cold air from the North Pole (the polar vortex) to more southern latitudes, a process that has become more frequent in the last 35 years.
The impact of the climate crisis does not end with cold waves in the US, andThe changes in the natural system, MSea level rise, Through Increasing intensity of hurricanes וAggravation of events in the forms in areas prone to this and up to an increase in the severity and frequency of Huge fires, threaten our future - including in Israel. Due to this, media organizations, for example The British Guardian, came out with an official directive not to use terms like "global warming" or "climate change", but to call the child by his name: "climate crisis". But, does it even matter what we call this phenomenon?
Language creates reality
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the fathers of modern linguistics, studied the languages of indigenous groups and tried to show that language mediates between us and the world, and that each language, with all its different terms and unique syntax, will mediate the world to us in a different way. In accordance with their research, they formulated the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, according to which languages divide the world into categories, which influence the way speakers understand the world and behave in it.
In one of the studies of Sapir he demonstrated how this tendency to understand terms affects the behavior of humans, and illustrated the differences between the attitude towards a tank marked as "fuel tank", and one marked as "empty fuel tank". Even in an empty fuel tank, there are dangerous vapors that can ignite and cause an explosion, but the addition of the word "empty" led people to ignore the real danger that lies in the tank - and to smoke cigarettes near it. "People's association with the word 'empty' is that the fuel tank is inactive - that is, the term we use can dictate our behavior," says Prof. Malka Rappaport Hovav from the Department of Linguistics at the Hebrew University.
Due to the importance and influence of language, proactive term changes occur today in various fields. The most striking example of this is the attempt to create a more inclusive and equal gender language, which allows addressing different women according to the gender they identify with. This trend has also reached entities such as The United Nations וThe European Union, who published official guidelines for the use of gender-equal language. Such moves are also being made in the Hebrew language: for example, the "Talk to us" initiative was formulated A comprehensive guide to egalitarian writing which allows the inclusion of all genders.
To correctly frame a negative phenomenon
"Each term divides the world into what is inside what it refers to and what is outside of it - the word tomato, for example, divides the world into what is a tomato and what is not a tomato," explains Rapaport Hovav. According to her, our psychological tendency is not to notice the differences between different things that are under the same term - that is, even when there are different tomatoes, we will refer to them all simply as "tomato".
This effect of the nomenclature on the way we perceive reality is also relevant to the field of climate. The use of the term "warming", for example, will present us with two options: a world that is warming or a world that is not warming - and thus people like Trump will be able to doubt the existence of warming in a world where the cold temperatures are breaking records. According to Prof. Eilat Baram-Zbari, head of the science communication research group at the Faculty of Science and Technology Education at the Technion, even the use of the term "changes" does not necessarily frame the negative phenomenon in the right way. "Change can be for the better or for the worse or be neutral - and the use of the term crisis, on the other hand, clearly has a negative connotation," she says.
Another example is The term "disposable tools". Its common use hides the fact that these plastic utensils will remain around even in hundreds and thousands of years.
Natural, or polluting?
The subject of term changes in the context of the climate crisis has recently made headlines in Israel due to The appeal she sent to the Language Academy The Minister of Environmental Protection, Tamar Zandberg, in which it was proposed to replace the term "natural gas" with "mineral gas", in view of the fact that this gas is a fossil fuel, which is mainly made of methane - the greenhouse gas Second after carbon dioxide in its contribution to the climate crisis and 28 times stronger than it in its influence on the greenhouse effect during a 100-year stay in the atmosphere. "The term 'natural gas' contributes to confusion and lack of clarity in the public regarding the nature of energy sources based on fossil fuels, including the gas mixtures produced from gas wells in Israel and around the world," the minister wrote in her appeal. "The term 'natural gas' creates a false representation as if the production and combustion of gas are not polluting, as if it were clean energy."
Our psychological tendency is not to notice the differences between different things that are under the same term. Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels
"Nowadays, 'natural' things are mostly those that we attribute a positive meaning to - therefore, our tendency is to think that natural gas is also something positive," says Rappaport-Hobb. This is despite the fact that this is not the only case where something "natural" is not positive: cyanide (hydrogen cyanide, found in minute amounts in almonds and most The fruits that contain iron) and a wide variety of deadly toxins produced by snakes, spiders, jellyfish and marine invertebrates - all completely natural.
In the meantime, Minister Zandberg said: "We are still waiting for the response of the scientific secretariat of the Language Academy on the matter, but at the Ministry of Environmental Protection we have already established a fact: we no longer use the term 'natural gas'." According to Prof. Baram-Zabari, such a step in itself can have a great impact. "Minister Zandberg does not hang around in unknown circles - she sets policy," she says. "Accordingly, this is the term that the industry that works with the policy makers will have to use, and this is the language that some journalists will start using. I believe that the use of the term will permeate, and that its very change can affect the way people perceive this gas."
At a time when the climate is only changing more and more for the worse, it is very possible that there is justification to change the terms we use for "climate crisis" and "mineral gas", and if Whorf and Sapir are right - perhaps this could help us to change the reality even a little.
