Climate change isn’t someone else’s problem, it’s ours – but the language is confusing

Cliff Mukasa, Atacama Consulting Foundation

The language of climate change, the jargon and technical terms of it, often feel alien, abstract and distant to the common person. Expressions such as the need to “limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius” leave us feeling confused and inadequate. The same goes for other terms such as “mitigation pathways, NDCs and Paris alignment.” For some, even the words “climate change” sounds like rocket science. If I were to ask a coffee farmer in my village in Masaka, Central Uganda, about global warming, they might not understand what I mean. But if I asked how the changing seasons and the extreme heat have affected their yields and farming practices, they could talk for days. Yet there are many in the world who still want us to believe that “climate change is a hoax.”

People with power and influence seem to believe that if they accumulate enough wealth, their children and future generations will somehow be shielded from the consequences of a dying planet. In a society that worships money and power, the common good is too often overlooked and climate change has become one of its greatest casualties.

In our social-media-driven world, where anyone can find “evidence” to support any belief, the truth has become harder to find. Young people today are growing up surrounded by conflicting messages and, too often, doing the right thing comes second to building wealth. But here’s the hard truth: no political leader, no church, no saviour is coming to fix this for us. This fight is ours. In the words of Robert Swan, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”

What is ideally a grassroot issue is now understood as a “distant and elite distraction.” How did we come so late to this realization? Perhaps more than those deliberating on climate change in the boardrooms, communities more than most understand the effects of the changing climate. Yet we continue talking to them with language and jargon they do not understand. Change will not only come from bold commitments on international stages. It will come from countless local, grassroots acts of courage and creativity. For those to flourish, the climate conversation must move out of jargon and into the language of daily life where, in truth, the fight for our future is already being lived.

This is an excerpt of a blog. To read the piece in its entirety, head to the #ShiftThePower Treehouse.

By: Cliff Mukasa, Atacama Consulting Foundation