Is it climate change or global warming? The language we use to describe this is important. A phrase or term can communicate an idea consciously and unconsciously. So, let's get it right when we talk about the climate.

Climate Change

The term Climate Change no longer reflects what is happening. David Wallace-Wells puts it eloquently in his book The Uninhabitable Earth: "The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions; that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that is a crisis of the "natural" world, not the human one; that those two are distinct..." The full quote on page one of his book is well worth reading.

Climate Warming

Climate Warming is a term usually used to describe Warming S...

The year 2016 felt like a great time for tackling climate change. Every country in the world had signed The Paris Agreement, with the Signatories promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As a result of the agreement each government formed a committee to report progress on climate change goals. For example, in the UK The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) undertook that role. The CCC’s 2020 report advises all government departments thus: ‘Ahead of the CCC's next adaptation progress report in 2021, demonstrate adaptation planning for a minimum 2°C and consideration of a 4°C global temperature rise (by 2100 from pre-industrial levels).’

What would a 4°C world look like? Author George Marshall described why his book, Don’t even think about it is important when he wrote three snapshots of a four-degree world. There will be an Earth of hell-like heatwaves of a magnitude the planet has not seen for five million years. Rain forests will be scorched, with the consequent loss of life-savin...