A few words could build political will to tackle climate change much faster. Just a few. The problem is no one is quite sure what they are.
It's important to choose your words carefully when talking about climate change — or should that be 'global warming'? The mainstream media uses these terms as synonyms, even though they have slightly different meanings.
In the scientific literature, 'global warming' is an increase in average surface temperature from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It's a narrow definition, purely about heating up the planet.
'Climate change' is any long-term change in Earth's climate, including temperature rises and changes to wind, rainfall and sea levels. So it's broader, and slightly more removed from increased emissions.
Subtle distinctions like this matter because the way an issue is described can have enormous influence on the public's appetite to solve it. The secret is choosing words that 'frame' the issue in your favour.
The best known examples of framing come from American cognitive linguist George Lakoff. Lakoff argues that George W. Bush replaced the phrase 'tax cuts' with 'tax relief' to reframe paying tax as an affliction. Embedded in those two words is a neo-conservative worldview against government intervention in the private sphere. If you accept the term, you absorb the worldview.
Framing also applies to the climate change debate. In world climate negotiations in the late 1980s, the US and Saudi Arabia lobbied to change the language of key resolutions from 'global warming' to 'climate change' because it sounded less connected to the burning of fossil fuels.
And in 2002, US pollster Frank Luntz famously advised Republicans to use the phrase 'climate change' because he thought it posed less of an emotional challenge than 'global warming'. President George W. Bush subsequently used 'climate change' in his speeches.
In Australia, two words helped Tony Abbott sabotage the previous Labor government's centrepiece climate policy — 'carbon' and 'tax'.
As UK climate change communications expert George Marshall has argued, carbon is an emotionally meaningless word lacking inspiration. Taxes are disliked, but tolerated as a social good. Combined, the two words implied an arbitrary cost, paid by the public, on a ubiquitous and invisible substance.
A 'carbon tax' does sound like a pointless tax on everything, which Abbott hammered home with every soundbite. The moment Labor got sucked into this frame — even to refute it — was the moment they lost the debate.
How can just a few words have so much influence?