What if COP’s failure was also a vocabulary problem? At a time of social, ecological and geopolitical turbulence, and in a world that changes quickly, the decision -maker needs to be up to date. However, we still hear speeches speaking of “global warming”, “erosion of biodiversity” or “sustainable development”.
Here is, for all useful purposes and to the address of decision -makers, an update proposal to overcome these outdated expressions.
“crisis”
Let’s start with “global warming” which could give the impression that our main problem is the thermostat, that is to say the average temperature of the earth.
Scientists – notably the intergovernmental group of experts on climate evolution (IPCC) – are talking today about climate “crisis”, because the main problem is not the average temperature: these are the multiple fluctuations – Storms, floods, droughts, social crises – which will be more frequent and larger amplitude.
Continue to talk about global warming while Canada experiences a heat dome at 50 ° C in 2021 or Europe experiences two months of heat wave in 2022, this is Semantic denial.
Do you still talk about “biodiversity erosion”? The pace of disappearance of species on earth is one hundred to a thousand times greater than the pre -industrial period and 30 % to 40 % of species are today threatened with disappearance.
collapse
Scientists, in particular the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ( uicn ), now speak of collapse of biodiversity, simply because it is an established fact. The direct threat to humans is the disappearance of associated ecosystem services: food, biomaterials, medicine, purification of water and air or soil regeneration depend on a high level of biodiversity. Again, talking about “erosion” and not “collapse” is taking aspirin to avoid seeing reality in front.
Do you still think that the socioecological crisis in which we are is the product of the domestication of fire, agriculture, even the industrial revolution?
Again, if these ancient developments have had their role, scientists (notably the American chemist Will Steffen and the Stockholm Resilience Center) show that this crisis really takes off in 1950, in what some economists still call “thirty glorious “, and that the others, more enlightened, call for” great acceleration “. To ignore the recent nature of the crisis is to refuse to make it a political object. It is to act our helplessness in words.
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