Rule29, a creative agency in my hometown of Geneva, Illinois, enters the fray about whether massive snow in the mid-Atlantic mean that “global warming isn’t real.” It’s an odd argument that seems to be percolating. My response:
Or a case of bad branding? The trouble is “global warming” — which all evidence by any peer-reviewed scientist indicates is happening at an alarming rate — sounds like everything (all seasons) should be getting warmer. And while they are. It also means that there will be extreme weather, horrible storms that dump massive amounts of snow on areas unused to it.
“Global climate change” is a term that aligns more with our experience of living in a warmer planet better. (And by “our” I mean those in North America, ask drought and heat plagued Southern Hemisphere about the heat thing. Australia may be uninhabitable the situation is getting so dire there — they are running out of water and suffering under massive wildfires.)
The issue is not whether global warming or global climate change is real, but how are we going to deal with the extreme weather, the pressures it puts on fragile international networks of people: more war, starvation, island nations and coastal cities lost to rising sea levels, and yes massive snow storms.
But we can spend time arguing about word choice too. As long as we make some hard choices about our consumption patterns and how our ecological choices reverberate around the globe.
