A little more climate talk could produce a lot more action
Better communication about the environmental crisis is essential to galvanising support for doing more to reverse the trend.
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Climate emergency is a case where a little more talk outside negotiating rooms could help produce a lot more action.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Lara Williams
World leaders and their negotiating teams are currently preparing for the 28th annual United Nations climate-change conference, due to start at the end of November in Dubai. Over the next few weeks, we will be sucked into discussions and debates featuring plenty of acronyms, bureaucratic terms and semantic gymnastics: CCS; Article 6.4; phase-out versus phase-down. But the climate emergency is a case where a little more talk outside negotiating rooms could help produce a lot more action.
Most folk don’t know what CCS – carbon capture and storage – is, don’t follow the deliberations of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Board, and remain blissfully ignorant of the difference between ameliorating and ending fossil-fuel emissions. Two recent reports suggest there’s more work to be done in explaining the climate crisis in language everyone can understand.