Changing the Way People Talk About Climate Change

As climate change has become an increasing threat to the world that we live on, one of the things that needs to happen is for people talk about the issues that threaten our plant. Although, the ways climate change is spoken about now has created a bigger divide in the way people speak on the issue. This way of talking has not only lead to a divide in the people who are making the laws but also to activists from both sides. As this divide grows making decisions on issues about the environment have become increasingly split. As the world progresses into an era where the next moves that are made about climate change will change the climate of earth for the future, the goals that people have of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will never be achieved until both sides are included in the discussion of climate change.

            In one article called “Ecospeak Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America” written by Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline Palmer they discuss the word Ecospeak which they state is creating a divide in the United States. They write, “Ecospeak, where public divisions are petrified, conflicts are prolonged, and solutions are deferred by a failure to criticize deeply the terms and conditions of the environmental dilemma” (Killingsworth and Palmer 6). They define Ecospeak as a way of discussing climate change where divisions in the argument are petrified which makes solutions often fail. This division, which they talk about, not only contributes to how people see the opposing side of the climate change discussion but it also effects the abilities to pass bills made in government. Creating a new policy’s to address climate change will be hard to do if divisions about the topic are strengthened and the conflicts are prolonged. If the rhetoric towards climate change remains in Ecospeak then instead of working towards common goals to eliminate climate change the discussion will remain frozen and stay as an argument.  Killingsworth and Palmer also state that the rhetoric of Ecospeak creates an oversimplified separation of the two opposing sides (6). When arguments from both sides become oversimplified a barrier between the sides grow creating a situation that is not good for making progress. By oversimplifying either argument the sides begin to look at each other either as the good or bad guys because neither truly understands the other. This creates two sides of people who really do not know the others standpoint on the issue because of the oversimplification of arguments.