Happy New Year folks, and please pardon that whistling-in-the-dark use of the word “Happy”.
Only God knows (and I hear He’s resigned) what our southern cousins are up to these days but for us Canucks we’ve got a very important federal election coming up near the end of the year and we’ve sure got to get our act together.
With the five-man wrecking crew recently labelled by Maclean’s as the “The Resistance” – three PC provincial premiers and the leader of the prehistoric UCP in Alberta and the leader of the federal Big Blue C Party, it of the twisted logo and the matching principles – with all of them essentially preaching that the peak of humankind’s priorities is to maintain the economy and jobs and to hell with a little thing called Climate Change which the vast majority of the world’s scientists tell us will be beyond control by 2030, and with the federal NDP struggling in the wilderness and the federal Greens lost in numerical oblivion and with the governing Liberals caught in a pit of their own digging pretending to promote the expansion of fossil fuels while longing to transition away from them, well it looks to me as though a great many of us have some thinking to do.
I made a modest proposal in this space back in October called Climate Change Pledge. Only a handful of folk applauded that challenge but only a handful of folk read this blog. Even so, I have one more modest suggestion to make.
Let’s stop talking about Climate “Change”.
Change. What an innocuous word. A change for the better. A change for the worse. A change is as good as a rest. Time for a change. Regime change. A change of heart.
Let’s drop the weasel word and name the beast that is lumbering over the horizon for what it is –Climate Chaos.
A word can have power. Let’s use it.
If Climate Chaos is not sidetracked, the long term resulting hurricanes floods desertification rising-oceans mass-migrations collapsing-economies and accompanying bloodshed will be the legacy that we will leave to our grand children and great-grandchildren. Some legacy.
But if Climate Chaos is sidetracked the required colossal effort will have doomed many jobs while creating many many more. It will have made us understand the perils of unrestricted capitalism and think anew about our interdependence with each other and with nature. It will be an epic struggle that can bring in a more human era rather than consigning our descendants to another Dark Age. Not a bad legacy.
Shakespeare called it correctly:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat.” *
But even the Bard had no idea how deep the quicksand in the shallows could be and how vast the breakers or how truly miserable the miseries.
*Julius Caesar, Act lV, Sc3
Return To Paradox 
Brilliant. We need to be scared to death. And this reminds us there is a lot to be scared about. The AGO’s Anthropocene exhibit shows us how we have changed the face of the earth. It doesn’t show us the impact of our changes to the earth’s climate have made or will make in the future to all life on the planet. But “Climate Crisis” stares powerfully out from the page and challenges us to get over our creature comforts and be the change rather than just thinking about it.
Thanks Gretta. But actually I think that Climate “Crisis” is also too weak a work. We’re always having a Crisis of some sort but the likely Climate Chaos is a another kettle of fish.
I agree because chaos also speaks to much on many fronts, which will be accurate.
I like the word Chaos too because while for many it is the worst thing that can happen, for some there is the awareness that out of chaos can come incredible creativity. Oh I hope so!!
Yes. But let’s hope the optimists don’t say “bring it on!”
Haha! Ah yes. That “snowflake” contingent that ultimately weakens the left.
The toughest book on global warming and its perpetrators is just out. “The Big Heat” by @JSCCounterPunch and @joshua__frank. But they still use the phrase “climate change” instead of “climate disruption” or “climate devastation.” Time to change the words to meet the peril! -R
Thanks for the tip off on the new book, “The Big Heat”.
I do NOT like the word Chaos because weather has always been chaotic and complex. I prefer climate catastrophe or disaster. Chaos theory is also a beneficial way to understand complex, non-linear changes in many fields. Chaos theory is concerned about the huge effects that can stem from relatively small events. The butterfly effect. What is thought to be chaotic seems less so when your vantage point changes. Think of a Hurricane. When you are in the city experiencing it, the effects are very different than what you can observe from above in a plane or even a satellite or space station.
Herb, as usual you’re being too intellectual and knowledgeable.. Sure there is a Chaos Theory but I’m interested in the basic English language as it is used by we the people.
So you have joined the Trump anti-intellectual crowd? Weather and climate have ALWAYS been chaotic and unpredictable. Nothing new there. Humans failing to understand Chaotic systems and complex phenomena is what has gotten us into this mess. Ralph Nader also recommends dropping change — it is always changing — and suggests catastrophe or disaster both of which better connote the disastrous catastrophes we are experiencing at increasing rates of frequency and intensity.
It’s a unique experience for me to be accused of being part of the Trump crowd. Interesting. As for climate and weather always being chaotic and unpredictable I can say that in the course of my 91 years I have found them to be variable but overall remarkably predictable up until the last few years. But really it’s a matter of semantics. I simply wish we could use a word that truly denotes the scale of what is coming. Catastrophic and disaster are both good words but both tend to denote something that has a beginning and an end. The coming chaos may have an end but it could well be ours.
Weather is a chaotic phenomenon, but climate is not merely weather. Climate change is what we are faced with…and the change will indeed bring on chaotic consequences.
One of the problems in this whole discussion is that we probably define the adjectives differently. I have never considered a howling blizzard in the middle of January to be chaotic nor an ear-shattering thunderstorm with torrential rain and high winds in the middle of July to be chaotic. Simply seasonal. But when those items shift more and more out of season then chaos come to mind. Thanks for contributing.
Interesting newsletter, as usual, Munroe. Particularly the semantic exchange with Herb. My we, on the left, can be needlessly pedantic, can’t we!
Thank you, Karen. I expect Herb will forgive us both.