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How You Can “Talk Smart” About the Climate Crisis Every Day III


Photo courtesy BBC-TV

Against the backdrop of “climate stripes” that will be featured on the cover of “The Climate Book” that Greta Thunberg is overseeing, out this October, the climate champion and ethical vegan addressed thousands gathered at the Glastonbury music festival on Worthy Farm, in Somerset, England, UK on Saturday 25 June 2022.


Compiled by Alfred Robert Hogan


As Fridays For Future co-founder Greta Thunberg told her audience of thousands at the Glastonbury music festival’s main Pyramid Stage in southwest England, on Saturday 25 June 2022, we need to be talking about the No. 1 climate crisis—“the biggest story in the world”—in every possible place we can. As she explained the challenge, “It must be spoken [of] as far and as wide as our voices can carry, and even further still. It must be told in articles, newspapers, in movies and songs. At breakfast tables, lunch meetings, and family gatherings. In lifts, at bus stops, and in rural shops. In schools, board rooms, and marketplaces. In the fields, in the warehouses, and on factory floors. At union meetings, political workshops, and football games. In kindergartens and in old people’s homes. At hospitals and at music festivals like Glastonbury. On social media and on the evening news. On dusty country roads and in the allies of our towns and cities…”

So, in that spirit, here is a third set of Climate Vocabulary terms—20 this time—to bolster or refresh your understanding, so you too can communicate the crisis effectively each day, wherever you may happen to be. These definitions were selected and adapted from various online sources.


Afforestation, Reforestation, and Deforestation – Afforestation refers to planting new trees on lands that historically have not been forested. Reforestation refers to planting trees where they have been recently clear-cut or otherwise removed. Deforestation involves clear-cutting trees en masse, converting forested lands to non-forest uses, often for animal agriculture, and sometimes for mining or occasionally for housing and development. Deforestation, the clear-cutting and removal of trees en masse, contributes to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations for two reasons: 1) the burning or decomposition of wood releases carbon dioxide and 2) trees that once removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis are gone. An estimated 80 to 90 percent of recent Brazilian Amazon rainforest “clear-cutting,” for example, has been done either to create grazing land for “cattle” (mostly for export overseas to become fast-food hamburgers and such) or to create feedgrain cropland for use in animal agriculture.

Anthropogenic -- Made by humans or resulting from human activities, usually used in the context of emissions and of “anthropogenic global warming” (or AGW for short).

Biosphere – Earth’s ecosystems and living organisms, in the atmosphere, on land (terrestrial biosphere), or in the oceans (marine biosphere), including dead organic matter, such as litter, soil organic matter, and oceanic detritus.

Carnism – Term coined by US psychologist and animal rights advocate Melanie Joy, PhD, in 2001, in an article in the journal Satya, and detailed and popularized in her 2009 book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. Central to carnism is the acceptance of meat-eating as "natural,” "normal," "necessary," and even "nice," dubbed the "Four Ns." A key feature of carnism is arbitrarily classifying some animal species as food, and accepting practices toward those animals that would be rejected as unacceptable cruelty, if applied to other species. The now-commonplace practice of carnism is also utterly incompatible with fully dealing with the climate crisis.

Climate emergency – An official, formal recognition by local, regional, or national governments of the dire situation we face—2248 jurisdictions in 39 countries had done so, as of Sunday 17 July 2022 (including 23 countries and the EU). On Monday 5 December 2016, in the suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, in southeastern Australia, the Darebin City Council became the world’s first jurisdiction to pass a climate emergency declaration. Such declarations act as “markers,” giving some added leverage to activists who can then better expose the hypocrisy and lies of “greenwashing” politicians, ideally leading to electing those who will actually act.

Clean Energy/Renewable Energy/Green Energy – Sources of energy that tap natural factors and forces to generate electricity; unlike fossil fuels, they do not produce carbon pollution or any other heat-trapping greenhouse gases; in addition to energy efficiency, major types include:

Coalbed Methane – Coalbed methane is contained in coal seams, and often called either virgin coalbed methane or coal seam gas, and is released by coal mining. The US EPA has had a voluntary program since 1994 in cooperation with the coal industry to “harvest” this methane, the main ingredient in “natural” gas.

Coral Bleaching -- The process whereby a coral colony, under environmental stress, expels the microscopic algae (zooxanthellae) that live in symbiosis with their host organisms (polyps). The affected coral colony appears whitened. If the global temperature rise average exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius (since the 1750 start of the Industrial Revolution), at least 70 percent of the world’s coral reefs could die, and with a 2 degrees Celsius increase, an estimated 99 percent could die. The best-known example is the 2900-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea, off northeastern Australia (Queensland).

Cryosphere – This means snow, permanently frozen ground (permafrost), floating ice, and glaciers. Fluctuations in the volume of the cryosphere change sea levels, which directly affect the atmosphere and biosphere.

Ethical vegan -- Someone who does not eat, drink, wear, or as much as possible otherwise use animal products (meat, dairy, eggs, honey, leather, fur, silk, wool, suede, etc.), first and foremost for ethical reasons—as in the case of Fridays For Future co-founder Greta Thunberg. Usually this is because the person truly values animals rights, though they also well u