Getting Confucian about the climate crisis

It’s never been more important to rectify the names

One of the many annoying traits of westerners who’ve spent time in Asia is our tendency to trot out bite-sized pieces of supposedly eastern wisdom. I’m pleased to say I’ve never knowingly – or at least non-ironically – talked about the symbols that go together to make up the Chinese character for “crisis” (they are, famously, danger and opportunity). But I’m not above quoting a bit of Confucius to demonstrate my regional bona fides.

My favourite dictum of the Master is, “First, rectify the names.” In other words, “If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.” [1]

In terms of the climate crisis, the importance of defining one’s terms may sound like splitting hairs while the world burns, floods, and chokes. But when a solution to the challenge we are facing seems so distant, it’s worth asking whether we are starting from the right place, nominally speaking.

Here are three examples where redefining our terms would represent a helpful step forward.

Understating the problem: carbon versus pollution

Here’s the thing about carbon. My expensive and frankly beautiful racing bicycle is made of carbon. The laptop I’m typing this on is a Lenovo ThinkPad X-1 Carbon. It’s not quite as beautiful as my bike, but I like it very much. Carbon also makes diamonds, which my wife likes even more.

Carbon isn’t nearly bad enough, is it? Surely the baddest of the bad guys in our current struggle needs a blacker hat and an uglier, moniker.

There’s a related debate about the pros and cons of global warming versus global heating. Warming feels kind of pleasant, while heating sounds comforting (to my northern European ears). Yet it’s also not an intuitive description for something that’s usually measured by a couple of degrees.

The gold standard of environmental threat naming comes from the 1980s: acid rain. Two short words painting a vivid picture of pure poison cascading down from acid clouds. While the impact of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere isn’t as direct, we would be better off describing the impact for what it is: pollution.

Everyone agrees that pollution is a very bad thing. Usually invisible but highly dangerous. Puts people’s lives and livelihoods at risk. Worth outlawing and putting bad people in prison for. Worth changing your own behaviour for. It would be better still if we could come up with an evil-sounding adjective to bolt on. Any ideas?

Mis-apportioning responsibility: emissions versus consumption

When we are talking about carbon pollution, we’re usually talking about emissions. Few would argue that emissions are a good thing. But focusing on the supply of carbon pollution tends to negate the opposite-but-equal concept: demand for carbon-intensive products, services and lifestyles. In short, consumption.

Emissions are easier to think about because the worst emitters are easier to spot and possibly because those big emitters are not normal people like us. Rather, they are companies, usually oil companies, sometimes car or shipping companies, or sometimes whole sectors like travel or agriculture. Frequently they are entire countries, like China or Saudi Arabia. Or the USA.

Looking only at emissions and not consumption of carbon allows – as renowned economist Dieter Helm has pointed out – a structurally deindustrializing country like the United Kingdom to congratulate itself on reducing emissions, when it had essentially no choice but to shut down globally uncompetitive coal mines, steel mills and other heavy industries. Yet the UK population’s consumption of carbon intensive products and services has not decreased at all. The UK has simply exported its industry while importing the products that cause even more emissions elsewhere.

Broadening our language from overwhelming focus on carbon emissions to include the critical concept of carbon consumption would do much to clarify the debate about the climate crisis, what to do about it, and by whom.

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum is currently doing something similar when she talks about cross-border drug trafficking. Rather than accepting the usual supply-driven narrative of cartels, drug lords and narcos, she’s reframing the discussion in terms of the problem of the United States’ demand for narcotics. We tend to talk about carbon pollution in the same, one-sided, supply-driven way. The difference is that while at least demand for narcotics is based on addiction, carbon consumption is merely relatively cheap and convenient. That shouldn’t be any excuse.

Marginalizing what should be mainstream: problems versus solutions

A survey[2] in late 2023 revealed that more than nine out of 10 people across 14 developed and developing countries now agree that climate change poses a serious and imminent threat to the planet. Half of those didn’t always think so but have come to believe it over time. And it’s not an abstract concern: 72% of respondents said they worry climate change will make life extremely difficult and unpleasant for themselves and their families.

Notwithstanding the Trump administration, we have come a long way from mainstream climate change denial. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude going back to the Greens in Germany in the 1980s through Al Gore to Greta Thunberg and all those fellow activists for making generations of sceptics into converts.

But while activism has been both necessary and successful, “activists” are what the media tends to call people who feel strongly but are in the minority. They are seldom portrayed as authorities. And, unfortunately, those who have been most adept at grabbing the headlines to sound the alarm frequently have the least practical or effective solutions. Boycotts are not going to cut it. Personal changes in behaviour are unlikely to register on a global scale. And just stopping oil just isn’t realistic.

What the world needs now is a focus on solutions. Most of all, practical solutions that work together on a systemic level.

We need those solutions to be debated in the mainstream of political and social discourse, with the conversation led by experts in technology, economics, justice and policy. We need them to be taken up by mainstream political parties and civil society organisations. Readers of this blog will have a good idea which of these solutions is my favourite, but it’s not the only one.

Where campaigning is needed, it shouldn’t be all about the problem. It should be about the pros and cons of specific, practical solutions.

(On a related note, Not-for-profit agency Potential Energy Coalition and the We Mean Business Coalition have also done some sterling work on a similar theme – focusing on materiality over morality in climate communications – which is well-worth a read.)

In summary, let’s be clear that rectifying names and redefining our terms isn’t itself going to achieve anything. That’s why Confucius said “first”. But by thinking carefully about the names we use to frame the debate about being upfront about pollution, prioritising the carbon consumption that causes it, and focusing on specific solutions to the climate crisis, the quicker we’re likely to get there.

[1] Here’s Wikipedia on the subject

[2] Edelman Trust Barometer 2023 Special Report on Trust and Climate Change