Wednesday, June 12, 2019

6/19 CCC: Language, Books, Nobel Prize Nominee, etc.

Creation Corner Column for June 2019: Language, Books, Nobel Prize Nominee, etc.


Suggested change of climate crisis language

The Guardian Weekly of the UK has announced (5/24) a new style guide for its environmental reporting.

Since the phrase "climate change" sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity, the new preferred terms will be "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown".

Other terms that have been updated include the use of "wildlife" rather than "biodiversity" and "climate science denier" rather than "climate skeptic".

Note: The Guardian Weekly will celebrate 100 years of publication this July.

Also note that the Friends of the Earth environmental organization, with a presence in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere, has its 50th anniversary this year.

Specieist Language (Advice from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA)

"Specieist" aphorisms, phrases, metaphors and idioms that are to be avoided, and entertaining and fun substitutes proposed for such that may evolve in our language usage include:

putting all your eggs in one basket/putting all your eggplants in one basket, or, put all your berries in one bowl
curiosity killed the cat/curiosity thrilled the cat
bring home the bacon/bring home the bagels
kill two birds with one stone/feed two birds with one scone
take the bull by the horns/take the flower by the thorns
hold your horses/hold the phone
let the cat out of the bag/spill the beans
be the guinea pig/be the test tube
open a can of worms/open Pandora's box
beat a dead horse/feed a fed horse
more than one way to skin a cat/more than one way to peel a potato
what am I, chopped liver?/what am I, chopped cabbage?

Calling a person a pig implies that pigs are not intelligent, whereas they lead complex social lives and can show empathy, such as when they try to rescue their captors from fires and ponds.

Saying someone is being used as a "lab rat" trivializes the plight of rats being poisoned, blinded, burned and mutilated in laboratories.  They don't deserve to be called "lab rats" any more than asylum seekers should be called "illegal aliens."

Using such cliches can desensitize us and may normalize violence to animals.  Some argue that not eating animals is an expression of human empathy. 

To quote Gandhi:
"Racism, economic deprivation, dog fighting, cock fighting, bullfighting and rodeos are all cut from the same defective fabric: violence.  Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves."

Strive to refrain from using anti-animal expressions, and search for animal-friendly language.

Thanks to the PETA Global Spring 2019 newsletter issue 2.

NEW BOOKS

Acorn Days. (The story of the origins of the Environmental Defense Fund).  Marion Rogers.

After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe.  Lydia Barnett.

Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.  Daren Dochuk.

The Beekeeper's Lament.  Hannah Nordhaus.

Conversations with Trees.  Stephanie Kaza.

The Democracy of Suffering: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, Philosophy in the Anthropocene.  Todd Dufresne.

Dog's Best Friend? Rethinking Canid-Human Relations.  John Sorenson & Atsuko Matsuoka, editors.

Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West.  Heather Hansman.

The Fall of the Wild: Extinction, De-Extinction, and the Ethics of Conservation.  Ben A. Minteer.

Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies.  Edward O. Wilson.

Green Buddhism: Practice and Compasionate Action in Uncertain Times.  Stephanie Kaza.

HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.

The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild.  Thomas D. Seeley.

Losing Earth: A Recent History.  Nathaniel Rich.

Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food.  Benjamin Aides Wurgaft.

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.

Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste.  Amanda Boetzkes.

Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It.  Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott.

Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America.  Joshua Specht.

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years.  Mike Berners-Lee.

Thomas Berry: A Biography.  Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim and Andrew Angyal.

Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet.  Partha Dasgupta.

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.  David Wallace-Wells.  Chapter titles include: Heat Death; Hunger; Drowning; Dying Oceans; Unbreathable Air.

Vanishing Ice: Glaciers, Ice Sheets, and Rising Seas.  Vivien Gornitz.

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.  Jeff Goodell.

The Way We Eat Now: How the Food Revolution Has Transformed Our Lives, Our Bodies, and Our World.  Bee Wilson.

What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action.  Per Espen Stoknes.

Climate Fiction (aka "Cli-Fi")

An increasing number of fiction books deal with the climate crisis, and readers may also be aware of mainstream movies with the same theme (one example: "First Reformed").

A recent article in the July issue of In These Times (ITT) magazine ("Confronting the Climate Crisis Though Fiction, by Amy Brady) notes such authors as Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler and J.G. Ballard from prior years.

Specific titles noted in the ITT piece are:

American War.  Omar El Akkad.

Back to the Garden.  Clara Hume.

The Collapse of Western Civililization: A View From the Future.  Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

Flight Behavior. Barbara Kingsolver.

New York 2140. Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Overstory. Richard Powers.

Note: While some are dystopian novels, others provide a hopeful narrative.  "Google" Cli-Fi for more information.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee

"...and a little child shall lead them."  Isaiah 11:6

Greta Thunberg, the teen-aged girl from Sweden helping to raise international concern for the viability of the planet, and featured on the "Next Generation Leaders" cover of TIME magazine of May 27, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I first learned this from the web site for Green Horizon magazine (an international journal published by the Green Horizon Foundation),





Wisdom from the USA Depression Era

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do, 
Or do without.