Climate optimism has been a disaster. We need a new language – desperately | Ellie Mae O’Hagan

The extreme weather of the past months is a game-changer: surely now the world is ready to talk about climate change as a civilisation-collapsing catastropheIn 1988, when the scientist James Hansen told a senate committee that it was “time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here”, those who took him seriously assumed that if they just persisted with emphasising that this terrible fact would eventually destroy us, action would be taken. Instead, the opposite happened: when confronted with the awful reality of climate change, most people tended to retreat into a panglossian vision of the future, or simply didn’t want to hear about it. Related: Stop talking right now about the threat of climate change. It’s here; it’s happening | Bill McKibben It may be that if the time for a mass movement is not now, there won’t be one Continue reading...