An exercise in semantics

There is a heated debate going on in the world…. wait, many heated debates.  And many of them center on semantics.

From Wikipedia:

Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós)[1][2] is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotation.  Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language.  The word semantics itself denotes a range of ideas, from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation.

No wonder we’re stuck.  Is it climate change or global warming?  Anthropogenic or just natural variation?  What the hell does “anthropogenic” mean again?  How exactly do you define ecosystem health?  It’s not getting warmer, we had more snow last year than in the past 2 decades…

Years ago, the day after I received my first master’s degree in Environmental Science, I moved up to the tiny mountain town of Silver Gate, MT, population 12 (13 once my daughter was born): suburb of Cooke City, MT, population 60, and arguably one of the premier snowmobile destinations of the lower 48.  Word got around that I had just finished my degree, and apparently some of the locals were suspicious that I was up there to close off the valley to snowmobiles.  So, naturally, I did what any newly minted hippie with an environmental grad degree would do.  I bought a snowmobile; the lawnmower of snowmobiles, but a snowmobile nonetheless.  In part it was to access the amazing wilderness areas surrounding Cooke City and Silver Gate (trust me, 30 minutes on a snowmobile to the wilderness boundary is much more feasible than a full day’s ski in when you only have 2 days off), and in part to demonstrate to the locals that I wasn’t the bad guy.  I wasn’t there to challenge their way of life or insert mine.  And it was pretty awesome to realize that when it came down to it, we were all interested in the same thing—we wanted to preserve the area we lived so we could continue to recreate and our kid’s kids could recreate there.  So the awe-inspiring natural landscape could continue to attract tourists to support the families in the community whose sole economic engine is tourism.  Now, that sounds a lot like conservation to me.  Or environmentalism.  Or sustainability.  Damn, those words again.  But don’t get me wrong; I would never call my neighbors environmentalists to their faces.  To them, that would be an insult.

I work in sustainability.  When I tell people that, quite often their eyes kind of glaze over and they say, “…Oh.”  Or “…Yeah, but what do you do?”  Or “…(silence and blank stare)…” 

The very word “sustainability” seems to confuse people, and means so many different things to different people.  And understandably so.  The sort-of universally accepted definition for sustainability is from the UN Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future 1987 Report: “Development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  A better, simpler one I heard recently is “Enough, for all, forever.” 

Somebody from BGI posted this article (which has been in my “to read” queue for 2 weeks, obviously, and I can’t remember who or on which BGI Facebook page…gotta love Facebook for news) about the challenge of semantics, questioning whether the term “sustainability” is destined for obsolescence, and should be replaced with a more universally appealing term like “resilience”.  It talks about the wine-making town of Sebastapol becoming the second California town to require all new development to have solar panels installed, with the Realtors selling this program as a safeguard against power loss and rising prices.  This makes complete sense to me.  What I’m talking about when I’m talking about sustainability is resilience.  How can we prolong our existence in our communities/country/world while still being able to benefit from the amazing technological advances and non-natural aspects of society?  Climate change mitigation is resilience. 

On the other end of the spectrum, GreenBiz posted a great article about the non-story of the first 24 hour period where average daily emissions have been over 400 parts per million.  “There wasn’t a lot of fanfare in the news; there were articles and a front-page story in The New York Times and a few op-eds. But the general tone was ‘no surprises here, we said we were on this course and so we are.’”  The author’s pertinent question was: “How have we let this be business as usual?”  She provided some interesting insights into how surpassing 400ppm can affect the business world and three key charges to actually address this problem:

• Start saying the words “climate change” out loud: “If we don’t use these words, who will?  Where’s the urgency?”
• Understand the risk of inaction: focus on the value-at-risk to the whole business model from climate change—a fundamental risk to the future of business.
• Think big: banish the term “low hanging fruit”: “If there’s low hanging fruit that’s still to pick, then shame on us. Let’s stand back from the tree and get a good luck at the stuff at the top.

And her final words: “So write the number 400 ppm on your office wall, look at it hard, and then ask if what we’re doing is enough yet.”

Well said, Helen Clarkson.  Well said.