THE CONVERSATION — Humans are a , and .
We as a species have known for decades that the carbon-fuelled actions of some nations meant that devastating heat and related extreme weather events were coming.
And yet, most of us did nothing.
The summer of 2023’s are the consequences of collective inaction and while there are many reasons for these failures to act, humanity’s complex relationship with heat is arguably a critical one.
At a fundamental level, heat is what allows for humans and the Earth’s biological diversity to exist. A stable core body temperature facilitates human survival and the . However, while heat may be essential to life, and desirable to many, .
One . If a human’s body temperature increases even a couple of degrees, then an illness is likely occurring. If a person’s core body temperature increases only three to four degrees celsius it can be fatal. Likewise, a rise in planetary temperatures above just 1.5 C could be equally fatal.A seemingly easy to understand threshold. However, in practice, communicating a 1.5 C tipping point has been extremely challenging. Humans generally and as a result . And confusion over these questions are
All under one greenhouse?
An early attempt at circumventing our innate fondness for heat in climate change communications was through leveraging the term greenhouse effect — a phrase which notably removes heat from the equation altogether.
Knowledge of the greenhouse effect goes back to the mid-19th century. In the latter half of the 20th century, the term .
But the term is inaccurate.
The greenhouse effect is the well-established phenomenon of the Earth’s atmosphere trapping the sun’s radiation and allowing the planet to be a warm and hospitable place. Using the greenhouse effect as a term referring to the warming of the planet due to the burning of fossil fuels .
In response to this limitation, global warming increasingly became the terminology of choice for the changing climate — . So much so that by the 1990s, . But this also had challenges.
Warming has a certain coziness and as climate change researchers Julia Corbett and Jessica Durfee highlighted, ‘.’
Global warming was also a narrow term,
In response to these limitations, the term climate change gradually came to replace global warming as the most widely accepted and used descriptor. Though more recently, this somewhat benign term has been altered again by some to more accurately address the urgency of the situation.
For example, in 2019 The Guardian moved from using climate change to the terms in response to climatic effects of ever-increasing severity.
This and arguably hampered climate change mitigation efforts for decades.
Too much of a good thing
Research indicates that in the summer of 2022, over . and it is . Heat-related and the heat is and .
Human beings, alongside all life, exist on Earth because of a . For millions of years, this greenhouse effect has made Earth a miraculously habitable orb in the coldness of space.
While all human beings have a complex — and often positive — relationship with heat, . However, the reckless pursuit of it (among other comforts) through the burning of fossil fuels has turned heat from a source of life to a harbinger of doom for all.
It is only through confronting this complex relationship — by accepting the inherent dangers of more heat — that we can hope to seriously pursue real action on fossil fuel emissions.
is an associate professor Communication of Popular Culture and Film, Brock University. Good does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You can no longer count on social media to deliver important news to you. Keep your news a touch away by bookmarking SASKTODAY.ca's homepage at this link.
Here's why you should bookmark your favourites.
