The climate movement needs its own ‘drill, baby, drill’

I write this as I sit in Karachi, Pakistan, after deportation from Canada because of my nonviolent activism on the climate crisis. My activism, and that of my Canadian wife, Sophie, is on hold as we chart our course through a life in exile and hope for reunification in Canada. 

Being deported from my Canadian home has given me some perspective on the climate movement in the West. I first came to Canada six years ago, at the age of 18, and joined the climate movement shortly afterward. I led a successful hunger strike campaign at Simon Fraser University, to press for full divestment of all remaining investments from fossil fuels. I also took part in several campaigns to urge government action on the climate crisis, specifically old growth logging. One of the important lessons I have learned has to do with the disconnect between the reality of the climate crisis, the activist space, and ordinary people. 

I believe that we must learn from everyone, including our opponents, and when I saw Trump say the words “drill baby drill,” I felt the clear attraction of a simple and understandable slogan. The same is true for Conservative Party Leader Pierre Pollievre’s slogans and his attachment of “carbon-tax” to people’s names. Though we in the climate movement may oppose these social hacks, we must learn from them. We need to speak truthfully — and simply.

Jargon

During my time organizing in Vancouver, I interacted with hundreds of people through talks specifically designed to talk to apolitical people unassociated with the green movement. Over the course of countless talks, I had to evolve. I learned just how much we, activists, were immersed in a niagara of activist words, words that most people will never use in everyday life. We used terms like “tipping points,” “nonlinear phenomenon,” “upstanders,” “wet-bulb,” “global dimming,” “sub-optimal,” just to name a few — and then we would spend some time explaining what all of this meant. This, by the way, was what we thought to be a more accessible mode of talking about climate change. We don’t have our own version of “drill baby drill” and “axe the tax.” I notice this particularly as LA is burning. It is astonishing that a major event of this kind can unfold, and we can’t come up with a succinct way of defining and describing it — just more conferences and panels. This is a testament to our failure of communication.

COP and COP-like stuff

Nothing can be expected to change if we continue like this. Our habit of speaking in parables has a subduing effect; it does not empower, it only makes matters more murky. We have created communication silos and ways of speaking that only we understand, which prevents meaningful engagement.

The very existence of an event like the conference of the parties (or COP) is a testament to the subduing consensus around talking about the climate crisis. Who gives a damn about COP? I can assure you most people don’t know what it is, and yet it is supposed to be the place where elected officials and community organizers gather to talk about the most important crisis we face. A friend once asked me, incredulous, when I first arrived in Canada, “Hey, did you know that Catherine McKenna didn’t even know what COP is?” and my first thought was, “I have no idea what that is.” But I was too ashamed to admit it. I should not have been ashamed; rather, it should be embarrassing to assume everyday people follow climate politics enough to know what COP is — or who Catherine McKenna is for that matter. . 

We should also ask ourselves, why is it that this important meeting, which happens every year, has no significance to ordinary people? Could it be because ordinary people have no significance to COP?

What can we do?

We can learn from George Orwell. Unlike many in his intellectual class, he had seen the world from a lens that others on the left had not. He was a colonial police officer in India, and fought in the Spanish Civil War against both fascism and communism. He developed an unparalleled critique of the communists, the colonial powers, and the fascists, only because he saw them up close, and in some cases, had been part of their power structure himself. Orwell wrote an essay called “Politics and the English language,” about the burying of reality under jargon such as “status quo” or “phenomenon.” Orwell called for the ban of all words among journalists that are not used in simple English — pretentious words “used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements.” (He also called for the ban on words derived from French and other languages, which may not be necessary in Canada.)

If we have any hope of communicating the reality of the coming catastrophe, we must use simple English (or simple French). I call on anyone involved in climate activism to swear off the use of jargon. If we want to describe a coming “tipping point,” we should instead say “when it is too late” or “point of no return.” If we find ourselves on the verge of warning of a “nonlinear increase,” we should instead say the growth becomes “out of control.” When we want to use the phrase “wet-bulb effect,” we should instead talk about “when it gets hot enough to kill people.” 

Ordinary and simple language is the key to effective rhetoric. But unlike much of the sloganeering from the right, it must be truthful. We have to communicate the real possibility of social breakdown using words that convey emotion, with a commitment to preserving social stability and truth. 

I speak with the authority of someone who has not only seen up-close the suffering created by rising temperatures, but as someone who will be spending the next few years of his life trying to figure out, with Sophie, how we will live out this period of exile. Being in this position has given me a deep sense of commitment to understanding the ordinary experience of ordinary people, for I now feel — and in a literal sense, am — very distant from the activist space. 

So, as we carry on with our lives and our lattes, let’s keep in mind that time is running out, and more jargon will not get us anywhere worth getting to.