By Chris Davey
The sun was shining, it was pleasantly warm, the heat tempered by the breeze, which is pretty much a permanent fixture on this bit of coastline, and the sounds of the sea wafted up the cliff. The spot is my favourite on that coast road. On such a day in such a lovely spot, it is genuinely hard to accept what’s in store on our present climate trajectory.
The National Emergency Briefing in November 2025 brought all this into sharp focus. And as a follow-up, the People’s Emergency Briefing 2026 documentary provides a digest of some key points. It’s doing the rounds of independent cinemas, local environmental groups, church halls etc around the country – over a thousand events and counting. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check your nearest screening on the map at nebriefing.org/screening-map.
As an exercise in getting the message on climate breakdown across to the public, it has already reached a large audience. In addition, an open letter to the government and main media outlets was signed by many MPs and peers at the November event, and there is now an early day motion (EDM93) put down by St Ives MP Andrew George, to get a media screening that it so richly deserves. At the time of writing, only one MP with a constituency in Cornwall had signed the EDM, Andrew’s LibDem pal Ben McGuire. If you feel this is worth supporting, you might like to encourage your own MP (if they’re not Andrew or Ben) to sign.
One observation from the screenings was that few people had realised the climate emergency was so serious. In polling across the world, a majority of responders say that governments are not doing enough on climate, but that may still mask a general lack of detailed knowledge on climate issues. There may be many reasons for this, but my view is that one of them may be the way climate issues are communicated. The way scientists use words is not always the same as general usage. Comms expert Susan Joy Hassol highlighted this in the Radio 4 programme How They Made Us Doubt Everything, S1E7, available on BBC Sounds. Here are a couple of examples from Susan:
- Positive: generally good, encouraging, smiley-face-emoji. Used by scientists in phrases like ‘positive trend in carbon emissions’. Sounds good, eh? No. In science speak, it simply means going up, and in terms of carbon emissions, that is, of course, not good.
- Uncertainty: we’re not sure… used by climate breakdown deniers to sow seeds of doubt about the veracity of the science. Meanwhile in the science, it means we can’t be sure whether the future situation will be the worst case we present, or the best case, or somewhere in between. The range of such possible values is the ‘uncertainty’. (But we know damn well it’s happening.)
So while we’re on the subject, let’s have a look at four other examples, not necessarily “scientific” but often-used terms in discussions on climate:
- Net zero: the aspiration to have carbon emissions offset by an equivalent amount drawn down, so added up the emissions effectively come to zero. Unrealistic with present technological solutions since the necessary direct air capture of carbon dioxide, or carbon capture at time of emission, do not exist at anything like the scale required to make this work. Therefore the concept of “net zero” relies on future scientists/engineers coming up with these solutions ramped up many times to have the necessary impact. The ultimate in reality-denying optimism.
- Progress: as in, we’re making progress — look at all the wind farms and solar panels we’ve put up… hmm yes, but unfortunately the emissions of greenhouse gases into the air are also still going up year by year, and that’s all that really matters. So here “progress” means “failure”. (Thanks to Kevin Anderson for this one).
- One per cent: the approximate contribution to greenhouse gases coming from the UK is currently about 1%. So we sometimes hear “with the US and China accounting for a quarter of the world’s emissions, our emissions are insignificant”. Except that if you add up all the countries who emit 1% or less, you find that together they account for nearly a third of the total, so huge potential for reduction here. See below for link to a fuller analysis.
- Soft denialism: while the “hard” version simply says human-induced climate change or planetary warming is not happening, the soft version is more insidious. It says that, yes, the climate is changing and it is likely to be down to human activity, but let’s not allow it to change the way of living we’ve got accustomed to. In other words, we can keep calm and carry on. I reckon we get a dose of that most days in the media, e.g. news reports of extreme weather events like the recent heatwave with temperature records being smashed to bits, without a single mention of the word “climate”.
- Full hybrid (vehicle): especially in adverts which mention electric drive train and hint at eco credentials — a full hybrid, also known as a no-need-to-plug-in hybrid, is, guess what – a fossil-fuel vehicle. (Coincidentally, Dave Borlace of the Just Have A Think YouTube channel has used his video this week to give an uncharacteristically full-bodied rant about hybrid vehicles. Worth a watch.)
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Some sources and further reading/viewing:
https://www.youtube.com/justhaveathink
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65810
https://eciu.net/insights/2021/why-the-uks-1-of-global-emissions-is-a-big-deal
The ever-forthright Kevin Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipdwvvZ8Wu4
How They Made Us Doubt Everything, BBC Sounds.
