Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus
WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”
The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.
Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.
Asked about the summary, ecoAmerica’s president and founder, Robert M. Perkowitz, requested that it not be reported until the formal release of the firm’s full paper later this month, but acknowledged that its wide distribution now made compliance with his request unlikely.
The research directly parallels marketing studies conducted by oil companies, utilities and coal mining concerns that are trying to “green” their images with consumers and sway public policy.
Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”
The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”
“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.
Mr. Perkowitz and allies in the environmental movement have been briefing officials in Congress and the administration in the hope of using the findings to change the terms of the debate now under way in Washington.
Opponents of legislation to combat global warming are engaged in a similar effort. Trying to head off a cap-and-trade system, in which government would cap the amount of heat-trapping emissions allowed and let industry trade permits to emit those gases, they are coaching Republicans to refer to any such system as a giant tax that would kill jobs. Coal companies are taking out full-page advertisements promising “clean, green coal.” The natural gas industry refers to its product as “clean fuel green fuel.” Oil companies advertise their investments in alternative energy.
Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, an expert on environmental communications, said ecoAmerica’s campaign was a mirror image of what industry and political conservatives were doing. “The form is the same; the message is just flipped,” he said. “You want to sell toothpaste, we’ll sell it. You want to sell global warming, we’ll sell that. It’s the use of advertising techniques to manipulate public opinion.”
He said the approach was cynical and, worse, ineffective. “The right uses it, the left uses it, but it doesn’t engage people in a face-to-face manner,” he said, “and that’s the only way to achieve real, lasting social change.”
Frank Luntz, a Republican communications consultant, prepared a strikingly similar memorandum in 2002, telling his clients that they were losing the environmental debate and advising them to adjust their language. He suggested referring to themselves as “conservationists” rather than “environmentalists,” and emphasizing “common sense” over scientific argument.
And, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Perkowitz agree, “climate change” is an easier sell than “global warming.”
““global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, ”
I think it’s too late to change what people feel about global warming. This new vocabulary will grow thin too.
This is all about our new language, eco-truth speak.
cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
The FTC might have something to say about using this kind of obfuscation.
Yah know – Iffen these propagandists (er, global waring – er, global warming) and socialist extremists actually had logic and real evidence on their side – instead of made-up and data and a religious view of the world that views “nature being destroyed by capitalism” – they just might not NEED propaganda and touchy-feely words that disguise their hatred.
This is straight out of George Orwell. It’s ridiculous to suggest they’re just doing what AGW opponents are doing: when someone describes cap and trade as a gigantic energy tax, they’re telling the unvarnished truth because that’s exactly what it is. Obama said, in plain language, that he intended to pass laws that would put coal-fired generating plants out of business.
Keep up the good work, Anthony.
Lies, damn lies, and marketing …
Thanks to the ubiquity of TV, more and more folks are not deflected by ‘new speak’ and manipulation.
The good news is that this tells me exactly where to push:
ANY time and attempt is made to talk about CO2 as evil is phrased as ANYTHING other than AGW, I’m going to be pushing the term GLOBAL WARMING front and center. Any Cap & Tirade is going to be rephrased as Tax and Charade. Two can play the marketing game…
In old age, many people will yearn for “global warming.”
Accidentally sent to news organizations, my rear end. What are the odds that these folks are going to run with the new “instructions”?
As long as CO2 taxation is on the table, Global Warming remains the issue. When the AGW advocates concede that Global Warming is a dead issue I will be willing to ask: How is (insert new PC phrase here) different from Global Warming?
The next question should be what’s the new reason to tax CO2.
So, apparently, a rose by any other name would NOT smell as sweet……….
“Al Gore Enrichment Scheme” = Cap and Trade
This is another way of controlling and limiting the debate. Who wants to be against fighting pollution?
Another great application of radical principles.
If only I had enough money to pay for a 90 minute block of prime-time on one of the big tv channels! I would have “The Great Global Warming Swindle” aired.
Then let’s see what would become of public opinion of global warming!
Welcome to the brave new world of cheat and mean green.
People don’t buy the worn out Global Warming BS any more so wrap it a trendy packaging, let the marketing boys add a nice jingle to it and push it on the public’s throat.
What do those green hillbillies think, that we are stupid or what?
I really believe this is the last desperate attempt to revive the crashing house of cards called AGW/Climate Change and it’s not going to work.
We will keep our eyes and ears open and rip the packaging of the scam.
And that’s a promise.
The problem isn’t that folks aren’t buying the global warming — now climate change — agenda. The problem is, is that they just can’t sell it.
Put a pollution tax in a nice new package and it’s still a tax. Increase my winter heating bill from $200/month to $300/month with a $25 “pollution reduction refund” and my bill is still higher.
A con is still a con, no matter the pretty wrappings and ribbons and bows that adorn the package.
Global warming didn’t work when people found they were still shoveling snow; climate change doesn’t cut it when the same message is still being pushed showing melting ice caps and glaciers.
This post is appropriately tagged as ridiculae.
E.M Smith: “Tax and Charade” – very good. “Tax and Tirade” may have been a typo but is almost as good.
Message to ecoAmerica
Advertising works because it’s selling something I want, or might be persuaded I want. The only way to sell me BS is if I want to put it on the roses.
Stop trying to spin the global warming message and start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You never know, it might work.
They can use whatever words they want to describe it, the fact is that their theory is based on distortions and lies.
Maurice Garoutte writes “The next question should be what’s the new reason to tax CO2.”
That’s easy. Ocean acidification!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, this issue is hitting the bottom of the priority list because after 20 years people are beginning to see right through this farce!
It’s gotten colder, so people are perhaps waking up and realising what a money-making scam this is.
As someone who has made a living from the use of words I think I can say that the approach we’re looking at here is about as dishonest as you can get.
“the air we breathe, the water our children drink.” … the air we breathe is probably cleaner than it has been since before the industrial revolution; the water our children drink is certainly as clean as it has ever been.
The situation in poorer parts of the world, which the Warm-mongers and their useful idiots would like to keep in its present under-developed state, is somewhat different. The money that was supposed to be spent implementing the Kyoto farce is twice what would be needed to provide clean drinking water to every child in sub-Saharan Africa.
By all means clean up the air where it is dirty. By all means scrub the emissions from coal-based industries but because they directly affect the health of the people living down-wind NOT because they add minuscule amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. By all means look for “cleaner” fuels but do it because sooner or later we will (probably) run out of coal and oil and NOT because of the fallacy of “global warming”.
Changing the language may well fool some of the people for some of the time but in the long run even the politicians will see through this scam.
This campaign is proof that not only do environmentalists hate human kind, they think we’re stupid too! Although, as mentioned in a previous post, this newspeak has an important secondary benefit. After all, who could argue against “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.” This campaign is beyond cynical.
Well, they don’t have to sell Trapped & Betrayed to everybody to make it happen. Just to enough to let the Demorxists pretend it’s the wishes of the people. Remember the Salad Shooter*? That’s about how many people have to be suckered into believing in AGW.
* “Look! Velveeta sticks to the ceiling!” — Opus
Actually, the most interesting thing here is that it was the NYT that printed this expose.
These people make it obvious that what really matters for them are the methods of propaganda – the best ways (and best vocabulary) to fool the people and to control whole countries. The content of the assertions and arguments is irrelevant for them. More seriously, they don’t even try to hide this sad fact.
Every person with IQ above 100 knows that whether “global warming” is called “global warming” or “climate change” or “thermostatic change of our deteriorating atmosphere” or whatever cannot possibly influence whether this system of ideas is found justifiable and adopted. The only people who can be influenced are those who only “know” approximately two words about the “problem”. If someone only “knows” two words, it really matters whether these two words are “global warming” or “deteriorating atmosphere”.
But these ideologues heavily underestimate the intelligence of individuals as well as the self-organizing power of the society. The truth is that virtually all people know more than two words about this “problem” today. Moreover, the people who only want to know roughly two words – “global warming” or “deteriorating atmosphere” – are rightfully losing their influence on the debate, converging to zero.
The people who care about the eco-speak are still imagining that the whole mankind is a collection of 6 billion simpletons who will accept their prayers about “deteriorating atmosphere” in the very same way as the Muslim sheep accept the word “Allah”: in a completely naive, uncritical, obedient, yet aggressive and fanatical way.
Well, there are surely people in this world who are ready to approach this “problem” – and other problems – in this way. But the ideologues are very wrong that these people will matter in the world of the 21st century. They may matter for a temporary fad in which newspapers and other institutions in whole countries lose the ability to think rationally, beyond simple slogans, and whole masses of population become irrational. But any institution (or nation!) that jumps on this way of “thinking” (or non-thinking) is going to become irrelevant, after a time period that can be shorter or longer but it is demonstrably finite. The environmental religion is unsustainable.
Unlike islam, it won’t be able to control the whole power systems of countries, armies, and policemen, and without them, an isomorphic totalitarian system to treat people as stupid sheep simply cannot work. What they want and need is a world where the people act equally irrationally, unfreely, and hopelessly as people had to act in the totalitarian systems. But such a system can only become real if they take over the “power” in the same way as Stalin or Hitler did.
The totalitarian system of thinking and control over the language simply cannot work simultaneously with freedom and democracy. I suspect that most of the power-thirsty global warming ideologues already realize this fact. They differ in their desire to liquidate freedom – e.g. my freedom to point out that their propaganda is a pile of lies and their money from carbon indulgences and climate speeches are a result of fraud.