For stop the real causes of climate change Humanity has to decide to make a drastic change of course and start acting differently from what the capitalist system accustomed us to.
All the activities we develop have to be redefined under a new paradigm that put aside extractivism, the generation of wealth only for a fewthe continuous growth of the market, etc.
To give ourselves to the task of restoration and regeneration we need to start telling the story in another way. It has been proven that up to now the marketing of climate change has been very poor and that the way we call current problems keeps us from understanding them and, even more, from doing something to reverse them.
In this note we are going to open the debate on a concept that we often repeat and that, without realizing it, seals a sense of things that favors the status quo and makes nothing change.
When the waves of heat (and cold) no longer go away, are they still waves?
This summer, Argentina was the clearest example that the climate crisis is not something that will happen in the future, but that it is already installed with all its force in our present. The extreme temperatures in this summer season were the norm (and not the exception) in a large part of the territory.
The media did not get tired of talking about heat waves each time the thermometer reached new records for several consecutive days. However, given this sad and new normality, we believe that this question posed by Jorgela Hiba, environmental journalist and director of the Dos Ambientes website, is very accurate:
Undoubtedly, the concept “heat wave” remit a something temporary that breaks in and then withdraws without any consequence. So, we can deduce, we don’t need to do anything about it. Just put up with the anomaly and wait for it to go away just as it came. Nothing to worry about. Really?
That’s where it lies the danger of this metaphor, which seeks to calm any concern and anesthetize any reaction. Disarming this sense imposed by years and years of repetition is more than important.
A user who joined this discussion also contributed their opinion:
Leaving set phrases should be the first step to call things by their name. So we should stop saying heat wave and talk about what summers will continue to be like this from now on product of climate change. And that the care that the population must have during a “heat wave” (hydration, not doing sports at peak hours, etc.) must be given every day.
This reflection exercise opens the doors to new questions. What issues would need to be reported if we got out of language autopilot? How many people would gain a new awareness of the dangers posed by the climate crisis?
What is clear is that the new world that we must create needs new narratives that give us strength to transform everything.