Why We Need New Words for Life in the Anthropocene

There’s a reason Naomi Klein begins her climate masterwork, This Changes Everything, with a search for “the stories that got us into this mess.”36 Australian science writer Gillian King collects climate metaphors on her blog, craftily wielding them to reframe key climate debates and combat misinformation. To bring out the futility of trying to outs

Its relentless trajectory: To bring it on, all we have to do is, um, nothing. Its overwhelming complexity: To fix it, not only do we have to do something, but, as Naomi Klein has said, we pretty much have to “change everything” about how our economy and society operates. Its asymmetries of power: Those of us most historically responsible for causin

We-e-ell, the exact mix of chaotic falling apart vs. thoughtful restructuring is partly up to us, but, in a word, yes. Well, fuck you. Fuck you, and the data you rode in on. Actually, it’s even uglier and more complicated than all that because we are also here:

minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River