Stop saying these four climate clichés

You’ve said them about solar panels, cars, computers, even cows. If you care about climate change, purge these words from your comments.

Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash

There are a few trite phrases you come across while reading about climate change; ear worms that seem to pop out of everyone’s mouth. At first, they sound reasonable, but dig a little deeper and you see something else at work. On a good day, they represent our trepidation entering a new energy future. On a bad day, they’re on par with climate denialism. Worse, we all use them, even those of us who fully accept and embrace a climate forward world. Full confession, I’ve used every one of these phrases at some point.

We need to stop saying them, and here’s why. These common phrases are a form of disinformation, dangerously destructive to the systems they reference. They are red herrings, designed specifically in some cases by the fossil fuel industry to cast shade on the new energy future. Every utterance sets back the climate timetable by a few seconds, seconds we already lack. So if you care about the future of all life on earth, or even if you don’t, stop saying these four things:

“Solar stops when the sun goes down.”