I believe part of the issue is the word of “global warming”. The word “global” is out of touch to regular folks, they think it’s something out there and not theirs. “When everything belongs to everyone, nobody will take care of anything.” Andre Gide said. He is right, when something belongs to everybody, people won’t take care of it. The word “warming” is a positive word which is not a “call to action” word either. Everyone likes to be warm, but nobody wants to be burned for example. It almost feels like these words were selected specifically to turn people away from the issue. We are destroying the nature and we call it global warming. I believe a much stronger word could be a good start to change the tactics we are using to save the nature. I want my children to be able to swim in the ocean with their children like I did. I want them to be to look at the blue sky and green grass. The word environment is another culprit as well, environment means what is around you and rarely used in daily language. Need to get back to this issue in future.
“I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I’ll give you an example of that. There’s a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can’t take any more input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn’t seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, We are up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It’s totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then, of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ll bet you if we’d of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I’ll betcha. I’ll betcha.” George Carlin