Fighting Back

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/britain-flooding_us_5680752fe4b06fa68880627d?utm_hp_ref=extreme-weather

This article opens with a statement that reads as follows: "Hundreds of troops have been called in to help fight the floods as residents evacuate." What is particularly interesting about this sentence is that you could replace "floods" with any war-related noun, and the scene goes from one of climate change to one of war-torn Britain. "Hundreds of troops have been called in to help fight the rebels/enemy/Americans/attacks/battle as residents evacuate." This is not the only example of the military rhetoric employed by the article; it features a plethora of terms such as "protect," "protective systems," "contingency plans," "vulnerable," "fatalities," "threatened," the list goes on. The military rhetoric frames the problem as immediate, serious, and dangerous - all things the battle (appropriately named, considering the language of this article) over climate change only skims over in its focus on a yes/no debate.

A Carbon Brief article referred to by Climate Outreach's piece on whether people relate flooding to climate change states that "the research shows Brits who think climate change is a serious problem focus on the weather getting wetter in recent years, rather than hotter, as is the case in other countries." This is encouraging in the battle over climate change because, not only does it imply that people are starting to take climate change seriously, it tells us that 'climate change' is becoming better understood, and not dismissed in its 'global warming' form when we don't see a rise in temperatures.