This may not be the most important thing in the world, but it drives me crazy: What do you call people who care about climate change and clean energy (PCCCCE)?
The political press still typically uses "environmentalists," but that terminology is woefully outdated and inapt. For one thing, not all environmentalists are primarily PCCCCE -- there are still some, believe it or not, who focus on things like land preservation or biodiversity. More to the point, lots and lots of PCCCCE aren't environmentalists. They inhabit insurance companies, the cleantech industry, the military, religious groups, hunting and fishing groups. Some are just citizens of good conscience. What unites them is a belief that climate change and clean energy are the top-line issues of the 21st century. 
Using the term "environmentalists" when you mean PCCCCE is not only inaccurate, it ends up hurting both the climate effort and environmentalism. PCCCCEism needs to be its own freestanding thing, detached from the limiting sociopolitical associations of environmentalism. (When people think environmentalism they think people who care about "the earth" and don't care about the economy, for better or worse.) Meanwhile environmentalism, which has been absolutely consumed by climate over the last few years, needs to re-engage with land, water, and species issues. Those are the issues that lead people to be environmentalists and the issues on which the movement has had its greatest successes.
Of course environmental groups will be partners in the climate effort, but they will not lead it and should not be its main public face. It'll never work if environmentalism has to shoulder the full political weight of climate.
The fact is, PCCCCE are extremely diverse. There needs to be a term for them that doesn't carry too much ideological baggage, something they would all accept, even given their cultural and policy differences. Are they "climate change advocates"? Well, they don't advocate for climate change. The "climate concerned"? Weak. "Climate crusaders"? Too do-goody. "Clean energy advocates"? Sterile and wonky. "Greens"? Meh. That term has been drained of all life or power by the trendy marketing of the last five years. "Sustainable ... ists?"
You see the problem. It's something I've struggled with as long as I've been writing about this stuff. Just this week I'm starting in on a series of posts about what PCCCCE should do next in light of the climate bill failure. But I still don't have anything to call them! (Obviously I can't keep using PCCCCE.).
Why is there no term? There's more at stake here than the semantic frustrations of journalists. Sometimes sociopolitical change begins with naming, identifying issues and concerns once thought unrelated as part of a larger phenomenon. That's what feminism did in the '60 and '70s -- it took a seemingly diffuse set of issues from housework to child-rearing to employment compensation and gathered them up under a common banner. It illuminated the connections and showed that disparate people were in fact involved in a common struggle.
Without a name, there's no identity. It's hard for, say, a corporate director of sustainability, a military officer, and a community organizer to bridge their differences and work together if they don't feel, on some level, like they're involved in the same thing. To name that thing is, in a sense, to make it real.
So, let's hear from you. What should PCCCCE be called?
Reprinted with permission from Grist.org.
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Science deniers can be entertaining sometimes.
Read the Green Zone. If the military doesn't stop doing what it's doing, nothing the rest of us do will make any difference at all.
And those who care about climate change should be called "realists". Greenwashers who care about the next Big Investment should be called opportunists. These are not the same people.
From the Pentagon's Feb. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review:
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Climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows.
Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.
While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas. In some nations, the military is the only institution with the capacity to respond to a large-scale natural disaster... Working closely with relevant U.S. departments and agencies, DoD has undertaken environmental security cooperative initiatives with foreign militaries
http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf
(climate) or (science)
and then the second word should be:
(supporters) or (activists) or (realists)
I.e. "climate realists" or "science realists" or something along those lines.
This does not describe energy companies, the military, or "cleantech". Some of us are more concerned with the science than new EVs.
So for the time being, how about sticking with "people who care about climate change and clean energy." It's a little clunky, but it's about as accurate as you're going to get at this stage.
You can check out my other thoughts and writings on renewable energy, and learn about my book-in-progress, at www.renewablebook.com
These can be very diverse people with very diverse motivations, so that's very, very broad. That covers James Hansen to the guy growing corn ethanol, and even just those two people have completely different motivations.
Writers have to label people individually depending on what and who they are, and a label to cover everyone is just not going to work in this case. I write about this topic all the time and I don't feel the need for one all-encompassing label.
Stereotyping is no good with something so important anyway. It would be more harmful than helpful.
economics and remain critical of all science (which is the
heart of the scientific method) I would call these, realists.
You can proceed on the basis of best available information
if you don't fully believe it.
Those who fix on one aspect to the exclusion of others, are
just religious. Proceeding to legislate morality therefrom, is
almost never helpful.
I saw a Wall Street Journal article recently saying that the only
way to get people to "Go Green" is to guilt them into it; evidently
the direct, logical arguments fail to convince. This is cast as a
fault of the unpersuaded, but perhaps it is more about the gaps
in the argument and the poor quality of solutions offered. That
means effort, more than words, is that is required. But there is a
sort of person and a sort of organization, that prefers to substitute
volume of voice for effect of effort. Like, the ones you see on TV
instead of in the garage workshop.