An Environmentalist's Thesaurus

'Global warming' is so passé.

By JOE QUEENAN

Some experts think the environmentalist movement has an image problem. According to them, greens are losing the battle against primeval despoilers of Nature's awesome bounty because they continue to use antiquated, in-your-face terms like "global warming," "cap and trade," and yes even "the environment." So says a new report by ecoAmerica, a cutting-edge, Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in environmental marketing and messaging, as reported in the New York Times (henceforth known as the Green Lady).
According to ecoAmerica, which has conducted rigorous, focus-group research in this area, environmentalists are taking it on the chin because politically charged terms like "global warming" conjure up images of hirsute, confrontational '60s types. "When you say 'global warming,'" Robert M. Perkowitz, ecoAmerica's president and founder, told the Times, "a certain group of Americans think that's a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues."
Sadly, Mr. Perkowitz never explained how this "certain group" manages to draw a connection between global warming and gay marriage. And it must be said, I'd love to see his raw data on the subject.
In any event, to right the listing ship of sustainable biodiversity, ecoAmerica recommends that environmentalists mothball the textured scientific lingo and get right down to the nitty-gritty. That means ditching excessively technical terms like "carbon dioxide" and substituting catchy phrases like "moving away from the dirty fuels of the past."
EcoAmerica also recommends jettisoning the cumbersome term "the environment" and replacing it with the infinitely more felicitous "the air we breathe, the water our children drink." The organization probably got paid tons of money for this high-level research, so its advice should not go unheeded.
Clearly, ecoAmerica is on to something with this bold initiative. But perhaps the subtle neologisms it's proposed don't go far enough. No one pays any attention to bloodless expressions like "depletion of the ozone layer" anymore. Moreover, "depletion" is a stupid word, since what it's supposed to decry is "catastrophic destruction" of the ozone layer, not its mere shrinkage.
What is needed here is more graphic language that the man on the street can understand. Thus, instead of saying something like "If mankind continues to deplete the ozone layer, we will cause irreparable damage to the environment," activists should say: "If we keep using the dirty fuels of the past to mess up that awesome thing in the sky that prevents our butts from like totally frying at the beach, then we might as well just spew filth into the air we breathe and the water our children drink and all curl up and die right now. Am I right, or what?"
Anyone can see how more colorful, less partisan, less politically rancorous language would enable environmentalists to seize the higher ground. Now it no longer sounds like some prissy elitist's butt that's going to fry. It could be somebody in a trailer park. Maybe even Dick Cheney.
There are many other environmentalist catchphrases that could use fine-tuning. "No carbon footprint" is a term so trendy, so precious, that it cannot help but reinforce the image of environmentalists as condescending do-gooders. Surely something less deviously euphemistic would work better.
Instead of hanging a sign in the window reading, "As of midnight Tuesday, this dining establishment will no longer leave a carbon footprint," restaurant owners could hang a placard reading: "Starting Tuesday, we will no longer allow disgusting fumes to belch all over the food your kids are eating and stinking up the air you breathe. We already warned the cook."
Similarly, instead of talking about "the melting of the polar ice cap," a phrase too apocalyptically antediluvian to scare anyone anymore, environmentalists should start referring to "dead polar bears in your driveway." "Degradation of habitat" could be replaced by a more evocative phrase like "torching Bambi's crib."
The one term environmentalists should probably deep-six, though, is "biological diversity." The ding-dongs who confuse "global warming" with gay marriage might think that biological diversity refers to features of the environment that only ethnic minorities care about. At this rate, we'll never get the planet back in working order.
Mr. Queenan, a satirist and writer, is the author of numerous books. His memoir, "Closing Time," has just been published by Viking.