There are concepts that I will refer to again and again in this project. If you have ideas for others, please let me know.
Disclaimer: You do NOT have to know all of these to be a decent and useful human being. In fact, you can know all these (and more) and still be a grade-A worse-than-useless knob. Trust me on this…
| Title | Description |
| Adaptation | But what are we adapting to? How quickly and how much will things change? And whose present and future interests are taken into account? Tricky AF. |
| Agnotology | “Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour. It comes from agnosis, the neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or ‘not knowing’, and ontology, the branch of metaphysics which deals with the nature of being.” (From BBC article) |
| Anthropocene | The geological age in which humans have started to impact on the whole planet (as opposed |
| Anthropocentrism | Looking at the world as if humans were the centre of the universe, and all that mattered |
| Anti-reflexivity | Old white men not coping with the rise of those who used to be (in their minds) ‘under the thumb – women, people of colour, “homosexuals”, nature. |
| Biographical Availability | If you have kids, a career, caring responsibilities, no money, you’re much less likely to be available for protest activity |
| Carbon Lock-in | The situation in which we find ourselves- the infrastructure of extracting, transporting, burning fossil fuels is so large and embedded, that getting out/beyond it is almost unimaginable |
| Citational erasure | Term coined to refer to what white scholars sometimes (often) do when writing about the anthropocene, the Majority World etc. See here and here. |
| Classism | One of the few remaining “acceptable” prejudices (especially in the UK) |
| Cognitive Maps | Frederic Jameson’s term for having frames of reference that help you really understand the world |
| Contraction and Convergence | The uncontroversial statement that we need(ed) to both reduce our emissions (contraction) and therefore they’d need to converge on a per capita basis by a date in the future. Yeah, we didn’t do that… |
| Cornucopianism | The belief that we can have our cake and eat it, and that those currently getting hurt by the effluent from the oven will be happy with more crumbs than they’re getting now. |
| Decolonising the Curriculum | Figuring out not just which thinkers are getting over-used, which concepts come with lotsa baggage, but also who and what has been/is being silenced |
| Denialism | More accurate term for so-called climate “sceptics”. |
| Ecological Modernisation | A 1980s notion that technology would provide answers to environmental and social problems and therefore no big changes were needed in the way humans organise their societies. |
| Ego-fodder | The audience at any event that isn’t organised for maximum interaction |
| Emotacycle | The predictable cycle of |
| Environmental Justice | There isn’t any. There’s just mayhem and gaslighting. So it goes. |
| Fetishism | A fetish is a god (an object which we believe has magical powers) that we created and then forgot that we created, but continue to worship |
| Free Rider Problem | If people can get the good stuff without having to put in the hard work, and without getting hauled over the coals for their non-effort, then some of them will. [see also common goods problem] |
| Growthism | The ideology that all problems can be solved with growth, and any problems arising from growth can be solved with… more growth |
| Hegemony | Weaponised common sense – domination which looks normal, natural, inevitable, good |
| Information Deficit Model | The belief that the reason the world isn’t better is because some people (those in positions of authority/influence) haven’t been given the right information |
| Intersectionality | The idea that mulitple forms of prejudice/oppression overlap and can have negative synergies – that you can’t easily read a group’s position in a power structure by simply adding/subtracting their characteristics |
| Issue Attention Cycle | Periods of heightened interest/concern in an issue, followed by a period where the issue is (largely) ignored again. We’ve been through several with climate change over the last 50 years. |
| Jevons Paradox | If you make a process or product cheaper, more people will buy/use it. The total amount of energy/material used will increase, rendering efficiency gains irrelevant in the bigger picture. We’re toast. [see also rebound effect] |
| Keeling Curve | A graph, from observations by Charles David Keeling, showing the remorseless and accelerating build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The scariest graph you’ll ever see. |
| Lifestyle emissions | The emissions tied to having a “nice”/sophisticated/civilised lifestyle, as opposed to (and in competition with) what other people need to survive. A term invented in 1989 by Indian intellectuals who saw that the West was going probably not going to take climate change seriously. [See also survival emissions.] |
| The Limits to Growth | A 1972 report, based on then-new computer modelling that made the outrageous claim that attempts at infinite growth on a finite planet was going to lead to trouble. All right-thinking and highly educated people sneered at it. |
| Mitigation | Efforts to reduce the impact of something. In climate change terms, this means reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) we pump into the atmosphere. |
| “no regrets” | A term popular in the 1990s to refer to “low cost” actions that you’d take anyway. Now largely replaced as a virtue-signalling term by “low hanging fruit” or even “net zero” |
| Path depdency | History matters- what has occurred in the past persists because of resistance to change. [See also Carbon Lock-in,, Historical Institutionalism] |
| Patriarchy | The system of power and domination tied to male-ness. Dreams of absolute control, over every living soul |
| Peer review | A quality control (or, if reviewer two has pissed you off a “gate-keeping”) process that means the more outrageous/poorly-supported-by-evidence arguments don’t get published. But see also group think, pluralistic ignorance, etc |
| Pluralistic ignorance | According to wikipedia “a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but go along with it because they assume, incorrectly, that most others accept it.” |
| Policy Window | From John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach – A period of time in which, thanks to public concern and either political competition or consensus, in which it is possible to make a significant change in a policy [See also “never let a good crisis go to waste”] |
| Post-normal science | Wikipedia – “represents a novel approach for the use of science on issues where “facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent”.[1] PNS was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz.[2][3][1] It can be considered as a reaction to the styles of analysis based on risk and cost-benefit analysis prevailing at that time, and as an embodiment of concepts of a new “critical science” developed in previous works by the same authors” |
| Predatory delay | “for a couple decades we had a legitimate argument that we needed a reasonable amount of time to change our ecological impact. It’s become clear that many of our leaders’ definition of a reasonable amount of time, though, is for things to change sometime after they’re dead.” Alex Steffen, 2016. [See also – tobacco industry fighting rearguard against cigarette regulation] |
| Protest wave | A period in which protest around an issue builds, peaks and vanishes. And as Warren Buffett observes, when the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming naked. [see also Issue Attention Cycle]] |
| Resilience | As with “innovation,” one of those nice sounding words that comes with enormous political baggage. Would a “resilient” Nazi Party be a good thing? Resilience of what, for who? Also, if something is “resilient” you can keep exploiting it amirite? |
| Resource testeria | Hard-hat-itis. The desire for politicians to appear in front of pipelines and hi-tech stuff, being “manly.” From a George Monbiot piece. |
| Scepticism | The way science works, obviously. But people are capable of creating policy-based evidence, and wilfully not seeing the nose on their face, if Occam’s razor is going to slash them with the old rizz-razz… See also Carl Sagan – “But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” |
| Science – impact | Impact science is science that assesses the (environmental) impacts of technology and societal action. [See also [production science] |
| Science – production | Science that helps you extract (GM, CCS, etc). See also impact science. The anti-reflexivity crowd love production science – impact science not so much. |
| Social movement organisations | Hard to define well, but organisations, not under control of state or corporations trying to create or prevent social change, or deliver services (it gets very fuzzy very quickly) [see also social movements page.] |
| “Sociologists invent words…” | … that mean industrial disease.” From the Dire Straits song of the same name. Academics DO like to slap labels on things, for fun and citations… |
| Socio-technical transitions | We went from sailing ships to steam ships. We went from horse and cart to automobiles. These were socio-technical transitions (from low carbon to high carbon). In the 1980s we needed to start moving damn fast to low carbon. We didn’t, in part thanks to stunningly successful campaigns of doubt and delay that continue down unto today. Oops. |
| Super wicked problem | “According to Kelly Levin and co-authors, super wicked problems are a new class of global environmental problem with four key features: time is running out those who cause the problem also seek to provide a solution the central authority needed to address them is weak or non-existent irrational discounting occurs that pushes responses into the future.” Chris Riedy [See also wicked problem] |
| Survival emissions | The emissions people need to survive, as opposed to the “nice to have” ones that you can choose to have (if you have money to make those choices). A term invented in 1989 by Indian intellectuals who saw that the West was going probably not going to take climate change seriously. [See also lifestyle emissions] |
| Technophilia | Unreasoning love of technology, believing it will be your nurturing mommy and solve every problem [See also technophobia] |
| Technophobia | Unreasoning fear of technology, only seeing the downsides [See also technophilia] |
| Truthism | The ideology that says that there is a single Truth (usually in the possession of those advocating it) and revealing this Truth to everyone else, pulling back the veil, will solve all problems [See also Growthism and information deficit model] |
| Two degrees | An alleged “safe” limit for warming above pre-industrial levels. Adds up to 7 or 8 degrees at the poles. isn’t safe for anyone or anything. And we’re gonna blow right past it. Oops. [See Chris Shaw’s work] |
| White Supremacism | The clue is in the name – the belief (possibly only going back to the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?) that white people are inherently “better” and have the god-given right to behave like total douches. |
| Wicked Problem | Wikipedia – “In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.” [See also super-wicked problems] |