In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell writes that "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
In the last week I saw two examples in environmental policy debates of what Orwell described.
The first was King County Executive Ron Sims' editorial in the Seattle Times where he announces his opposition to the RTID, Proposition 1, on the grounds that is does little to reduce CO2 emissions (a point on which we agree and you can read my analysis here). To add drama he mentions the plight of the polar bears, noting that "By 2050, around the time we finish paying for this package, two-thirds of the world's polar bears are expected to be extinct."
He could have, more accurately, said the that population of polar bears declined by two-thirds. One doesn't say that a polar bear who has died has become extinct. You can say that it is "no more, it's ceased to be, it's expired and gone to meets his maker ... it's a stiff, bereft of life, it rests in peace." Extinct it is not. Extinct has a specific meaning that is distinct from other words like extirpated or dead. The use of the word extinct, therefore, is used only to heighten the drama and obfuscate.
This use of the word is more inappropriate given the fact that if the population does decline to 33 percent of its current size in the next forty years, it will still be larger than it was forty years ago, when it was about 6,000. The current population is around 22,000. Would we say that the during the last 40 years, two-thirds of the polar bear population has become distinct instinct restinct de-extinct stinct alive?
The other use of environmental language currently in vogue is the appeal to the word of scientists. This week Chris Martinez of Green Everett responded to my op-ed in the Herald regarding green buildings. I had argued that the City of Everett should support local timber harvests since their new green building code gives preferences to local timber. Martinez objected.
He wrote that "Clear cutting continues to be a major contributor to global warming; impoverishing soils and releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Replanted young trees will take centuries to soak up the amount of carbon from the atmosphere that was stored in the original forest." He went on to say that "Scientists long ago debunked the timber industry's notion that cutting down old trees is good for the climate." The problem is that scientists say no such thing.
University of Northern British Columbia professor (and scientist) Art Fredeen has done quite a bit of work on the impact of forest management on CO2 and climate change. In a study published just last year he notes that after a timber harvest, CO2 does leach into the atmosphere for about 8 years. By the end of 16 years, however, the forest has stored as much CO2 as was lost and begins to remove new carbon from the atmosphere. Given that the shortest harvest rotations in Washington are about 40 years, forests in the Northwest spend more than half of their life removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
As long as the harvested timber is used for construction or other long-term uses (which account for the vast majority of timber uses in Washington), there is a net gain in the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. This is actually recognized by the UN, the Kyoto Protocol and other climate agreements. As I've mentioned many times, the University of Washington also notes that use of wood in construction can displace steel and concrete, which emit far more CO2.
The use of intentionally misleading language is designed to hide those things which are uncomfortable and to intimidate the reader. Who would challenge a policy when so many polar bears are going "extinct?" Who are you to challenge "scientists?" Such inaccurate language attempts to hide the realities, but it betrays the insincerity of their arguments.
