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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We'll do election results some more, a little later on, but now we continue our climate coverage as the COP26 Climate Summit continues in Glasgow. Our topic today is the vocabulary of climate change. For example, if you've heard any of the speeches so far, you might notice a particular vocabulary word that leaders use when making promises about climate policy. Let's hear some examples.

Joe Biden: We're going to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by well over a gigaton.

Justin Trudeau: Canada is making our first contribution to the adaptation fund.

Narendra Modi: Adaptation benefits [foreign language].

Mia Mottley: Adaptation finance remains only at 25%.

Narendra Modi: [foreign language] mitigation.

Mia Mottley: On mitigation, climate pledges, or NDCs.

Justin Trudeau: To reach net-zero by 2050.

Boris Johnson: When we agreed to net-zero.

Narendra Modi: 2030 [foreign language] net-zero [foreign language].

Joe Biden: To achieve net-zero emissions of net-zero for a net-zero world.

Brian Lehrer: You heard Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, and UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, all speaking at the World Leader Summit at COP26 this week. Does this language clearly articulate climate policy to you? Some is technical jargon. Some terms seem simple but have underlying complexity. What do these words or phrases actually mean? What does net-zero mean? What does carbon neutral mean? What does mitigation and adaptation mean? What do they mean? What does the term climate change even really mean?

Joining me now to help explain and answer your climate change vocabulary questions is Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at the University of Southern California. Professor, thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. We appreciate your time in a busy week.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Oh, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, is there any climate-related terminology that leaves you scratching your head? Are there any terms you hear thrown around and maybe assume you understand, but in reality it might be more complicated? This is a safe educational space, so don't be shy. Do you have any suggestions for how you would effectively communicate climate policy? Do you think there are words that aren't being used that could be? Give us a call 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Professor Bruine de Bruin, let's start with some of the terms that we heard there in those clips. How about greenhouse gas? We hear it so much. Do we know what it means?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Well, climate scientists know what it means, but I recently conducted a study in which I asked climate scientists to identify the key terminology that they use in their climate change communications, and these weren't just any climate scientists. These were the climate scientists who work for the IPCC. They publish the international reports on climate science with suggestions on what we can do about it, and they gave me those terms.

They're adaptation, mitigation, carbon-neutral, net-zero, all the terms that you heard in the speeches, and then we asked people from across the United States who were concerned about climate change and not so concerned about climate change to define those terms for us, and we found that a lot of people are confused about what this climate jargon actually means. I feel like people often feel like climate scientists are talking over their heads.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you to pick apart two particular ones that we heard in that montage and that we're hearing a lot these days, especially in the pledges coming out of the summit, carbon neutral and net-zero. Are they the same thing?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: That's a good question. I think that even some climate scientists don't agree about that. They're similar. Carbon neutral means that when climate scientists use that they mean that if you are releasing carbon dioxide into the air, you're also making an effort to take the same amount out of the air through investing in a forest or grasslands, because those can take CO2 out of the air or technologies that can take CO2 out of the air.

That means that overall your net emissions are zero, but net-zero is often used to refer to a much wider policy that goes much beyond just being one company being carbon neutral, but rather going much further than that and not just reducing your carbon emissions, but also other greenhouse gas emissions.

Brian Lehrer: Should people be skeptical when they hear one term or the other? It sounds from this answer that maybe they should be a little more skeptical when they hear the term carbon neutral as a pledge than when they hear the term net-zero, but how should the general public, especially if we're interested in a strong climate change protection prevention policy. How should we hear those terms differently from each other politically?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Well, I think we should ask our policymakers to explain what they mean when they use those terms because the intention is what matters, and so we should ask people for clear definitions in everyday terminology.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go on to another one. Mitigation. We heard that in the montage from several of the world leaders, what do we mean when we say mitigation with respect to climate change.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: When climate scientist mitigation, they usually mean actions that we can do to stop climate change from getting worse. Reducing our carbon dioxide emissions by changing how we produce our energy, for example. When we asked people from across the United States what they thought mitigation meant they often struggled to define it. They thought it was one of the most difficult terms in the context of climate change, and they often confuse it with mediation and thought that mitigation meant trying to resolve a conflict, which they couldn't even define it in the context of climate change.

If mitigation is a key term in climate change communications and people have difficulty understanding it, it's really time for climate scientists and policy makers to think about explaining their terms better.

Brian Lehrer: How about adaptation? Is that when simpler?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Yes, so people perceive adaptation to be a much simpler word, but when we asked people to define adaptation, they often defined it as a making a book into a movie. Which is also an adaptation, but of course, doesn't refer to climate change. I think again it may be a simple word but people don't always know what it means in the context of climate change. Using clear everyday wording is important so that we can all be on board on what the climate message is and do something about it together.

Brian Lehrer: Activists would tend to say adaptation isn't enough because what adaptation really means is adjusting our lives to the reality that the globe is getting warmer, and of course, it's going to continue to get warmer for some period of time. It's already baked in no matter what preventive measures we take for further warming, but adaptation can sometimes seem like resignation to the inevitability of massive change, which is going to cause massive destruction and massive numbers of deaths.

Adaptation, I think it's a little bit tainted as far as the activist community is concerned. Tell me if you disagree, even though yes, we do all have to adapt to the reality of a warmer planet.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: That's right. There's two sets of actions that climate scientists talk about in the context of climate change. Adaptation is adjusting to climate change that is already happening. Mitigation is stopping climate change from getting worse, and of course, activists want to focus more on mitigation than adaptation because in reality it's probably a combination of both. Climate change is happening, so we need to adjust to what's happening, but we should definitely also stop it from getting worse if we don't want to suffer the consequences.

Brian Lehrer: William in Astoria has a climate vocabulary question. Hi, William. You're on WNYC.

William: Hi, Brian. Good morning. I'd like to know what is captured carbon or CO2 being captured.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we hear this phrase carbon capture.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Yes, carbon capture is also a term that a lot of our interviewees found complicated to understand, and so from my understanding carbon capture means that instead of releasing carbon dioxide into the air, for example, when you're burning coal, you take it from the emissions before they go into the air and you take them and you put them, for example, deep underground so that they don't go into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Of course, that is a technology that is still being worked on.

Brian Lehrer: Hopefully that's clear. How about the different? Well, I'm going to let a caller ask this question. Paul in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Paul.

Paul: Hello, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I wonder if your guest could clarify the difference between weather and climate? That's a distinction that's confusing to many people. Also, is there a better term than climate crisis? Since I don't think a lot of people feel a crisis but the scientists tell us we're in one.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take those separately and I have a follow up question about climate crisis. How about that basic distinction between weather and climate? A lot of our listeners probably could define that difference pretty easily but a lot of people probably couldn't.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: A lot of people don't see the difference between weather and climate so then when it snows, when you're not expecting it, people say, "Well, climate change is not happening because it's snowing right now and climate change it means the world is getting warmer, so this must be wrong."

According to climate scientists, weather is what you experience outside in a specific location at any time but climate is the average weather over much longer periods of time. I've heard it explained as climate determines the clothes that you choose to buy, and that you hang in your closet, because it's the weather you expect overall. Weather determines what you wear from day to day. The weather might change even though the climate overall is supposed to be relatively stable.

What we've seen happening is that the climate is changing and that means you might get more extreme weather in your specific location. I hope that was clear.

Brian Lehrer: I hope that was clear. Paul, thank you for your call. Now on climate crisis, I think there's a stepladder or a pecking order here. You could say climate change and then particularly from the activist community they want me as a journalist and other people to say climate crisis, and then that anti has been upped even more so in recent times where there are people who say, "No, you can't say climate crisis anymore, or you shouldn't just say climate crisis." Even that doesn't communicate the urgency. They want us to say climate emergency.

How about the word crisis, which is what the caller actually asked about? Then that whole pecking order that I laid out?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Yes, I have not actually tested words like climate crisis, climate emergency or climate change. What this highlights is that wording matters. Using wording that resonates with people is important. Whether it's climate change, climate emergency or climate crisis, we should choose the words that ring true with people and help them understand the importance of climate change and doing something about it now so that it doesn't get worse.

Brian Lehrer: Meredith in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC with a climate vocabulary question. Hi, Meredith.

Meredith: Hi, there. How is it going? To agree with Wändi there and stridently disagree with Paul, I make a point of saying global warming because I think the word change belies the emergency the crisis that global warming actually is. Language is everything. Just as the Patriot Act hid certain nasties, I think by dressing things up in climate change, and change happens everywhere every day, for everything, it makes it routine that makes it pedestrian and that's not what this is.

Brian Lehrer: Meredith, thank you very much. You're drawing the distinction between global warming and climate change for the entire phenomenon. I don't know, Professor Bruine de Bruin, if you have looked at the political origins of one versus the other and who's trying to spin by saying either global warming or climate change, have you studied those terms in terms of whether they communicate clearly and if they mean different things to people hear them?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Yes, what we're seeing is that global warming does make it clear that you're referring to increasing temperatures. What is confusing about it is that climate change will bring different types of extreme weather to different regions. That does not necessarily mean that a specific region will have increasing temperatures per se as their biggest climate impact and so that can make it confusing.

Another thing that we've seen with global warming is that when the weather is unseasonably cool, when you use a term like global warming, people who are already not so sure that climate change is happening then conclude, "Well, if it's unseasonably cold, climate change can't be happening right now." I'm Sorry, "Global warming can't be happening right now." Global warming can also be confusing to people even though the terms themselves seem more specific.

What's important here is to use wording that people can understand but not just stick with a specific term but actually explain what those terms mean in everyday language as well when we use them.

Brian Lehrer: It was the Republican messaging guru, Frank Luntz, who came up with the term climate change to cast out or make more vague what was happening in the climate as opposed to global warming which yes, even though things can be different and weird in different ways, I know that there's the one climate scientist who prefers Global Weirding because it's not all in one direction, but it's still ultimately the effect of the warming of the atmosphere.

Nevertheless, climate change doesn't tell you anything except that something is changing which is value neutral. Global warming is more specific and tells you that things are getting hotter.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: I'll give you another example of an issue with global warming though. I used to live in the United Kingdom where the weather is not very warm as you may know. What we found in that country is that people who live in the North where even the summers are grey and rainy and cold, people liked the idea of global warming happening because it would bring warmer weather. What we actually found is that people in the UK weren't concerned about climate change, they were just concerned about it bringing more rainfall and flooding.

That's another drawback of using the term global warming because not everybody will experience increasing temperatures as their biggest climate impact.

Brian Lehrer: One last one that I think you tested in your study, tipping point, because this is something that the climate scientists say and warn about, if we don't do enough to mitigate global warming we're going to reach a tipping point. How about that? I think people get confused of, what do you mean a tipping point after which what? The whole world blows up? Or my neighborhood gets affected? How about tipping point?

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: When climate scientists use the term tipping point, they usually refer to a situation where the climate change that is happening has gone so far that it cannot be turned back to what it was before. It's basically a point of no return. A lot of people understand what the term tipping point means, they just don't know what climate scientists mean when they use tipping points. They don't know what it means in the context of climate change. When using a word like tipping point, it's really important to explain in everyday language, what you mean by that.

Brian Lehrer: We've been speaking about climate vocabulary with Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at the University of Southern California. She'll be speaking at a COP26 panel, this Friday at 10:30, Eastern time. It's the launch of the topical collection, climate change communication, and the IPCC. If you want to log on, I guess that's virtual session Friday morning at 10:30. Professor, thank you so much, so informative and clarifying.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin: Thank you for having me.

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