6 Climate Crisis Memes Worth Stealing
From Greta Thunberg to Climate Denial, A Crop of Useful Memes | ISSUE 17 | May 17, 2019
QUICK/READ: Please steal these climate crisis memes below.
LONGER/READ: Discussion of the climate crisis reached a tipping point, oh… about ten minutes ago, it seems. For the first time, the Democrats, at least, are asking where presidential candidates stand on climate. (Jay Inslee and Beto O’Rourke thumbs way up! Joe Biden thumbs sideways/down!)
Plus, it’s Greta Time. Literally. The Swedish student graces TIME’s cover for May 27, 2019, near Sweden’s Parliament during her school strike, which launched a thousand student climate strikes globally. (See how the photo came to be.)
THIS MOMENT CALLS FOR climate crisis memes. I’ve taken some great things people have said and made them into memes. Please borrow, steal and pass them on. Make your own! We also accept memes ideas. If you hear or read something good, send it to douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com. We’ll see if we can work it up.
NOTE: I encourage other mememakers to tag your memes with #climatememes if you’re part of the Climate Twitterati.
ONE | Call It What It Is
Let’s start with Greta Thunberg’s ‘speaking truth to knucklead adult power.’ She kicked off a good discussion on Twitter recently, urging folks to stop calling it “climate change.” And start calling it what it is. A catastrophe. A crisis. A disaster.
We profiled Greta in Issue 7. Here’s a meme culled from her tweet:
TWO | You’re In Denial
Climate Twitterati is full of ping-pong matches between the forces of science and peer-reviewed climate studies—and those of climate denial and delayism. Denialists often trot out their own supposed science-y graphs and charts. And alt-Universe arguments that the ice sheets are growing! All that CO2 is good for you! The planet is entering a new ice age, not an epic meltdown!
In one memorable sentence, climate scientist Michael E. Mann summed up a Strategic Plan for Climate Crisis Outreach:
PS | Be Active, Civil & Factual
The climate denial Twitter guard are on call daily. Think of them as Aragorn in his guise as Strider, protecting the Shire. One such feed worth following is “Peter Believes in Science Not Dogma.” Then, there’s the Twitter hashtag #climatebrawl.
I thought ‘climatebrawl’ was too combative when I first saw it. But a chief proponent of the hashtag, Gerald Kutney, consistently urges fact-based civility. As in this tweet:
PSS | ‘Climate Skeptics’ No More
Speaking of denialists, The Guardian, one of the West’s best newspapers, recently announced a Style Book change, governing terms used in its influential climate coverage. No more use of “climate sceptic” as the science is so solid. Use “climate science denier,” says the Guardian. Pass it on to media folk you know and love/loathe:
THREE | Us and Them
A May 6, 2019 Guardian headline could and should send chills down the spine of any human being. Not to mention the spines of any creature, including invertebrates: “Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life: Scientists reveal 1 million species at risk of extinction in damning UN report”
It seems like a good time for a reminder from our MemeWorks. It’s not only our existence and quality of life at stake from a boiling biosphere:
FOUR | A Fundamental Change
Bill McKibben, a godfather of the modern environmental movement, is an influential figure in global mobilization around climate change. An author and activist with the planetwide group 350.org, he has perhaps done more than any one figure to sound the climate claxons. In CCT’s ISSUE 17, I wrote about his essential new book “FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” See the review for more. But here is a key takeaway from “Falter”:
FIVE | Call To Duty
Environmental attorney Mary Christina Wood, author of “Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age,” was featured in a powerful interview in the February 2019 The Sun. Beyond all the graphs and studies—essential in getting us to wake up—there is also the moral call-to-arms. Have a kid? Love someone under age 30? This meme’s for you. And me, And everyone. And every species:
SIX | Inslee Gets Serious
Washington state governor Jay Inslee is polling at the bottom of the Democratic pack. But his hugely ambitious climate crisis proposal, released this week, vaults him to the top of the pack in terms of ambition and vision. Huffpo ran a glowing review of the plan. But not even MSNBC covered it the day of its release:
HUFFINGTON POST: Jay Inslee released a sweeping $9 trillion economic plan Thursday to create 8 million jobs, revitalize the labor movement and rapidly cut planet-warming gases, propelling the Washington governor far out ahead on the Green New Deal at least nine of his rival 2020 presidential candidates vowed to enact.
The 38-page Evergreen Economy Plan promises at least 8 million jobs over 10 years, and offers the most detailed policy vision yet for mobilizing the entire United States economy to stave off catastrophic global warming and prepare for already inevitable temperature rise.
Our MemeWorks offers a shareable heads up:
SEVEN | You Promised Cartoons
I did. This is from WaPo’s ever-brilliant Tom Toles. (Check out the double-team of his artwork with Michael Mann’s climate communication mojo in the book “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics and Diving Us Crazy.”)
PS | Help grow The Changing Climate Times audience. Subscribe for free and read past issues at changingclimatetimes.substack.com. And post the link to social media sites. Feedback/content ideas welcome. Be well | Changing Climate Times Concierge and Curator Douglas John Imbrogno | douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com