Why We Must Stop Saying “Climate Apocalypse”: Symbols, Religious Social Memory, and Effective Climate Action

Abstract

The apocalyptic framework has become a handy metaphor for climate change because this story, better than most others, is able to express the scope and severity of the transformation most scientists believe is coming to humanity’s planetary and social systems. Since the first Earth Day in 1970 (Bailey 2000) and increasingly in journalistic media, nongovernmental organization circles, scientific literature, academia, eco-activism, and youth culture, climate change is referred to in world-ending terms that are explicitly apocalyptic. Those who use the phrase “climate apocalypse” mean to spur serious confrontation with the facts of climate change, resulting in climate activism, whether in the form of climate change mitigation or shoring up societal resiliency. However, stories not only describe reality, they help shape reality, and “climate apocalypse” has the unintended effect of creating passivity, fear, paralysis, and naïve hope in its audience.