News Headline
Forget ‘environment’ — it’s time to ring in a fresh expression
Source
Gulf News
Publication Date
2017-08-09
Language is crucial to how we perceive the natural world. While there are examples everywhere, I will illustrate the problem with a few from the United Kingdom. On land, places in which nature is protected are called “sites of special scientific interest”. At sea, they are labelled “no-take zones” or “reference areas”. Had you set out to estrange people from the living world, you could scarcely have done better. Even the term “reserve” is cold and alienating — think of what we mean when we use that word about a person. “The environment” is just as bad: An empty word that creates no pictures in the mind.