This Might Sound Weird, But…
As we experience the changes in our environment as a result of the climate crisis, we may come across a sensation of subtle uneasiness- perhaps something called “climate weirding”…
Illustration by Laura Cuppage.
Just off the Sandstone Trail that runs north to south through the county of Cheshire, there is a mystical place named Urchin’s Kitchen. Urchin’s Kitchen is a channel that was created through the sandstone rock by glacial meltwater at the end of the last ice age. As you walk through it, the layers of rock rise up on either side of you, draped with pendulous ivy and huge overhanging ferns. You can’t help but feel like a hobbit on a very long and important journey. I first came across it almost 15 years ago and it always stayed in my memory, as one of the most magical places I had ever been.
In 2019, after several years, I returned on a solo walk. I found the wooden waymarker fallen, lying in the long grass which was pulling it down into the earth. The path to The Kitchen was overgrown, unused and barely traceable. When I fought my way through, I discovered the reason: Urchin’s Kitchen had become a channel for water once more. I tested the depth with my waterproof boot. Ankle deep sodden mud, the full width of the gorge, as far as I could see. So I retraced my steps to the main path and tried to find a way into the opposite end of The Kitchen, but it was just as bad. I stood defeated. The sun was low in the autumn sky. A buzzard landed in its Scots Pine tower above my head and a sickening smell that might or might not have been a decaying animal hung low over the undergrowth. I had a horrible sense of unease. Suddenly the whole reality of the climate emergency was there in front of me. This sunken path, returning to the status of its ancient past, became a portent of everything to come. At that moment, I was taken over by grief and loss as past, present and future became one. As I tried to reassure myself that the path would probably return to normal during a drier spell, I simultaneously experienced an intense knowing that everything was going very, very wrong.
You could say what I experienced was an example of ‘climate weirding.’ Interchangeable with the term ‘global weirding’, which was coined over a decade ago by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, it is an attempt to more accurately describe climate changes as we actually experience them. ‘Global warming’ creates the impression that everywhere is just getting hotter; ‘global weirding’ speaks more to the fact that this is not necessarily how it plays out around the globe. Climate change is not happening in a purely linear fashion. As most of us understand, the impact from greenhouse gases and biodiversity loss is not just heat, drought and fires, but also cold spells, storms, hurricanes and floods. Changes might present more subtly – something that is missing. A watercourse that was once frequented by herons might quickly become devoid of them. It’s not always something you can put your finger on straight away, but you sense something has gone. Some weather patterns might be prolonged rather than severe. Last night I took a walk and the cow parsley was drooping before it had even flowered. I have never seen that before. We have had no rain for several weeks and the ground is parched. But it’s only April, in England, so it’s pretty – well – weird. Rain is forecast though, and set to continue for days. These long periods of drought followed by long periods of rain are the reason that UK wheat crop yields were the lowest for 40 years in 2020, down by around a third. Last autumn many fields in Cheshire were still swaying with ruined wheat and maize crops well after the time they would normally have been harvested.
At a time when climate deniers are exploiting the loopholes in the language of global warming, using other extremes of wet or cold weather to ‘disprove’ planetary heating, the term ‘climate weirding’ creates space for a variety of human-made climate and environmental changes and goes some way to pop the balloon of denial propaganda.
The shifts that the term ‘climate weirding’ highlights can also help draw the attention of the general public to the fact that we are already seeing rapid changes, and that they are affecting them locally. It can be easy to convince yourself the climate emergency is only affecting other towns, other countries, other continents. But helping people to open their eyes to the strange goings-on on their doorsteps could help to foster that sense of urgency that seems to be lacking amongst many. As a society we are reactionary rather than proactive, so being able to say ‘look at that field down the road. All that unharvested wheat is a sign the farmer who lives on the corner, who’s children go to the same school as yours, is losing his livelihood. And within that same web of cause and effect, the bread you buy from the supermarket has gone up in price because one of our staple crops is already in shorter supply.’ The word weirding can be used to help hook people’s attention to things they might notice on their own doorstep. And in a world where more and more people are part of a diaspora, scattered and dispersed from their homelands, many aren’t staying in one place long enough to notice and grieve the long term environmental changes of their childhood homes. A word such as weirding can help anchor us to real-time change where we are right now.
However, if you do follow these ‘weird’ changes through to their conclusion, this is where the word ‘weirding’ fails us. The Cambridge dictionary defines weird as something ‘strange and unusual’. We can shrug our shoulders. ‘Huh, that’s a bit weird.’ Then shake our heads due to a lack of explanation and walk away, satisfied that it will probably be of little consequence. Weird is not an urgent word. Weird keeps us one step removed from the seriousness of it all. Weird does not communicate potential catastrophe. Weird is what they say at the beginning of a disaster film when they are blissfully naïve and unaware of what is about to befall them.
Dictionary.com refers to the word ‘weird’ as ‘that which is mysterious and outside natural law.’ Without a wider framework to tie ‘climate weirding’ into, it is at risk of sounding like something spooky that is beyond our understanding and therefore beyond our control is afoot. ‘Well, storms will be storms,’ we might say. ‘Weird,’ as usual. And we just wait for the storm to pass before we hop into our diesel cars to pick up some avocados from the supermarket.
Hanna E. Morris, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication, who researches environmental communication believes we should be careful that the language we use doesn’t decouple source from harm. A critic of the term ‘Anthropocene’ (which denotes the current period as one in which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment), she says it doesn’t do justice to the fact that a privileged few are doing the most harm to the disadvantaged many. “Like some other climate change language, it underplays, trivialises or creates blanket cause and effect – ignores colonialism and the fact that indigenous peoples are more disproportionately affected.”
But if the word ‘anthropocene’ lets those most to blame off the hook, could it not be argued that ‘climate weirding’ goes further and lets everyone off the hook?
Morris insists, “Climate change needs to be understood more precisely and more specifically,” and thinks that terms such as ‘slow violence’ are more accurate. However she acknowledges that slow things don’t fit into our attention grabbing headline culture.
So in reality, what other option do we actually have when working out how to process and communicate an unprecedented crisis of such magnitude? Working out the most useful language in any new situation is trial and error.
And whereas ‘anthropocene’ is academic sounding, difficult, maybe creating barriers, the word ‘weird’ is the opposite. It has the potential to draw people in with the promise of excitement, entertainment, an interesting story. ‘Weird’ provides a great hook and in that respect it can fulfil a particular role in terms of messaging to those who don’t normally engage.
Weird can provide a starting point in place of the usual language that provokes anxiety and defensiveness. Bash people over the head and it causes them to flee from further conversation. Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist who teaches public policy and public law at Texas Tech University, knows this. She hosts the PBS digital series “Global Weirding” and has found the name really useful in opening up conversations within the usually reluctant Christian Conservative demographic that it is aimed at.
If you want to connect with anybody, you need to meet them where they are. It might just be that ‘weirding’ is the best we’ve got to help us do that right now and for that reason, it’s worth keeping around.
Michelle Parsons
Shell Parsons is an autistic writer, advocate and nature therapy practitioner. She believes that neurodiversity is an essential part of biodiversity. You can find her at shellparsons.com, on Instagram @neurodivergentinnature and as a contributor in The Neurodivergent Collective. She is a cat mum and an actual mum and loves wildlife gardening and nature walks.