Words matter

Submitted by Michael on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 11:04

Joe Romm makes a point I love in an essay today at Climate Progress. 

It does not do to call those on the other side of the climate-change question "skeptics." As he says, they are not skeptics at all — their minds are made up. 

I have made a similar point regarding my "other" issue, obesity. People talk about the popular dieting solutions — Weight Watchers, The Zone, Atkins, whatever — as if the class of products and schemes is solving anything. Two of every three American adults, 145 million of them, are overweight or obese — and the problem is growing.

Meanwhile, Romm takes pains to dance around the term "deniers," apparently because some to whom the term has been applied have complained that it links them to another set of deniers — of the Holocaust. I can say that I didn't make that connection, and perhaps that helps explain why, even if I see the point, I don't have a lot of sympathy for it. 

These people are deniers. Another segment of the populace has martialled an impressive array of data and educated opinion on a topic, and these people deny — the facts, the opinions. What should those who deny be called?

Let's start the solutions to these problems by calling things as they are. 

 

Speaking at Commonwealth Club

I will be speaking on the topic of food addiction at the Commonwealth Club of California, the oldest public affairs forum in the country, on Feb. 28. I'll be joining a fabulous panel of researchers and clinicians: Nicole Avena of Princeton and the University of Florida, Eric Stice of the Oregon Research Institute, Vera Tarman of Renascent Center of Toronto, abd Elissa Epel and Andrea Garber, both of the University of California at San Francisco. I am very excited to be part of the roster, not to mention to be appearing at such a great institution. Ticket information here; if you come, please stay afterward to say hello.

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