The Sound Green

I think the way Hall talks about languages in “Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices” helps me to look at environmental communication in a new way.  Despite scientists are discovering new figures or statistics over the past centuries, the term “global warming” is no longer new to the public anymore.  I think it is possible that whenever there are new findings about global warming, people who only care about the environment when they have time, which is most people, will automatically shut their brain and think they already know this “same old stuff”.  Gradually, global warming no longer sounds alarming to us, so we started referring the environmental crisis as “climate change”.  

Compare to the previous term, climate change can be used in more ways.  It is not only confined to the Earth heating up but also dramatic weather we need to deal with.  The term definitely attracted public attention and sparked conversations.  However, I think in the recently one or two years, the “scariness” of climate change has die down a bit, despite we are dealing with colder winters and warmer summers in general.  

I sometimes feel really frustrated about the environmental issues because it seems to me that no matter how much we talk about it and how we hard we try to cut down on daily consumption, we are still in search for the solutions.  I assume there are still many people out there who are not trying hard enough to save the planet?  Maybe environmental activists should use red rather than green as their campaign colour from now on so people may start to see the alarming situation of climate changes?