Global Warming Hides Behind “Security”

by E. Bruce Harrison

Washington politicians who favor legislation to fight global warming are doing what companies do when faced with a declining brand in an overcrowded marketplace: Rebrand and take charge of the terms that influence perception.

"Security!" Sen. John Kerry told a Washington press event, vying for attention to his newly-drafted climate-change bill.

In a congressional space where financial and health reform has sucked up 99 percent of the air, the senior senator from Massachusetts asserted that the bill is hard nosed.

"It's about security," he said at a news event. "Economic security, energy security and national security."

There was a fresh, urgent, directness in his message.

No time to focus on floods or stranded polar bears or other emotion-laden green messages that have accompanied previous legislative launches to address global warming.

No mention even of cap-and-trade, the expensive but commonly accepted as the most viable economic path to carbon emission cuts.

It makes sense.

Politicians, like companies, can sell only what people are willing to buyÑand right now the public market for paying the price to "stop global warming" is closed for repairs.

And the fact of the matter is that the term "global warming" lost sales appeal shortly after Kerry lost his 2004 presidential battle.

By 2006, with George Bush re-elected and a new coalition of business and green advocates forming under the banner "U. S. Climate Action", the term "climate change" had become acceptable as less frightening and more palatable in most quarters.

Former President Bill Clinton, adept at political terminology, that year launched his program to take "measurable steps toward helping to slow down global warming" and called it the Clinton Climate Initiative.

The exceptional old-style word-slinger was the former politician Al Gore, whose prize-winning documentary in 2007 continued to sound "a global warming alert."

The legislation squeezed out of the House with some support from business led by major electric power producers, giving the Senate its current opportunity, was called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Sen. Kerry's version, drafted with approval of jurisdictional committee chair Barbara Boxer, is similar — essentially giving it a "Get Security Now" label — but runs into trouble trying to place the costly control of carbon emissions, linked to climate change, in politically acceptable terms.

So the marketing has to deal with costs.

No talk is as toxic as tax talk when costs must be sold to voters in tough times. The best current example of this is that very effort is made by proponents of the health-care bill — including President Obama — to avoid branding individual cost increases a "tax."

The fact is that political opponents of cap and trade have already been fairly successful in rebranding the term "cap and trade," calling it "cap and tax."

Since "cap and tax" has shown some consumer acceptance, Senate leaders continue their linguistic initiative.

"Cap and trade doesn't mean anything to people," Sen. Kerry told the media, so he's offering a new term — "pollution reduction and investment" — to describe the economic mechanism.

"PRI," he explained, "is an actual description of what's happening here."

Time for an optimal brand launch, under whatever name, is a major handicap.

Administrative officials had hoped to go to the global climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen in December armed with a congressional mandate.

That's not going to happen. Best achievable outcome for the White House is that the Senate completes hearings on the bill and that the sound bites indicate that the U.S. is serious about its role in the future of the planet — even if not everyone is entirely sure of the terminology.

E. Bruce Harrison, based in Washington, D.C., is the author of "Corporate Greening 2.0: Create and Communicate Your Company's Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies," (PublishingWorks Inc., Exeter, NH, 2008).

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