The earth is not your mother, carbon doesn’t have a foot, and the atmosphere is not actually a greenhouse. And yet, these figurative environmental concepts endure, when even the word sustainability seems to have lost its sparkle.
A decade has passed since the Paris Agreement, when to raise awareness and encourage action, science was summarised into a single global goal: "keep warming below 1.5°C". A month out from the enactment of the EU’s new greenwashing law, confidence on what phrases to use and what buzzwords to avoid is low, just when the urgency to communicate clearly about climate is at its highest. During a time when many words feel off limits, and as 1.5 starts to feel out of reach, we return to the trusted literary device of metaphors to help refresh our thinking.
Metaphors are where cognitive science meets climate science; they have the power to make the unprecedented understandable. They can make sense of the systemic, elicit emotion, facilitate problem solving and even change behaviour. Here, they help us illustrate some of climate’s trickier concepts, and hopefully, inspire some action.
1. From cliff edge to speed limit
The threshold of 1.5°C can lead to a misconception: that there's a safe zone on one side and disaster on the other. It can create an all or nothing attitude, where if we miss the target, we might as well give up, preventing meaningful action when it matters most.
Instead of cliff edges, consider speed limits. The faster you drive, the greater your risk. A speed limit is a rule that has been set to keep everyone safer, eliminating the need for individual judgement. We can think of 1.5°C in the same way: at 1.3°C of global warming, impacts are still serious, but at 2°C, they escalate so much further that the level of disruption becomes untenable, and for many around the world (given the uneven distribution of impacts), life-threatening.
With climate, unlike a cliff edge, there's no single threshold where everything suddenly breaks. Instead we’re facing escalating and often uncertain consequences at every increment. As such, it’s beneficial to take action (ease on the speed pedal) regardless of whether the target will be hit.
Speed isn’t just a metaphor when it comes to climate; the unprecedented pace of change is what makes action so urgent. When you’re driving too fast, there isn’t enough time to react to the unexpected, just as there won’t be enough time to adapt to the new world if emissions keep accelerating.
2. Svalbard winter: the new Indian summer?
Just as speed limits vary around the world, the rate of warming varies from place to place too. Consider how you check the weather forecast. How often do you look up the global average temperature to decide what to wear and whether to bring an umbrella?
Focusing solely on 1.5°C can skew the significance of local nuances. Take Europe, the fastest-warming continent, where 2024 marked the warmest year on record, with 2026 hot on its tail. Europe’s temperature increase since pre-industrial levels sits at around 2.4°C, roughly double the global average, and triple that of India, which is warming slower than the global average.
Let’s zoom in further to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where the sun doesn’t rise for two months a year. And yet, annual average temperatures have risen by roughly 4°C since the seventies (about five times the global rate). In winter, it's warmed by more than 7°C over the same period. Projections in the "Climate in Svalbard 2100" report suggest a further 7–10°C of warming by the end of the century under a medium-emissions scenario.
Zooming in enables you to zoom out in higher definition, with decision-useful insight. Local and even country-level circumstances help land the message harder than the global average ever will, and challenges the perception that this is all happening somewhere else.
3. Ecosystem health to Human health
During the National Emergency Briefing, a short film aiming to bring the message of climate change and nature loss to the masses, UCL Professor of intensive care medicine Hugh Montgomery compares the Earth to a life support machine (along with Sir David Attenborough). This is a powerful metaphor, offering a way to understand the seemingly small difference between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming.
Take something we’re all familiar with: a human body. Normally 37°C, yet at just 38.5°C, you’re feverish and unwell. At 40°C, you’re in serious medical danger. Decimals are a matter of life and death.
So whether overshooting 1.5°C makes the world feverish or on the brink, it’s out of balance, and it’s already directly impacting human health. Professor Montgomery extends this metaphor to stress the urgency in his speech: “If we take action, we might survive to leave the hospital. If we do not, the outcome is absolutely certain”.
4. Supply chain as a Relay race
Scope 3 (indirect emissions) has become an all encompassing term which actually covers 12 categories, not just one type of purchasing. Scope 3 translated as supply chain sounds like somebody else's problem. We appreciate the watery metaphor of ‘upstream’, but thinking of the challenge as a relay race may travel better: the team only finishes as well as its slowest handover.
A supplier who is not managing their risk or environmental impact can lead to an organisation being unexpectedly exposed, or worse, carrying losses or incurring costs, regardless of the rest of the runners’ efforts.
It also reframes supplier engagement as risk management, rather than data gathering for its own sake. Effective baton passing means competitive advantage. If Scope 3 feels like a slog, take inspiration from studies that show cheering on other runners actually improves your own performance.
5. Nature is a load-bearing wall, not a wallpaper
Our relationship with nature (perhaps our most potent source of metaphors!) is being rewritten. There’s growing recognition that nature is not just a backdrop of trees and bees, but the very building blocks of life as we know it.
Ecosystems are even being compared to human-made structures. A report released in January by the Institute for Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (ISEP), argues that natural capital already meets the government's own definition of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and calls on the government to formally recognise it as such.
A fortnight later, following a freedom of information request, the government released a strategic assessment exploring how global biodiversity loss and the collapse of critical ecosystems could impact the UK’s resilience, influencing global weather patterns and the release of trapped carbon, exacerbating climate change. When its loss threatens geopolitical stability, food security and long-term prosperity, nature is national security.
Pollinators, soil health, clean water and stable weather are not just wallpaper, but load-bearing structures. Take enough of them away and the whole house falls down. Yet our dependency on nature can be a complex idea to grasp, especially if it is not immediately obvious how a particular business is supported by it. Consider: how would you be reading this article on your laptop or mobile without precious metals, minerals and water?
So critical is its role, at this year’s London Climate Action Week panel by BAFTA Albert (the climate action body for film and TV), it was proposed that nature should win the award for Best Supporting Actor. We’d certainly give nature a standing ovation, afterall, we would not be standing without her.
Do you have a metaphor that helps you comprehend the climate crisis? We’d love to hear it!
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