Kolomental illustrations of climate change: BLACK AND WHITE CLIMATE CRISIS.
How do you picture climate change and pollution? If you imagine factories blowing out black smoke, you are wrong. More than 80% GHG emissions come from power plants that blow out WHITE colored smoke. Haze is white. Carbon dioxide is clear. Warming is bright. Pollution is white.
This is the paradox of climate action and linguistics activism. Taking advantage of the English language means abusing its connotations of “darkness” and “blackness” to negative meaning, so of course the smoke causing global warming has to dark right? That is factually wrong. The most damaging smoke are the huge clouds of white coming out of power plants. Black smoke coming from local fireplace ceremonies, indigenous cooking with firewood, are all healthy and sustainable practices.
How you imagine the world's largest crisis determines how you act against the world's largest crisis. If you can't even see the problem as it is, how can you possibly fix it? Dirt is white, death is white, global warming is white.
To solve the climate crisis, the first step is to see the bad in white and the good in black.