Environment Forum

It’s not been a great year for greens, politicians and companies looking for progress on the fight against climate change. First came the disappointment at the Copenhagen meeting in December, then Senator Lindsey Graham pulled out of the Senate bill, then the Senate climate bill mutated into an oil spill bill —  and even that couldn’t get passed before the congressional August recess.

But climate backers might find a bit of happiness in the fact that bits of their lingo have officially made it into modern English discourse. Two climate related entries made it into the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, which was published on Thursday. 

Here are the entries: Carbon capture and storage – the process of trapping and storing carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels; and Geoengineering – manipulation of environmental processes in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming. Try that last one in your spell checker!

Maybe it shows that the climate fight is not dead, but that it’s just begun.

Other entries? Click here.

 Photo: Reuters/Tom Dubanowich/Handout