👋 Hey there, fam. This week, we’ve got a treat for the language lovers among us. We’re looking at some of the new words and phrases that defined how we talked about climate change in 2025. This is one of my favorite projects of the year — a signature feature from my colleague Kate Yoder, who covers climate through a lens of culture, language, and history — and it has taken on a new significance in a year when climate policy, science, and messaging has been intentionally silenced by the U.S. government. 

One quick reminder: As we’re thinking about the language of climate change, remember to RSVP for the Looking Forward book club gathering in January! We’re reading Under the Sky We Make, by Kimberly Nicholas. I have contacted the five winners of our book giveaway — so if you didn’t hear from me, go on out and grab a copy at your nearest library or favorite local bookstore. Happy, cozy holiday reading to you all!

This post originally appeared in Grist’s weekly solutions newsletter, Looking Forward. Not on our list yet? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

How we talked (and didn’t talk) about climate change in 2025

Raise your hand if you look forward to the major dictionaries’ annual word-of-the-year features. (Hello, fellow word nerds. I see and appreciate you.) The words chosen to represent a given year say a lot about what people are experiencing. The picks for 2025 include “slop,” (Merriam-Webster) “6-7,” (Dictionary.com), and “rage bait” (Oxford University Press) — reflecting a society that is very online and not exactly having the best time, as Grist’s Kate Yoder observed this week. But like any new slang, these words also reflect people doing their best to navigate the world around them.

“Things are changing so quickly that people are coming up with new language to describe what’s happening and make sense of it,” Kate said. 

For nine years running, Kate has compiled a similar project looking at the climate words that defined the year. She keeps a list throughout the year of phrases that strike her as new or intriguing, and each December, she reflects on which ones rose to the top in terms of cultural significance. 

Her top pick for 2025: “greenlash,” or a social and political backlash against climate action. 

It’s a somewhat meta choice — the word that captures our climate year is about not talking about climate change. But it describes a phenomenon that began in Europe and then arrived in the U.S. with the Trump administration’s assault on climate policy and science. That retreat from climate has rippled out to businesses and media coverage. Even Democratic leaders and some mission-driven organizations are talking about climate change less. 

“Even though it’s not the most hopeful word of the year, I think there’s some power in naming what’s happening,” Kate said. She added that while it does sum up the national mood in a certain way, the backlash doesn’t necessarily reflect how most people feel about climate change in 2025. Polls show that a majority of Americans remain concerned about it. Those concerns are reflected in another term Kate chose as a runner-up for the year: “rain anxiety,” which describes a unique sense of dread that flood survivors in particular experience when it rains. 

But while people report that they are hearing about climate change less, there’s another phenomenon going on that’s reflected in Kate’s words of the year: The shifting tides of the climate conversation are also changing the words we hear when it’s discussed. Like “Green New Scam,” another one of Kate’s runners-up for this year’s list and one of President Trump’s favorite phrases, which paints climate action as a conspiracy. 

Or, on the other side of the political aisle, “cheap energy,” a political agenda and slogan adopted by Democrats this year that de-emphasizes talking about climate change itself in favor of selling climate-friendly policies as budget-friendly. Focusing on affordability and energy costs proved to be a winning strategy for progressive candidates in last month’s elections.

The phrase might signal some of the new ways to break through the “greenlash” with climate messages. 

“How we power our world and how much that costs has always been a huge political issue. And for a long time, people talked about climate action as like, ‘This is gonna cost more, but it’s worth it anyway,’” Kate said. “And then just in the last few years, as we’ve seen solar and wind and batteries become much cheaper, people are actually saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t just a moral standpoint, this can actually save you money and this is where the world is headed.”

And for those of you wondering if Kate’s list has a climate equivalent to the meme words chosen by some of the regular dictionaries as words of the year, may I point you to “swasticars.” You’ll have to read the full list to find out what that means.

Read more: 

More from Grist

🗓️ Alive in 2025

As reflected in our vocabulary, the climate milestones of 2025 are not especially encouraging — from catastrophic fires and floods to deregulation to the crossing of planetary boundaries and the first major tipping point. But all is not lost. There are also many ways in which climate solutions are picking up momentum and making a real difference. Read more

🪨 Mission critical

Another runner-up word for the year: “critical minerals,” a science-jargon-sounding term that actually refers to a specific list of raw materials deemed essential to the U.S. economy and national security. If you’ve heard a lot of talk of critical minerals this year but remain fuzzy on what they actually are and why they’re so important, this primer is for you. Read more

👚 Too fast, too furious

The fast-fashion industry is notoriously terrible for the environment, from the microfibers that leach off of synthetic fabrics to the toxic dyes dumped in rivers to the emissions from shipping garments all over the world. But a reckoning may be on its way, as more brands feel the pressure to adopt cleaner practices and work toward circularity. Read more

In other news

And finally, looking forward to …

… our language being shaped not by tech or divisive politics, but by nature. Earlier this year, Kate wrote about how words describing the natural environment (like “magpie,” “meadow,” or “moss”) have been steadily fading from our vocabularies and written materials. I’m looking forward to a world where people will talk more about real flora and fauna than AI slop. 

🌧️🌱🌧️

“Bryological? That’s what they picked?” you say to your sister as you scroll through the article on your Reader. 

“I was surprised too,” she chuckles. 

“I mean, why not just moss? Or hornwort?” 

“I think it’s more about the trend than the plants themselves,” she offers. “You know, that was a thing this year. People being ‘bryological.’” 

“It was? What does that even mean?” 

“I don’t know — living simply, I guess? Staying in place? Being humble and … moist?” 

You both laugh, and she leans in to look at some of the other chosen words of the year: petrichor, rewilding, zoophoria … 

— a drabble by Claire Elise Thompson

🌧️🌱🌧️

A drabble is a 100-word piece of fiction — in this case, offering a tiny glimpse of what a clean, green, just future might look like. Want to try writing your own (and see it featured in a future newsletter)? We would love to hear from you! Please send us your visions for our climate future, in drabble form, at lookingforward@grist.org

👋 See you next week!