A New Climate Vocabulary
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Herb Simmens speaks about how a new climate vocabulary can bring to life a hopeful vision of a healthy and restored climate. This narrative vision will be presented using some of the 1,000 terms - 400 original - included In his newly published book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future.

Herb Simmens has had a long career in public policy, government service, academia, urban planning and climate writing and advocacy. He served as a county manager and city manager in New Jersey as well as the Executive Director of the New Jersey State Planning Commission for a decade. He was also on the faculty of two universities and the executive director of a climate related nonprofit. He helped initiate a movement that led to the declaration of the first climate emergency in the United States by the Montgomery County, Maryland council in 2017. The county action included the most aggressive emission reduction targets in the country as well as the first commitment for large scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In 2017 he wrote the first and still the only proposed new vocabulary for the climate crisis A Climate Vocabulary of the Future. The second addition was published in 2023. It contains 1,000 terms of which almost half are original, as well as a detailed vision for how the world community restored a healthy climate. A Climate Vocabulary of the Future has been called a ‘science poem and an inspiration’ by the world’s most popular climate fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and a ‘masterpiece of climate education’ by Edward Saltzberg, Executive Director, Security and Sustainability Forum.

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