Forget ‘the environment’: we need new words to convey life’s wonders | George Monbiot

Language is crucial to how we perceive the natural world. Help me to find better ways of describing nature and our relationships with it so we can better defend it

If Moses had promised the Israelites a land flowing with mammary secretions and insect vomit, would they have followed him into Canaan? Though this means milk and honey, I doubt it would have inspired them.

Related: The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape