I may be completely out of the loop, but as far as I can tell Newsnight introduced a very worrying expression tonight – a “political surge” towards a global climate change agreement. The worrying part being that the talking head who proposed the phrase, described the need to have a “political surge, just like the surge we saw in Iraq.” It was amazing to see how quickly the idea caught on, within seconds the whole panel was discussing the need for a “political surge.” And in doing so retroactively legitimised the escalation of military conflict in Iraq.

Lets hope it doesn’t catch on.

George Lakoff on Bush’s infamous ‘surge‘.