I’m told it was the most middle class joke a friend had ever heard. But I was quite proud of it. Professor Jan Bebbington, distinguished Director of the Pentland Centre was lost for words.

And words it where it all started. We were recording an episode on taxonomies with Dr Charika Channuntapipat, a former colleague of Jan’s at the University of Birmingham, and now employed by the Thai Stock Exchange in Bangkok. And to be honest, before we started preparing for said episode, I had never heard the word taxonomy in my life. I suspect I am not alone.

Many people reading this blog will know precisely what a taxonomy is. You might work in academia, in finance, or have a broad understanding of anything and everything relating to sustainability, which is where the taxonomies at the heart of our discussion – in Thailand, the EU, Australia, and elsewhere – come in. But I fear you are in a miniscule (not just small) minority. If I was to walk out of my front door right now and walk up and down the street, knocking on doors and asking everyone who is home what a taxonomy is, those who don’t slam your doors on me in fear of some kind of hard sales pitch almost certainly won’t have a clue. I mean them no offence in the slightest, but it is not a term used often among parents at the school gates of Roose, nor on those previously-discussed terraces of Barrow AFC for that matter.

There may be a biologist or two among that number I speak to who bring up the classification of living organisms – and fair play to them for that, because I had most definitely forgotten my GCSE science when the topic was brought up – but if anyone was to turn around and tell me ‘Oh, a sustainability taxonomy. You mean the classification and definition of business and economic activities based upon where they are sustainable or not’, I would eat my hat.

This is a problem we have discussed before on Transforming Tomorrow. Not my eating of hats – though I have a collection and could probably do with losing one or two, even if not by means of digestion – but the language of sustainability and how it can be alienating in some ways, confusing in many.

When we spoke with Florencia Lujani in the autumn about sustainability messaging and communication, I asked about whether the word sustainability itself might sometimes be an issue in trying to reach new, wider, audiences. We discussed the importance of finding language that does not exclude, bore, or baffle those we want so desperately to reach. I suspect Florencia would never encourage anyone wanting to speak to people beyond the sustainability bubble to use the word taxonomy in casual conversation.

This all brings me back to the so-called middle class joke for the ages. I won’t spoil it for you if you have not been listening – I suspect it will lose something in the writing, but the episode title may well give you a clue, and there is a video of the exchange that resulted in said verdict here.

It’s funny. Not necessarily the above exchange (that depends very much on your own personal sense of humour), but rather being referred to as middle class. It’s not something I think of myself as, but I suppose I am in many ways even if I was brought up by parents who would almost certainly see themselves as working class. It’s especially funny (peculiar) to me as the person (who shall remain nameless) calling me this is far posher than I am and is the epitome of middle class (she’ll appreciate being called that, I’m sure). But it does make the point that I am in the prime group of people who talk about the environment, who think about the climate and the impact of AI on all of the above, who have some understanding of modern slavery issues in the production of goods we might all find about our homes. I am not the type of person who ‘needs’ to be communicated with on issues around sustainability – the kind who would run a mile at the first mention of taxonomies.

So, if you enjoyed the joke, consider yourself firmly middle class. But also think about how you communicate with that wider audience when it comes to getting your sustainability message. In fact, maybe don’t even use the word sustainability to begin with!

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