Regarding this post on PSFK "Is 'Planet Earth' The Key To Our Eco Failure?":

I don’t think we call the place that we live as our planet. We don’t use the term ‘Earth’ as the familiar name of the place we live. We live in our ‘world’, we see the ‘world’ around us and we travel across the ‘world’ sometimes to the other side of the globe.

Could the use of the words ‘planet’ and ‘Earth’ by environmentalists of all strips have a negative impact on the public’s perception and relationship to important issues?

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Maybe ‘Planet’ and ‘Earth’ are too connected in our minds to science and not to our daily lives, maybe the use of those words sounds a little Sci-Fi for the rest of us to really digest and take seriously. It’s interesting to note that there is no mention of ‘planet’ or ‘Earth’ in Obama’s Agenda for the Environment either.

I’m not saying that these words aren’t used by enviornmentalists. It’s just that their use of words that don’t relate to the world around us, might psychologically obstruct our support for international solutions to combat environmental damage around the globe.

I'd like to agree with Piers' comments and draw the line a bit further.  I think that when we use "the environment" in a description of the world around us, we have a similar disconnect as what he describes here.  The environment?  Don't we live here, breathe air, drink water?  Is "the environment" over there ---> somewhere?  Definitely part of the issue in getting people's heads around important environmental and planetary issues is finding the right language to reach them.  Something we all have to work on is connecting people to the reality of the challenges facing the world in a meaningful way, one that inspires understanding and action.