The words that reporters and anchors use matter. What they call something shapes how millions see it—and influences how nations act. And today, we need to act boldly and quickly. With scientists warning of global catastrophe unless we slash emissions by 2030, the stakes have never been higher, and the role of news media never more critical.
We are urging you to call the dangerous overheating of our planet, and the lack of action to stop it, what it is—a crisis––and to cover it like one.
In the late 2010s, the phrase climate crisis emerged "as a crucial piece of the climate hawk lexicon", and was adopted by the Green New Deal, The Guardian , Greta Thunberg, and U.S. Democratic political candidates such as Kamala Harris. [2] At the same time, it came into more-popular use following a series of warnings from climate scientists and newly-energized activists. [2]
In the U.S. in late 2018, the United States House of Representatives established the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the name of which was regarded as "a reminder of how much energy politics have changed in the last decade". [25] The original House climate committee had been called the "Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming" in 2007. [2] It was abolished in 2011 when Republicans regained control of the House. [4]
The advocacy group Public Citizen reported that in 2018, less than 10% of articles in top-50 U.S. newspapers used the terms crisis or emergency in the context of climate change. [26] In the same year, 3.5% of national television news segments in the U.S. referred to climate change as a crisis or an emergency (50 of 1,400). [26] [27] In 2019, Public Citizen launched a campaign called "Call it a Climate Crisis"; it urged major media organizations to adopt the term climate crisis. [27] In the first four months of 2019, the number of uses of the term in U.S. media tripled to 150. [26] Likewise, the Sierra Club, the Sunrise Movement, Greenpeace, and other environmental and progressive organizations joined in a June 6, 2019 Public Citizen letter to news organizations [26] urging the news organizations to call climate change and human inaction "what it is–a crisis–and to cover it like one". [24]
We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. Nor can we treat something like a crisis unless we understand the emergency.
In 2019, the language describing climate appeared to change: the UN Secretary General's address at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit used more emphatic language; Al Gore's campaign The Climate Reality Project, Greenpeace and the Sunrise Movement petitioned news organizations to alter their language; and in May 2019, The Guardian changed its style guide [29] to favor the terms "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown" and "global heating". [30] [31] Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner said: "We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue. The phrase 'climate change', for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity." [32] The Guardian became a lead partner in Covering Climate Now, an initiative of news organizations Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation that was founded in 2019 to address the need for stronger climate coverage. [33] [34]
In May 2019, The Climate Reality Project promoted an open petition of news organizations to use climate crisis instead of climate change and global warming. [2] The NGO said: "it's time to abandon both terms in culture". [35]
In June 2019, Spanish news agency EFE announced its preferred phrase was "crisis climática". [26] In November 2019, Hindustan Times also adopted the term because climate change "does not correctly reflect the enormity of the existential threat". [36] The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza also uses the term climate crisis rather than climate change; one of its editors described climate change as one of the most-important topics the paper has ever covered. [37]
Also in June 2019, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) changed its language guide to say: "Climate crisis and climate emergency are OK in some cases as synonyms for 'climate change'. But they're not always the best choice ... For example, 'climate crisis' could carry a whiff of advocacy in certain political coverage". [38] Journalism professor Sean Holman does not agree with this and said in an interview:
It's about being accurate in terms of the scope of the problem that we are facing. And in the media we, generally speaking, don't have any hesitation about naming a crisis when it is a crisis. Look at the opioid epidemic [in the U.S.], for example. We call it an epidemic because it is one. So why are we hesitant about saying the climate crisis is a crisis? [38]
In June 2019, climate activists demonstrated outside the offices of The New York Times ; they urged the newspaper's editors to adopt terms such as climate emergency or climate crisis. This kind of public pressure led New York City Council to make New York the largest city in the world to formally adopt a climate emergency declaration. [39]
In November 2019, the website Oxford Dictionaries named climate crisis Word of the year for 2019. The term was chosen because it matches the "ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year". [40]
In 2021, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat created a free variable font called Climate Crisis that has eight weights that correlate with Arctic sea ice decline, visualizing historical changes in ice melt. [41] The newspaper's art director said the font both evokes the aesthetics of environmentalism and is a data visualization graphic. [41]
In updates to the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity of 2021 and 2022, scientists used the terms climate crisis and climate emergency; the title of the publications is "World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency". [13] [42] They said: "we need short, frequent, and easily accessible updates on the climate emergency". [13]
In September 2019, Bloomberg journalist Emma Vickers said crisis terminology may be "showing results", citing a 2019 poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation saying 38% of U.S. adults termed climate change "a crisis" while an equal number called it "a major problem but not a crisis". [4] Five years earlier, 23% of U.S. adults considered climate change to be a crisis. [43] As of 2019 [update] , use of crisis terminology in non-binding climate-emergency declarations is regarded as ineffective in making governments "shift into action". [5]
Emergency framing may have several disadvantages. [9] Such framing may implicitly prioritize climate change over other important social issues, encouraging competition among activists rather than cooperation. It could also de-emphasize dissent within the climate-change movement. [9] Emergency framing may suggest a need for solutions by government, which provides less-reliable long-term commitment than does popular mobilization, and which may be perceived as being "imposed on a reluctant population". [9] Without immediate dramatic effects of climate change, emergency framing may be counterproductive by causing disbelief, disempowerment in the face of a problem that seems overwhelming, and withdrawal. [9]
There could also be a "crisis fatigue" in which urgency to respond to threats loses its appeal over time. [18] Crisis terminology could lose audiences if meaningful policies to address the emergency are not enacted. [18] According to researchers Susan C. Moser and Lisa Dilling of University of Colorado, appeals to fear usually do not create sustained, constructive engagement; they noted psychologists consider human responses to danger—fight, flight or freeze—can be maladaptive if they do not reduce the danger. [44] According to Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, fear is a "paralyzing emotion". He favors climate crisis over other terms because it conveys a sense of both urgency and optimism, and not a sense of doom. Van der Linden said: "people know that crises can be avoided and that they can be resolved". [45]
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said in early 2019 crisis framing is only "effective for those already concerned about climate change, but complacent regarding solutions". [11] She added it "is not yet effective" for those who perceive climate activists "to be alarmist Chicken Littles", and that "it would further reinforce their pre-conceived—and incorrect—notions". [11] According to Nick Reimer, journalists in Germany say the word crisis may be misunderstood to mean climate change is "inherently episodic"—crises are "either solved or they pass"—or as a temporary state before a return to normalcy that is not possible. [46] Arnold Schwarzenegger, organizer of the Austrian World Summit for climate action[ failed verification ], said people are not motivated by the term climate change; according to Schwarzenegger, focusing on the word pollution might evoke be a more-direct and negative connotation. [47] A 2023 U.S. survey found no evidence that climate crisis or climate emergency—terms less familiar to those surveyed—elicit more perceived urgency than climate change or global warming. [48]
In 2019, an advertising consulting agency conducted a neuroscientific study involving 120 U.S. people who were equally divided into supporters of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and independents. [49] The study involved electroencephalography (EEG) and galvanic skin response (GSR) measurements. [8] Responses to the terms climate crisis, environmental destruction, environmental collapse, weather destabilization, global warming and climate change were measured. [49] The study found Democrats had a 60% greater emotional response to climate crisis than to climate change. In Republicans, the emotional response to climate crisis was three times stronger than that for climate change. [49] According to CBS News, climate crisis "performed well in terms of responses across the political spectrum and elicited the greatest emotional response among independents". [49] The study concluded climate crisis elicited stronger emotional responses than neutral and "worn out" terms like global warming and climate change. [8] Climate crisis was found to encourage a sense of urgency, though not a strong-enough response to cause cognitive dissonance that would cause people to generate counterarguments. [8]
Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.
Research has shown the naming of a phenomenon and the way it is framed "has a tremendous effect on how audiences come to perceive that phenomenon" [10] and "can have a profound impact on the audience's reaction". [45] Climate change, and its real and hypothetical effects, are usually described in scientific-and-practitioner literature in terms of climate risks .
The many related terms other than climate crisis include: [a]
In addition to climate crisis, other terms have been investigated for their effects upon audiences, including global warming, climate change, climatic disruption, [10] environmental destruction, weather destabilization and environmental collapse. [8]
In 2022, The New York Times journalist Amanda Hess said "end of the world" characterizations of the future, such as climate apocalypse, are often used to refer to the current climate crisis, and that the characterization is spreading from "the ironized hellscape of the internet" to books and film. [72]
The "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" was a document written in 1992 by Henry W. Kendall and signed by about 1,700 leading scientists. Twenty-five years later, in November 2017, 15,364 scientists signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" written by William J. Ripple and seven co-authors calling for, among other things, human population planning, and drastically diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources. The second notice has more scientist cosigners and formal supporters than any other journal article ever published.
The politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, certain industries like cement and steel production, and land use for agriculture and forestry. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have provided the main source of energy for economic and technological development. The centrality of fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries has resulted in much resistance to climate friendly policy, despite widespread scientific consensus that such policy is necessary.
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Climate change denial is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.
Climate change in New Zealand involves historical, current and future changes in the climate of New Zealand; and New Zealand's contribution and response to global climate change. Summers are becoming longer and hotter, and some glaciers have melted completely and others have shrunk. In 2021, the Ministry for the Environment estimated that New Zealand's gross emissions were 0.17% of the world's total gross greenhouse gas emissions. However, on a per capita basis, New Zealand is a significant emitter, the sixth highest within the Annex I countries, whereas on absolute gross emissions New Zealand is ranked as the 24th highest emitter.
350.org is an international environmental organization addressing the climate crisis. Its stated goal is to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy by building a global, grassroots movement.
Media coverage of climate change has had effects on public opinion on climate change, as it conveys the scientific consensus on climate change that the global temperature has increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.
The climate movement is a global social movement focused on pressuring governments and industry to take action addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. Citizens and environmental non-profit organizations have engaged in significant climate activism since the late 1980s and early 1990s, as they sought to influence the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate activism has become increasingly prominent over time, gaining significant momentum during the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and particularly following the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016.
Extinction Rebellion is a UK-founded global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, Roger Hallam, Stuart Basden, along with six other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action to mitigate the effects of human-caused climate change.
Fridays for Future (FFF), also known as the School Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.
The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, was the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference. It was held in Madrid, Spain, from 2 to 13 December 2019 under the presidency of the Chilean government. The conference incorporated the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 15th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP15), and the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA2).
Climate change art is art inspired by climate change and global warming, generally intended to overcome humans' hardwired tendency to value personal experience over data and to disengage from data-based representations by making the data "vivid and accessible". One of the goal of climate change art is to "raise awareness of the crisis", as well as engage viewers politically and environmentally.
Warming stripes are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Warming stripes reflect a "minimalist" style, conceived to use colour alone to avoid technical distractions to intuitively convey global warming trends to non-scientists.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been noted for her skills as an orator. Her speech at the 2019 United Nations climate summit made her a household name. Prior to her speaking engagements, Thunberg had demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, using the signage Skolstrejk för klimatet.
Climate communication or climate change communication is a field of environmental communication and science communication focused on discussing the causes, nature and effects of anthropogenic climate change.
The history of climate change policy and politics refers to the continuing history of political actions, policies, trends, controversies and activist efforts as they pertain to the issue of climate change. Climate change emerged as a political issue in the 1970s, when activist and formal efforts sought to address environmental crises on a global scale. International policy regarding climate change has focused on cooperation and the establishment of international guidelines to address global warming. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a largely accepted international agreement that has continuously developed to meet new challenges. Domestic policy on climate change has focused on both establishing internal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incorporating international guidelines into domestic law.
Vanessa Nakate is an Ugandan climate justice activist. She gained international recognition for her climate activism in Uganda, where she began a solitary climate strike in January 2019.
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess the available scientific information on climate change. Three Working Groups covered the following topics: The Physical Science Basis (WGI); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WGII); Mitigation of Climate Change (WGIII). Of these, the first study was published in 2021, the second report February 2022, and the third in April 2022. The final synthesis report was finished in March 2023. It includes a summary for policymakers and was the basis for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai.
This article documents events, research findings, scientific and technological advances, and human actions to measure, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of global warming and climate change—during the year 2019.
... climate change, a term that Gore renamed to climate crisis
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