According to The Guardian, instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favored over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned.
“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”
Climate skeptics are also passe, with “climate science denier” being the preferred term to use. Viner says the Guardian’s staff were informed in an email on Friday of the changes. “Increasingly, climate scientists and organizations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” the email noted.
Looking at headlines recently, it is obvious that globally, we are in a climate crisis. In September, United Nations secretary general António Guterres used the phrase in talking about the seriousness of what we are facing today.
In his address, Guterres said, “Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment. We face a direct existential threat. Climate change is moving faster than we are – and its speed has provoked a sonic boom SOS across our world.”
A string of apocalyptic reports on the state of the planet is bringing home the need for concrete steps. We have seen the reports on the number of animal and plant species facing extinction, and the billions of dollars in damages that have been accrued because of what the climate crisis has done.
The U.S. state of Louisiana just recently used the term “existential crisis” in referring to climate change when the state released a sweeping plan called LA SAFE, detailing climate adaptation strategies.
The term climate change has been heard so much that people have become immune to what it means. There is no sense of urgency or fear – just a benign phrase that doesn’t garner any emotion anymore.
Earlier this month, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has inspired school strikes for climate around the globe, said: “It’s 2019. Can we all now call it what it is: climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis, and ecological emergency?”
This journalist agrees with Miss Thunberg. Let’s call a duck a duck and the climate crisis we are in a climate crisis.
