No More Climate Change: It’s Now a Crisis

What’s in a name?  A lot, The Guardian says:  it’s ditching mentions of climate change and switching to sterner language.

Talk about climate change, and there’s a good chance that people will know what you’re referring to, even if they don’t share your concerns about it.

But for one UK-based newspaper, The Guardian, “climate change” is now frowned upon, though it’s not formally banned.  The paper’s house style guide recommends that its journalists should instead use such terms as “climate crisis” and “global heating”.

The Guardian has updated the style guide to introduce terms that it thinks more accurately describe the environmental crises confronting the world.  So out goes “climate change”, to be replaced by the preferred terms, “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown”.  “Global heating” replaces “global warming”.

“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” says 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.”

The United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, spoke of a “climate crisis” last September, adding:  “We face a direct existential threat.”  The climate scientist Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a former adviser to Angela Merkel, the EU, and the pope, also uses the term.

In December Professor Richard Betts, who leads the UK Met Office’s climate research, said “global heating” was a more accurate term than “global warming” to describe what is now happening.  British Members of Parliament recently endorsed the opposition Labor Party’s declaration of a climate emergency.

Read more at No More Climate Change:  It’s Now a Crisis