Guardian revises climate lexicon
London, May 21: Two-century-old Guardian has updated its stylebook to accommodate ecological sensibility.
Instead of ‘climate change’ it would now write ‘climate emergency, crisis or breakdown.’ The ecologically sensitive replacement for ‘global warming’ is “global heating”. “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” its editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, says.
“The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.” “Increasingly, climate scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” the paper quoted her as saying.
It cites many instances where a new narrative is emerging given the gravity of the crisis. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, talked of the ‘climate crisis’ in
September, adding: “We face a direct existential threat.”
The climate scientist Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a former adviser to Angela Merkel, the EU and the pope, also uses ‘climate crisis.’
In December, Prof Richard Betts, who leads the Met Office’s climate research, said ‘global
heating’ was a more accurate term than ‘global warming’ to describe the changes taking place to the world’s climate.
In political world, UK MPs recently endorsed Labour party’s declaration of ‘climate emergency.’ The scale of the climate and wildlife crises has been laid bare by two landmark reports from the world’s scientists. In October, they said carbon emissions must halve by 2030 to avoid even greater risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
In May, scientists said human society was in jeopardy from the accelerating annihilation of wildlife.
Other terms that have been updated, including the use of ‘wildlife’ rather than ‘biodiversity,’ ‘fish populations’ instead of ‘fish stocks’ and ‘climate science denier’ rather than ‘climate sceptic.’
In September, the BBC accepted it gets coverage of climate change ‘wrong too often’ and told staff: “You do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate.”
Earlier in May, 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?”