Climate crisis

This article is about the term or expression, "Climate crisis". For substantive discussion of the current warming of the Earth's climate system, see Global warming.

Logo of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis (formation authorized January 9, 2019). The original House climate committee (formed in 2007), called the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, was abolished when Republicans regained control of the House in 2011.

Climate crisis is a term describing global warming and climate change, and their consequences.

The term has been used to describe the threat of global warming to the planet, and to urge aggressive climate change mitigation. The term is applied by those who "believe it evokes the gravity of the threats the planet faces from continued greenhouse gas emissions and can help spur the kind of political willpower that has long been missing from climate advocacy". They believe that, much as "global warming" drew out more emotional engagement and support for action than "climate change", calling climate change a crisis "could have an even punchier impact". In June 2019, environmental and progressive organizations joined in an open letter characterizing climate change and human inaction as "what it is – a crisis".

A study has shown that the term does invoke a stronger emotional response in conveying a sense of urgency, but some caution that this very response may be counter-productive and cause a backlash effect due to perceptions of alarmist exaggeration.

Definitions

Regina Phelps, an internationally recognized expert in the field of crisis management, distinguishes between a routine emergency and a crisis emergency. She says a routine emergency is usually predictable and something it is possible to prepare for. She describes a crisis emergency as a situation where:

- The threat has never been encountered before, so there are no plans in place to manage it.

- It may be a familiar event, however, it is occurring at unprecedented speed, therefore developing an appropriate response is challenging.

- There may be a confluence of forces, which, while not new individually, in combination pose unique challenges to the response.

In the context of climate change, Prof Pierre Mukheibir, Professor of Water Futures, at the University of Technology Sydney believes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has described climate science in such a way that the above three points apply to the current situation. He goes on to say the term crisis is "a crucial or decisive point or situation that could lead to a tipping point", one involving an "unprecedented circumstance".

A dictionary definition states that "crisis" in this context means "a turning point or a condition of instability or danger", saying the term emphasizes that "action needs to be taken now or else the consequences will be disastrous". Another definition differentiates the term from global warming and climate change describing climate crisis as "the various negative effects that unmitigated climate change is causing or threatening to cause on our planet, especially where these effects have a direct impact on humanity".

Use of the term

Historical

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has used crisis terminology since the 1980s, with the term being formalized by the Climate Crisis Coalition (formed in 2004).

A 1990 report from the American University International Law Review includes selected materials that repeatedly use the term "crisis". Included in that report, "The Cairo Compact: Toward a Concerted World-Wide Response to the Climate Crisis" (December 21, 1989) states that "All nations... will have to cooperate on an unprecedented scale. They will have to make difficult commitments without delay to address this crisis."

Recent

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at the December, 2018, "Solving Our Climate Crisis, a National Town Hall"

In the late 2010s, the phrase emerged "as a crucial piece of the climate hawk lexicon", being adopted by the Green New Deal, The Guardian, Greta Thunberg, and U.S. Democratic political candidates such as Kamala Harris. At the same time, it came into more popular use "after a spate of dire scientific warnings and revived energy in the advocacy world".

In late 2018, the United States House of Representatives established the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, a term that a journalist wrote in The Atlantic is "a reminder of how much energy politics have changed in the last decade". The original House climate committee (formed in 2007) had been called the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and was abolished when Republicans regained control of the House in 2011.

Public Citizen reported that in 2018, less than 10% of articles in top-50 U.S. newspapers used the terms "crisis" or "emergency". In 2019, a "Call it a Climate Crisis" campaign urging major media organizations to adopt the term, stated that in 2018, only 3.5% of national television news segments referred to climate change as a crisis or emergency, (50 of 1400), though Public Citizen reported triple that number of mentions, 150, in just the first four months of 2019.

Letter to Major Networks:
Call It a Climate Crisis—
and Cover It Like One

    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.

Public Citizen open letter
June 6, 2019

Following a September 2018 usage of "climate crisis" by U.N. secretary general António Guterres, on May 17, 2019 The Guardian formally updated its style guide to favor "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown" and "global heating". Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner explained, "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." Similarly, in June 2019, Spanish news agency EFE announced its preferred phrase crisis climática (climate crisis), with Grist journalist Kate Yoder remarking that "these terms were popping up everywhere", adding that "climate crisis" is "having a moment". In November 2019, the Hindustan Times also adopted the term because "climate change" "does not correctly reflect the enormity of the existential threat".

Conversely, in June, 2019 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation updated its language guide to read "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". The update prompted journalism professor Sean Holman to say that "journalists are being torn by two competing values right now"—to tell the truth and to appear unbiased—but that by telling the truth journalists appear to be biased to "large swaths of society... (that) don't believe in the truth".

In June 2019, 70 climate activists were arrested for demonstrating outside the offices of The New York Times, urging the newspaper to adopt the phrases "climate emergency" or "climate crisis", the demonstration being part of public pressure that swayed the City Council to make New York the largest city to formally adopt a climate emergency declaration.

In May 2019, Al Gore's Climate Reality Project (2011-) promoted an open petition asking news organizations to use "climate crisis" in place of "climate change" or "global warming", saying "it’s time to abandon both terms in culture". 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, urging them to call climate change and human inaction "what it is–a crisis–and to cover it like one".

In November 2019, the Oxford Dictionaries included "climate crisis" on its short list for word of the year 2019, the designation designed to recognize terms that "reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year" and that should have "lasting potential as a term of cultural significance".

Alternative terminology

Research has shown that what a phenomenon is called, or how it is framed, "has a tremendous effect on how audiences come to perceive that phenomenon" and "can have a profound impact" on the audience’s".

Google trends data shows that, following the 2006 release of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, "climate crisis" searches increased, with a resurgence beginning in late 2018. Also graphed: "climate emergency" searches (see Climate emergency declaration).

The effects of climate change are sometimes described in terms similar to climate crisis, such as:

• "climate catastrophe" (used with reference to a 2019 David Attenborough documentary and the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season)
• "threats that impact the earth" (World Wildlife Fund, 2012—)
• "climate breakdown" (climate scientist Peter Kalmus, 2018)
• "climate chaos" (The New York Times article title, 2019, U.S. Democratic candidates, 2019), and an Ad Age marketing team, 2019)
• "climate ruin" (U.S. Democratic candidates, 2019)
• "global heating" (Richard A. Betts, Met Office U.K., 2018)
• "climate emergency" (11,000 scientists' warning letter in BioScience, and in The Guardian, both 2019),
• "ecological breakdown", "ecological crisis" and "ecological emergency" (all set forth by climate activist Greta Thunberg, 2019)
• "global meltdown", "Scorched Earth", "The Great Collapse", and "Earthshattering" (an Ad Age marketing team, 2019)
• "climate disaster" and "climate apocalypse" (The Guardian, 2019)

In addition to "climate crisis", various other terms have been investigated for their effects on audiences, including "global warming", "climate change", and "climatic disruption", as well as "environmental destruction", "weather destabilization", and "environmental collapse".

Effectiveness

In September 2019, Bloomberg journalist Emma Vickers posited that crisis terminology—though the issue was one, literally, of semantics—may be "showing results", citing a 2019 poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation saying that 38% of U.S. adults termed climate change "a crisis" while an equal number called it "a major problem but not a crisis". Five years earlier, U.S. adults considering it a crisis numbered only 23%.

Conversely, use of crisis terminology in various non-binding climate emergency declarations has not been effective (as of September 2019) in making governments "shift into action".

Concerns about crisis terminology

Some commentators have written that "emergency framing" may have several disadvantages. Specifically, such framing may implicitly prioritize climate change over other important social issues, thereby encouraging competition among activists rather than cooperation and sidelining dissent within the climate change movement itself. It 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". Finally, it may be counterproductive by causing disbelief (absent immediate dramatic effects), disempowerment (in the face of a problem that seems overwhelming), and withdrawal—rather than providing practical action over the long term.

Others have written that, whether "appeals to fear generate a sustained and constructive engagement" is clearly a highly complex issue but that the answer is "usually not", with psychologists noting that humans' responses to danger (fight, flight, or freeze) can be maladaptive. Agreeing that fear is a "paralyzing emotion", Dr. Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, favors "climate crisis" over other terms because it conveys a sense of both urgency and optimism, and not a sense of doom because "people know that crises can be avoided and that they can be resolved".

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe warned in early 2019 that crisis framing is only "effective for those already concerned about climate change, but complacent regarding solutions". She added that it "is not yet effective" for those who perceive climate activists "to be alarmist Chicken Littles", positing that "it would further reinforce their pre-conceived—and incorrect—notions".

In June 2019, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation updated its language guide to read that the term climate crisis "could carry a whiff of advocacy in certain political coverage".

Two German journalists have respectively warned that "crisis" may be wrongly understood to suggest that climate change is "inherently episodic"—crises being "either solved or they pass"—or as a temporary state before a return to normalcy that is in fact not possible.

Psychological and neuroscientific studies

A 2013 study (N=224, mostly college freshmen) surveyed participants' responses after they had read different simulated written articles. The study concluded that "climate crisis was most likely to create backlash effects of disbelief and reduced perceptions of concern, most likely due to perceptions of exaggeration", and suggested that other terms ("climatic disruption" and "global warming") should instead be used, particularly when communicating with skeptical audiences.

An early 2019 neuroscientific study (N=120, divided equally among Republicans, Democrats and independents) by an advertising consulting agency involved electroencephalography (EEG) and galvanic skin response (GSR) measurements. The study, measuring responses to the terms "climate crisis", "environmental destruction", "environmental collapse", "weather destabilization", "global warming" and "climate change", found that Democrats had a 60% greater emotional response to "climate crisis" than to "climate change", with the corresponding response among Republicans tripling. "Climate crisis" is said to have "performed well in terms of responses across the political spectrum and elicited the greatest emotional response among independents". The study concluded that the term "climate crisis" elicited stronger emotional responses than "neutral" and "worn out" terms like "global warming" and "climate change", thereby encouraging a sense of urgency—though not so strong a response as to cause cognitive dissonance that would cause people to generate counterarguments. However, the CEO of the company conducting the study noted generally that visceral intensity can backfire, specifying that another term with an even stronger response, "environmental destruction", "is likely seen as alarmist, perhaps even implying blame, which can lead to counterarguing and pushback."

See also

• Climate emergency declaration
• Environmental communication
• Media coverage of global warming
• Public opinion on global warming
• Tipping points in the climate system

Further reading

• Hall, Aaron (November 27, 2019). "Renaming Climate Change: Can a New Name Finally Make Us Take Action". Ad Age. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. (advertising perspective by a "professional namer")
• Hertsgaard, Mark (August 28, 2019). "Covering Climate Now signs on over 170 news outlets". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019.
• "Act now and avert a climate crisis (editorial)". Nature. September 15, 2019. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019. (Nature joining Covering Climate Now.)
• Zillman, John W. (2009). "A History of Climate Activities". World Meteorological Organization. Archived from the original on August 16, 2019. Vol. 58 (3).