Scientific American announced it would replace the term “climate change” to “climate emergency.”
The magazine has joined the growing list of news outlets who have switched the term climate change to a “climate emergency.” According to Fox News, “SA compares climate change to someone losing their breath and being rushed to the hospital in the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“The planet is heating up way too fast. It’s time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here,” SA writes in their statement on Tuesday.
Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term “climate emergency” in its coverage of climate change. Read our statement about this decision, and the impact we hope it can have throughout the media landscape. https://t.co/ccpALIvpxe
— Scientific American (@sciam) April 12, 2021
The statement, co-authored by Columbia Journalism Review, the Nation, the Guardian, Noticias Telemundo, Al Jazeera, Asahi Shimbun and La Repubblica, insists that the word “emergency” best describes their climate concerns and their take is based on science, not politics.
“Why ’emergency’? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires and ice melt of 2020 routine and could ‘render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable,'” warned the January Scientific American article.
Skeptics observe that the climate terms appear to be changing with the wind, and others dismissed the magazine’s statement as “propaganda,” Fox News reported.