Climate crisis
[2] A study has shown the term climate crisis invokes a strong emotional response by conveying a sense of urgency.
Scientists have called for more-extensive action and transformational climate-change adaptation that focuses on large-scale change in systems.
[12] They warned about "profoundly troubling signs", which may have many indirect effects such as large-scale human migration and food insecurity; these signs include increases in dairy and meat production, fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation, activities that are all concurrent with upward trends in climate-change effects such as rising global temperatures, global ice melt and extreme weather.
[12] In 2019, scientists published an article in Nature saying evidence from climate tipping points alone suggests "we are in a state of planetary emergency".
[5] A similar definition states in this context, crisis means "a turning point or a condition of instability or danger" and implies "action needs to be taken now or else the consequences will be disastrous".
[2] A 1990 report by the American University International Law Review includes legal texts that use the word crisis.
[3] "The Cairo Compact: Toward a Concerted World-Wide Response to the Climate Crisis" (1989) states: "All nations ... will have to cooperate on an unprecedented scale.
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.
[4] The advocacy group Public Citizen reported that in 2018, less than 10% of articles in top-50 U.S. newspapers used the terms crisis or emergency in the context of climate change.
[26] In the same year, 3.5% of national television news segments in the U.S. referred to climate change as a crisis or an emergency (50 of 1,400).
[30][31] Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner said: "We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue.
[35] In June 2019, Spanish news agency EFE announced its preferred phrase was "crisis climática".
[26] In November 2019, Hindustan Times also adopted the term because climate change "does not correctly reflect the enormity of the existential threat".
[38] Journalism professor Sean Holman does not agree with this and said in an interview: It's about being accurate in terms of the scope of the problem that we are facing.
[43] As of 2019[update], use of crisis terminology in non-binding climate-emergency declarations is regarded as ineffective in making governments "shift into action".
[9] Such framing may implicitly prioritize climate change over other important social issues, encouraging competition among activists rather than cooperation.
[9] Emergency framing 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".
[9] Without immediate dramatic effects of climate change, emergency framing may be counterproductive by causing disbelief, disempowerment in the face of a problem that seems overwhelming, and withdrawal.
[18] According to researchers Susan C. Moser and Lisa Dilling of University of Colorado, appeals to fear usually do not create sustained, constructive engagement; they noted psychologists consider human responses to danger—fight, flight or freeze—can be maladaptive if they do not reduce the danger.
[44] According to Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, fear is a "paralyzing emotion".
[11] According to Nick Reimer, journalists in Germany say the word crisis may be misunderstood to mean climate change is "inherently episodic"—crises are "either solved or they pass"—or as a temporary state before a return to normalcy that is not possible.
