Climate emergency: moving from rhetoric to reality
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By Adam Corner
On 1 May, 2019, the UK became the first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’, following similar decisions by a spate of local councils. Last week, The Guardian updated its style guide to introduce the terms ‘climate emergency, crisis or breakdown’ instead of ‘climate change’, with the newspaper’s editor giving the reasoning that these words more accurately ‘describe the situation we’re in’.
This sequence of emergency declarations are part of an astonishing few months for climate change politics and public engagement. With polls showing a record high in the level of concern about climate change, it’s clear that the school strikes, Extinction Rebellion, and the BBC’s documentary fronted by Sir David Attenborough have left their mark on public opinion. In one survey, half of respondents (54%) agreed that climate change ‘threatens our extinction as a species’. In another, the majority of participants (63%) agreed with the statement ‘ we are facing a climate emergency’...
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