Cover the climate crisis like it is one - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Journalists, scientists, and policy experts routinely invoked the phrase “climate change” back in the good old days—2016, that is—when it seemed like the Paris Agreement might actually set the world on a path to a stable climate. Three years and a world of hurt later, some are calling for a new language to describe the threat to humanity’s future: “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” “climate breakdown,” and “climate chaos.”
There’s no question that the Paris Agreement is obsolete. The temperature recently reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris, a city where many buildings don’t have air conditioning. In the United States, more than 70 medical groups urged political candidates “to recognize climate change as a health emergency.”
Yes, this is an emergency. And yes, the term “climate change” is not only worn-out and boring, but also politically fraught. However, the media have a much bigger problem than what vocabulary to use. Many of the world’s largest news organizations simply aren’t telling the climate story with anything approaching the urgency and attention they devote to a glut of trivial subjects. Updating a style guide does little to fix that problem. Here’s what a meaningful solution looks like: a well-funded commitment to publish more and better stories on one of the most important, life-threatening issues of our time.