Introduction: Critical Challenges in Communicating Climate Change

Language matters. In May 2019, The Guardian, a progressive news outlet in the United Kingdom, announced it was changing its “home style” of how to report on changes to global climates. Instead of ‘climate change,’ the website and newspaper reported, “the preferred terms are ‘climate emergency, crisis or breakdown’ and ‘global heating’ is favored over ‘global warming’, although the original terms are not banned” (Carrington, 2019a). In explaining the changes in approved terminology to be used in news reporting, Guardian editor Katharine Viner said, “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue” and that “[t]he phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”