Climate emergencies are a bit like buses. You wait an age for one and then three come along at once. Parliaments in the and passed motions declaring a climate emergency in May. On Monday, .
It isn鈥檛 just parliaments sounding the alarm. 鈥淭his is a climate emergency,鈥� , using the phrase for the first time. Hours earlier, James Bevan of England鈥檚 Environment Agency a climate emergency has for flooding, and Vince Cable, the leader of the UK鈥檚 Liberal Democrats, said plans to expand Heathrow Airport were wrong given the world鈥檚 climate emergency.
They join a cast of high-profile public figures already on the bus, from UK opposition leader to UN secretary general . But how did the language of climate change campaigners jump to the lips of the establishment, and should we welcome its seemingly unstoppable adoption?
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Its origin story isn鈥檛 entirely clear, but the first using the phrase appears to date back to comments by Greenpeace in 2001. David Spratt of the Breakthrough think tank tells me his 2008 book, , was key to popularising the phrase in Australia.
Over the past year, however, the floodgates have opened. More than 600 local and national governments have declared climate emergencies since January 2018, and the volume of news stories using the phrase is 12 times greater. February鈥檚 expansion of school climate strikes led by Greta Thunberg and protests by Extinction Rebellion also played a role. The Guardian even recently , advising journalists to use the phrase instead of climate change.
Meaningless phrase?
Does this language make a difference? A day after Canada鈥檚 climate emergency motion, . Bristol City Council in the UK , yet the city鈥檚 mayor . Nothing changed on UK streets after parliament declared one, notes former Labour leader Ed Miliband. 鈥淭his muted response to an alarm that we ourselves have sounded symbolises the challenge we face,鈥� . Such a disconnect risks rendering the phrase climate emergency meaningless.
Mike Hulme at the University of Cambridge because it implies 鈥渢ime-limited radical鈥� action could end the emergency, when climate change is actually a 鈥渘ew condition of human existence鈥�. Some, Hulme included, also fear the language may engender counterproductive responses.
But Roz Pidcock of communication organisation Climate Outreach says a climate emergency 鈥渟uggests a response that is very radical in scale and ambition, but not reckless or knee-jerk鈥�, and certainly not license for extreme measures like geoengineering the planet鈥檚 climate.
Despite the risk of the phrase being devalued, Rebecca Willis of Lancaster University in the UK tells me it is still useful 鈥� and that鈥檚 because it is true. Few would argue with that. As Spratt says: 鈥淵ou cannot solve a problem unless you name it for exactly what it is.鈥� Getting politicians to adopt the language will also be critical to holding them to tough policy decisions later, says Doug Parr of Greenpeace.
The widespread adoption of the phrase isn鈥檛 a problem. The huge, grave, urgent problem is the lack of action commensurate with such language. And that action is going to include a lot of silently gliding electric buses.
