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Scientific American joins trend, will call climate change ‘climate emergency’

Scientific American has joined the growing list of news outlets who are upgrading the term climate change to a “climate emergency.” In its warning, SA compares climate change to someone losing their breath and being rushed to the hospital in the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The planet is heating up way too fast. It’s time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here,” SA writes in their statement on Tuesday.

The statement, co-authored by Columbia Journalism Review, the Nation, the Guardian, Noticias Telemundo, Al Jazeera, Asahi Shimbun and La Repubblica, insists that the word “emergency” best describes the current predicament.

“Why ’emergency’? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires and ice melt of 2020 routine and could ‘render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable,'” warned the January Scientific American article.

The groups insist their take is based on science, not politics. But skeptics observe that the climate terms just appear to be changing with the wind.

Climate change is also being blamed by outlets like MSNBC for the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. According to anchor Ayman Mohyeldin, climate change is urging migrants to make their way into the U.S. because natural disasters are “making the farmland and agricultural base … that much harder to sustain the economic needs of a country that has 17 million people.” 

President Biden has signed several climate change executive orders and promised aggressive spending on that front during his campaign. Conservative concerns over Biden’s approach were compounded with his nomination of Deb Baaland for interior secretary, due to her sponsorship of the far-left Green New Deal and endorsement of a fracking ban.