A few days ago, the UK's Oxford Dictionary selected climate emergency as its vocabulary of the year 2019. The term is used to describe a situation in which "urgent action is needed to slow or stop climate change and avoid irreversible environmental damage". According to the Oxford corpus, the use of the term "climate emergency" has increased 100 fold since 2018.

More and more mass media use "climate emergency" and "climate crisis" to replace "climate change". According to the editors of the Oxford Dictionary, "climate emergency" clearly outlines the climate crisis facing mankind in 2019. This term has become a popular search term in social media, which has triggered extensive discussions on climate issues, reflecting the increasingly serious challenge of climate change in the world today, and also reflecting the significant increase of public awareness of coping with climate change.

In 2019, the impact of climate change will be more felt. At the beginning of the year, extreme weather occurred in many countries, and the temperature in some places broke local meteorological records. The continuous forest fires in Brazil, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and other countries are considered to be related to climate change and deforestation, which has attracted global attention. The greenhouse gases produced by human activities cause frequent global extreme weather, melting ice sheet and rising sea level, which also brings severe challenges to the world's poverty reduction and health undertakings.

According to the research of the World Meteorological Organization, from 2015 to 2019, the global average temperature increased by 1.1 ℃ compared with the pre industrial era, and by 0.2 ℃ compared with 2011 to 2015. The important goal of the Paris Agreement is to control the increase of the global average temperature in this century within 2 ℃ compared with the pre industrial level, and strive to limit it within 1.5 ℃. In order to achieve the target of temperature rise within 1.5C, by 2030, the global net anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by about 45% compared with the level in 2010, and by 2050, the "net zero" emissions will be achieved. "We are far from on track to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement," said Petrie Talas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization

In this context, people pay more and more attention to climate change. According to a poll released by Yale University last September, 67% of the people think that climate change is happening, 60% are worried about the threat of climate change, and 83% support renewable energy research.

Some countries have successively declared a climate emergency to cope with climate change. In April last year, Nicola sturgeon, the chief minister of the Scottish government, declared a climate emergency in Scotland. The governments of France, Portugal, Canada and other countries have taken similar actions. The European Parliament also passed a bill to declare a climate emergency for the EU.

Tracy Ritchie, vice president of the earth day network, an international environmental organization, said: "the growing level of climate crisis, the Oxford Dictionary's choice of" climate emergency "as the hot word of the year, reflects this urgency and the growing awareness of the public." Some analysts believe that "climate emergency" reminds people that it is urgent to deal with climate change.

Source: People's daily