Oxford Dictionaries names 'climate emergency' its word of the year 2019

Oxford Dictionaries has reportedly named 'climate emergency' as its word of the year for 2019 further defining it as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it”. According to the reported data of the dictionary, the usage of the word soared 10,796 per cent. The term is the most common compound involving “emergency”, reportedly occurring three times as often as the next most-common, “health-emergency”.

Over 11,000 scientists from across the world have also warned that the planet is facing a 'climate emergency' and the world should take immediate action to 'avert untold sufferings due to climate crisis'. A study published by a journal Bioscience cited an increase in the human livestock population, meat production, world gross domestic product, air travel, fossil fuel consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions as factors that contribute to the crisis. The study was spearheaded by ecologists Bill Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University along with a group of scientists from 153 countries. 

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UN on climate change

Hundreds of cities, towns and even countries have declared “climate emergency” during 2019. The selection panel reportedly said that in 2018 climate did not feature in the top words but the term as beaten words like 'climate crisis', 'climate action', 'climate denial', and 'extinction', which were on the shortlist. Climate emergency has surpassed all of the other types of emergency to become the most written about emergency by a huge margin. Earlier, a report released by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described how global warming is already altering the Earth's climate and ecosystems from magnifying heatwaves and droughts to the super changing the tropical cyclones. There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed," says the report. 

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