Images of tornadoes engulfing homes, trees and people – Climate Change
Heat waves, floods, droughts – climate change is probably a frequent topic of conversation for you, as it is for me.
In times of need, many of us turn to communication platforms like WhatsApp or Instagram to ask for help from those closest to us. We add emojis like 🤯 😡 🤷🏻♀️ 🥵 🥶 at the end of our messages for emphasis or to visually express our emotions.
But for a while now, I’ve felt guilty about using these colorful symbols when talking about climate change, and here’s why.
As a journalist, I hear stories about the devastation people experience after disasters hit cities and villages. A farmer might talk about how drought caused his sheep to die of thirst, or an elderly woman might talk about how a wildfire burned down her house, destroying everything inside, including her memories.
Seriously, what emoji would you send to the victims to convey your sympathy and respect for these horrific situations?
These people🐄☁️🏠🔥😥💔💧!? I mean…
Or, what would you do if you heard some more positive news and someone survived the hurricane and evacuated their whole family to safety?
Why not message them the tornado thumbs up combo 🌪️👍 to show your relief?
Then I began to wonder if there were an emoji that could better and more effectively represent the reality of the climate crisis.
I did a little research and found some information that I wanted to share 👇🏽.
Today also happens to be World Emoji Day, making it the perfect time to highlight some of these facts and hear from experts about the important role that a range of environmental emojis play in helping communities tackle climate change.
Images of starving polar bears on melting ice – Climate Change
Missing
Emojis are approved by the Unicode Consortium, a California-based non-profit organization. Every year, a subcommittee releases new emojis to update existing keyboards used on various electronic devices.
Previously, the UTC had not approved a standalone climate change emoji, officially rejecting a proposal in 2017 and saying two separate emojis like these 🌎🔥 could be used instead.
A few years later, renewable energy advocates were disappointed when Unicode rejected their application for a wind turbine. To make matters worse, the fossil fuels that are the main culprits of climate change were represented by the emojis for oil and gasoline 🛢️⛽️.
I emailed the Unicode Consortium to find out why, but they did not respond to a request for comment.
In my ongoing search for a suitable climate emoji, I came across a set of disaster and resilience icons called Climoji, which are free to download 👈🏻.
The Climoji project was launched at New York University in 2018 by artists Marina Zarkow and Viniyata Panny, along with students and faculty, to make it easier for people to communicate about the dangers of climate change.
Illustrations of melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss are some of the images found on Climoji but not on UTC.
“We’re doing something similar to the Unicode emoji set, but it’s unlikely to appear in the official emoji set,” says Marina Zulkow, co-founder of Climoji.org.
“Seven years into developing Kurimoji, that elimination — the proverbial elephant in the room — may be part of Kurimoji’s strength,” Zarcow added.
“I believe Krimojis have had a lasting impact precisely because they are as simple as standard emojis, and the most successful Krimojis clearly straddle the line between tragedy and comedy,” she added.
Images showing drought and climate change
Painting a real picture
New data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that every month for a year has seen global temperatures exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a key warming threshold set by scientists.
Temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 will be the hottest on record, and climate-related events will become faster and more severe for many people around the world, the report said.
So “having more relatable ways to make messages easier to understand, more succinct and more approachable for people to communicate these realities — heatwaves, floods and evacuations, to name just a few of the new normal — could literally save lives and livelihoods,” says Nancy Groves, director of digital strategy for communications at the United Nations Environment Programme.
“Emoji use, like the climate crisis, transcends generations, borders and languages,” Groves added.
So “as the world warms, we’re going to see a wider range of options as everyone looks for ways to share their experiences,” she added.
The good news is that designers, artists and environmental experts are already working to create and establish more emojis we need to talk about climate change 😊.
