Why em? why?

How is this a good construct as a typography metric? It adds to the problem.

HTML

<div class="row">
<div class="twelve columns text-center">
<h1> LARGE HEADER TAGLINE </h1>
</div><!-- End Tagline -->
</div><!-- End Row -->

CSS

body {font-size:100%}
/* Headers */
h1 { font-size:6.2em;font-weight:500; }