Using Language to Fight the Fossil Fuel Industry

Language can be a tool to implement social change, as well as to recognize it is happening. This has become particularly apparent in the political realm in the last few years, as both the left and right try to brand each other with terms that will inspire fear or disgust.

So, perhaps we should apply this technique to the problem of climate change and how to reduce comsumption of fossil fuels.

As a society, we have not made the status quo strange and the negative aspects of fossil fuel dominance visible in our language and labels: dirty, gas-powered cars; polluting, coal-fired electricity; unsustainable, oil-dependent agriculture. And we need to.

In their book Ending the Fossil Fuel Era, Thomas Princen, Jack Manno and Pamela Martin explore U.S. philosopher Richard Rorty’s provocative idea that major social change is in part dependent on “speaking differently” to the problem of climate change. Making the fossil fuel world strange and negative in our thoughts, speech and labels is part of pursuing the transformation that we need to stave off the worst implications of climate change.

Feminist and critical race scholars taught us this lesson in other realms. Language matters because it helps us to construct our reality. Adjectives or the lack thereof can signal the dominant and non-dominant entities.

I can think of one specific example that isn't mentioned in the article. Alberta's oil sands should really be called tar sands, a more accurate description of what they are. But the term I prefer is carbon bomb, because of the effect that fully utilizing them would have on the planet.