The death of words

Note: As some of you have noticed, I’ve launched a new section in this blog where I will publish shorter pieces on current energy events. Some of these will be behind a paywall, others will not. I will not be sending them to your inboxes because something tells me that would be a hundred energy rants too many, but they’ll be right here for you to peruse as you see fit at your convenience. There so much that is rantworthy out there I just couldn’t help myself. End of note.

“Navy fleet welcomes newest USS New Jersey, the first gender-neutral submarine”, media informed us in mid-September, leading with the statement that the vessel was “the first submarine designed to fully integrate male and female sailors” and then continuing with “It was given the nickname "Jersey Girl" by Newport News Shipbuilding President Jennifer Boykin.”

If the outlet reporting the news was the Babylon Bee, we’d all chuckle and move on to the next piece of satire. But it wasn’t the Babylon Bee. It was a serious publication from New Jersey called the Bergen Record. And the author of the report apparently saw nothing wrong with the above quotes.

Here’s another quote. “Australia and the UK agree that the transition to net zero represents economic opportunity. The Albanese and Starmer Governments believe private capital and the power of government can be leveraged to shape a clean energy future in the interests of working people. The transition paves the way for new industries, new technologies, new job opportunities and a revitalisation of each nation’s industrial base.”

It comes from a press release from the office of Australia’s Prime Minister on the occasion of a deal struck between him and UK pal Keir Starmer during some Commonwealth conference currently taking place in Samoa. The deal in a nutshell: “The Australia–UK Climate and Energy Partnership will focus on the development and accelerated deployment of renewable energy technologies, such as green hydrogen and offshore wind, to support the economic resilience and decarbonisation goals of both countries.”

What we have here is about a hundred words devoid of specific meaning, a string of empty platitudes masking plans to make most Australians and Britons poorer and unhappier. But I’m sure both Albanese and Starmer mean well. They probably genuinely believe they are working for the greater good — and indeed they are.

It’s just not the greater good of the masses but that of a select few business executives set to benefit from subsidies whose purpose is essentially the political equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein’s bolt of electricity on the body on his table.

I remember when I was a little girl I used to repeat one word again and again for fun, noticing that the more times I said it the more it sounded like a random collection of sounds rather than the vocal articulation of an object or a concept. Try saying oil, for example, a hundred times in quick succession. Towards the hundredth time you’d probably forget what the word means. All you’d remember is how it sounds. There must be a psychological reason for this but I can’t be bothered to look it up because that’s not the point.

The point is that when you destroy the meaning of words by abusing them, you can turn them into hammers to drive a narrative deep into people’s heads well and good, leaving no space for questioning. Climate is one such word. Transition is another. Clean and green are two more such severely abused words. The list goes on, of course, to include formerly clear concepts such as disinformation and resilience.

Climate, once upon a time, meant, in the kind of basic terms I tend to prefer, a complex system of weather patterns. Today, it is sometimes an enemy, sometimes a victim of human activity, a threat, an opportunity, a risk, a monster, a cookie, a pathogen, a villain, a cup of tea, an abused animal and pretty much anything you like. The word has become a vessel to be emptied and refilled with whatever content the user wants to fill it with.

With some of the other words, things are not as versatile. Essentially, the original meanings of these words — and many others — have been subverted to an extent where they mean the opposite of their original meaning. Nowhere is this clearer, perhaps, than in the case of disinformation. Once upon a time, disinformation used to mean the use of language for manipulative purposes. Now, those who use language for manipulative purposes are calling hard facts disinformation.

The hard fact that physical constraints prevent windosolar from becoming the dominant ingredient of a country’s, a city’s or even a village’s energy system is being called anti-climate disinformation. They totally can, the word abusers insist. You’re only disputing this because you’re jealous and you get paid by Big Oil. Slander is only slander if the bad guys are doing it. When the good guys do it, it’s a legitimate tactic in an argument.

The hard fact that the world runs on hydrocarbons and will continue to run on hydrocarbons until we find a way to make electricity as versatile as those molecules is being dismissed as Big Oil propaganda and disinformation on no grounds whatsoever other that “We say so and we’re always right.” Kind of like “We’re the only ones telling the truth, so don’t trust anyone else” as one now former PM said a couple of years ago, not long before she became former.

The hard fact that energy security hinges on the abundance and affordability of energy is being called disinformation. It is also being called an attempt to shift the blame for changes in the climate from those providing the abundant and affordable energy in the form of hydrocarbons to those using them.

There’s even a guide to “the fossil fuel industry’s biggest disinformation tactics” in The Guardian, that bright beacon of truth. It’s a wonderful example of projection — as climate crusaders keep blaming energy users for climate change, alongside the evil energy industry. Funny old ironic world.

On another meaning-murdering front, we get the speculation-turns-fact treatment. Peak oil demand is the most obvious example. Agency after NGO after agency keep telling us that oil demand is going down and even if it’s actually rising right now, it will begin to go down very soon, so run for the hills and for green stocks unless you want to lose money or spend half your salary on filling your car’s tank. Also, remember those stranded assets.

The refrain has become a fixed part of the transition pattern in the media, in the same way that “human activity is the main cause of global warming” has become an indispensable part of any and all energy reporting or at least what passes for energy reporting in politically correct circles. It’s the good old “repeat a lie a hundred times” tactic and it works marvelously.

Here’s a recent example, courtesy of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which is one of my favourite transition propaganda outlets. In it, the IEEFA zeroes in on BP and its recent decision to stop being stupid about cutting oil and gas production and focus on expanding it instead.

The IEEFA presents this decision as a sign of short-sightedness because of course everyone knows that climate change is real and coming for your money unless you put that money into transition stocks and bonds, and whatever else is on the market.

Never you mind that transition industries are having some trouble becoming or remaining profitable. Never you mind those negative electricity prices. And, of course, never mind the hard fact that both oil and gas demand are on the rise. They will totally stop being on the rise very soon and they’ll plummet shortly after. Because the climate crusade army command says so.

The death of words provides a great opportunity for some to convey meanings that serve their specific purposes. Yet it is also dangerous because even dead and turned into weapons, words have power — in this case the power to highlight hard physical reality and the discrepancy between that hard reality and the vision that the crusaders try to force on us.

The murder of meaning is risky business because words are a weapon that can easily turn on the one wielding it, especially if the wielding gets too frantic as facts advance on the vision. They are the Nothingness that destroyed the world of Fantasia in “The Neverending Story” and while that was really sad and tragic in the book (not to mention the death of Artax, which is the top most unforgivable treatment of a character by an author), in real life it is the opposite.

In real life, you can build worlds with words alone but you can’t make them last, even if you suck out the original meaning out of these words and replace it with a convenient substitute. Those substitutes simply have a short shelf life and no preservative has yet been invented to change that.