Today’s Political Rhetoric Rewards The Rich But Can’t Save The Planet

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Language at its finest imparts information so humans can empower each other. It conveys expressions of emotions, warnings for self-preservation, offerings of social togetherness — and, most recently, misinformation/disinformation. The current global political climate is packed with rhetoric that persuades audiences to roil over perceived slights, including peer-reviewed evidence that supports a worldwide transition to renewable energy.

Today’s precisely-designed political rhetoric also masks the actual motivations of the Über rich, whose self-interests deplete natural resources and suffocate bespoke momentum to save the planet. Meanwhile, the climate crisis beats down on everyday citizens with extreme weather, drought, wildfires, and floods.

A host of political leaders have come to office with high achievement motivation but frustration with the political process. They’ve found a solution: they frame what could be life-altering climate situations for everyday citizens with linguistic twists that are at odds with eyewitness testimony and scientific data. In doing so, these mostly billionaire politicians offer populist proclamations that mask their true intentions to reap personal gain at tremendous costs to the planet.

“The introduction of a new term may suggest new ways of thinking, at least for some, and for a spell,” explains John McWhorter, associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. “But covering a hole in the roof with construction paper keeps the wind out, too, or at least some of it, and for a spell. It’s not actually a solution.”

Don’t Save the Planet — Burn Fossil Fuels for the Common Good!

The US Department of the Interior protects and manages the nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage, provides scientific and other information about those resources, and honors its trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and affiliated Island Communities.

Former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, once a contender to be Donald J. Trump’s vice president, has been nominated as Interior Secretary. He faced the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week. What platform is Burgum, likely the Secretary of the US Interior Department, promoting?

He views US public lands and waters as part of the country’s financial “balance sheet,” with potentially trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas, and minerals waiting to be extracted beneath the surface.

Sorry? I didn’t hear anything about protecting natural resources, or providing scientific information about the benefit of fossil fuels for future generations, or honoring commitments to the Indigenous people of this land. Instead, he will push forward with what he calls “energy dominance,” a euphemism that rejects investment in renewable energy and, instead, is a false promise for the “foundation of American prosperity.”

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters account for nearly 22% of US greenhouse gases. Burgum is following his boss’ “drill, baby, drill” mantra, which is exploitive and irresponsible, devious and dangerous.

Donald Trump’s Turn-of-the-Phrase

Climate change has become a dominant, highly contested, and politicized topic, and experts point to the populist moment as a radical politicization of climate change. “Language change really can play some part in changing habits of mind,” linguist McWhorter says, and right wing populists around the world have seriously challenged the narrative of climate change. They refuse to acknowledge it is a global challenge that rests on complex interdependencies, accumulated greenhouse gas emissions, and a threat to the world population as a whole.

For example, Donald Trump speaks of January 6 as “a beautiful day.” In the storyline Trump presents, he is always the victim, but so are his supporters. Trump’s positions have become even more extreme, his tone more confrontational, and his accounts less tethered to reality, according to a Washington Post review of his speeches as well as interviews with former aides. Yet enormous numbers of US voters love the guy.

Susan Hunston, professor of English language at the University of Birmingham, analyzes that, compared with the other speakers, Trump uses shorter words and a more restricted vocabulary. Hunston says that this conscious style is designed so his language will appear familiar to a larger proportion of people. Using simple grammatical constructions, his language, both in content and in style, though “odd for a political leader,” is familiar to his audience and “is the true language of populism.”

Trump’s hypocritical position as a populist has increased the degree of polarization around the climate crisis and the need for clean energy solutions.  Politicization and populism are closely connected in climate change politics.

Rhetoric that Can Illuminate Everyday Citizens

Some people in power do craft language choices to have a rhetorical impact that is intended to help save the planet. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during his address at an annual gathering of global elites on Wednesday that the world’s addiction to fossil fuels has become an all-consuming “Frankenstein monster” (allusion) imperiling hopes of a livable future. He added that “we are living in an increasingly rudderless world” (metaphor). He called out the fossil fuel industry and advertising, lobbying, and PR companies who are aiding, abetting, and greenwashing. “You are on the wrong side of history,” he stated. “You are on the wrong side of science. And you are on the wrong side of consumers who are looking for more sustainability, not less” (repetition).

In 2024, over 700 gigawatts of new solar and wind energy capacity was installed globally. A rhetoric of renewables would squash the argument that they’re a weak alternative — actually, they are the new mainstream. And that mainstream impetus for transitioning to clean energy sources derives from common sense, bottom line economics.

Solar panels and wind turbines have become the cheapest sources of energy in history, even when accounting for storage solutions like batteries. In 2024 alone, the price of solar modules dropped by 34%, and the cost of large-scale battery storage continues to plummet.

As Mik Aidt outlines for the Center for Climate Safety, “measured by lifetime costs, no energy source — not oil, gas, or coal — can compete with solar panels and onshore wind turbines.” For every media article filled with “resistance against renewables,” communities are moving forward with clean energy solutions that have reduced electricity costs and emissions while creating jobs.

It’s time to clean up the preponderance of climate disinformation rhetoric that’s swirling around the globe.

A winter 2025 report published by Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law identifies thirty-three of the most common misconceptions about renewable energy and debunks them with peer-reviewed scientific evidence and government data. Disinformation campaigns, they write, are often highly effective at derailing renewable-energy projects. The researchers say their intention is to both confirm that the transition to renewable-energy systems has challenges and to promote more informed debate about urgent climate policy matters.

For example, they note that in New Jersey, public support for offshore wind turbines plummeted from 76% in 2019 to 54% in 2023, likely because of a coordinated campaign by wind opponents asserting that the turbines generate sounds that are harmful to whales. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) determined that the rumors are baseless, but they have persisted nonetheless.

“By contrast, offshore oil and gas drilling routinely harms marine life,” the Columbia researchers write.

Jennifer Rubin (formerly of the Washington Post) in The Contrarian says that many of us would “welcome the clear, compelling voice of former Vice President Kamala Harris.” Trump has launched a “full-out assault on the Constitution and the rule of law,” Rubin declares, and highlights how Harris “was right about what Trump intended to do and the danger he posed to the rule of law.”

Former Vice President Harris, won’t you speak out about the need to protect our world from the rape and pillage of billionaire “populists?”