What’s In a Word?

We all know words matter. Words matter so much that there are some we refer to only by a single letter. There are countless slurs — racial, religious, sexual — so dangerous and so loaded that most of society considers them off-limits altogether, even in their original context.

So: cigarettes masquerading as “organic produce”? Deadly, mesothelioma-causing asbestos pretending to be “insulation” or “brake pads”? Would we accept either?

But climate-changing, air-pollution-causing, cancer-inducing toxic petrochemicals? Somehow, literally everyone has adopted the fossil-fuel industry’s greenwashed language of “energy.”

That linguistic sleight of hand is one of the oil industry’s most remarkable victories.

How? By letting the industry name its product for what it eventually produces rather than what it actually is. “Energy” is the usable output we derive from a resource. It tells us what something produces, not what that thing is, or what damage it causes. Fossil fuels are not “energy.” They have to be extracted, transported, refined, and burned to produce energy — but by that logic, lumber is “houses,” raw aluminum is “beer cans,” and asbestos is “insulation.” We do not usually name dangerous materials by their final use. We do it here because the euphemism serves power.

And it is a euphemism. These are toxic petrochemicals. Burn them and they poison the air. Spill them and they contaminate water. Refine and transport them and they leave damage everywhere in their wake. Call them “energy,” though, and suddenly they sound modern, comforting, even necessary. So… “energy”?

There’s no question “energy” sounds a whole lot better than “toxic sludge,” which is a far more accurate description of tar sands oil products. But the reality is that it’s no more “energy” than cigarettes are “organic produce.” And we would never accept cigarettes being described that way — so why do we so willingly describe this sludge we extract and export as “energy”?

It is a toxic substance that has to be diluted with still more toxic chemicals before it will even flow down a pipeline — sorry, an “energy corridor.” It is then shipped to one of the very few refineries in North America capable of processing something this dirty, with Venezuela being one of the only other comparable sources of feedstock.

Canada produces some of the dirtiest oil on the planet, and it takes an extraordinary amount of carbon-intensive energy, steam, and chemical input just to extract and move it. And yet, somehow, we are still calling it “clean.” Even our supposedly sophisticated political leadership now repeats the fiction that these dirty chemicals amount to “clean energy.”

The only “energy” we actually export is in the form of electrons sent down a transmission line. The rest is dirty fuel — dangerous chemicals that, like tobacco, are damaging life on the only planet we have. Except people initially choose to smoke. None of us get to choose whether we inhale car exhaust or smokestack emissions. Fine particulates are everywhere. The microplastics and PFAS that come from the same petrochemical system are now in our bodies and in our food.

I understand that fossil fuel companies have embedded themselves into virtually every part of modern life, and that any transition will take time. But as long as we keep calling this stuff “energy” instead of what it is — toxic sludge we burn to stay warm — it still sounds like our friend. It still sounds like something benign, even noble, rather than the callous, abusive, exploitative relationship we need to exit as fast as possible.

We should reserve the word “energy” for actual usable energy: charged electrons moving through wires or stored in batteries. The rest is dirty fuel.