The Trump administration has plumbed the depths of the English language from the U.S. president’s telling a protestor, “I’d like to see your child fight for energy” (which weird flex but ok). Truly, these are all terrible and terribly stupid things to say.
But in the lexicon of the Trump administration, we now have the definitive word on what the worst phrase is. On Tuesday, the Plain English Foundation declared “freedom gas” the worst words of the year. The group bills itself as “the authority in clear communication,” and I have no reason to doubt this as their word choice is inspired.
The Department of Energy included that fateful phrase in a May 2019 press release about natural gas, attributing the phrase to Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes.
“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,” Menzes said before talking about “molecules of freedom.”
Honestly, “molecules of freedom” would be my choice for worst phrase of the year. It sounds like the name of a wretched, fascist tribute band of supergroup Atoms for Peace. But alas, I’m just a humble blogger. Let’s hear what Neil James, the executive director of the authority in clear communication, had this to say about their choice:
“When a simple product like natural gas starts being named through partisan politics, we are entering dangerous terrain. Why can’t natural gas just remain natural gas?”
Too true, Neil. Too true.
This isn’t even the administration’s first flirtation with freedom fuels. Last year, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC that American fracked gas was the “kind of freedom that is priceless.” Mastercard, eat your heart out.
But while Trump’s toilet riff is kinda funny (aside from having to think about our president taking a 15-flush dump), the attempt to rebrand natural gas as some kind of patriotic duty is an Orwellian nightmare. The U.S. has flooded the world with natural gas over the past decade or so thanks to advances in fracking. This is hardly liberating. Instead, it’s made the world more dependent on gas with many utilities infrastructure meant to last for decades.
Extracting and burning natural gas releases carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas that’s way more potent than carbon dioxide (and which the Trump administration wants to deregulate). The more the world burns, the more it worsens the climate emergency. Again, not exactly freedom.
In fact, if we’re going to rebrand natural gas, how about make it “unnatural gas” for the world it’s creating. Or “terror gas” if we want to get a little spicier. You know, on second thought let’s forget all about it and leave it in the ground.