THE world of words is quite fascinating and mind-shattering. Words can be used as verbal bridges to provide knowledge and information to the world of green discourses.
The same words can also be used as a wall to deny communicative access to the phrase bank of climate representations.
The language of late-fossil capital has broken the rules of conventional communication hence taking over climate action narratives and shaping them into green propaganda, consisting of the language of disinformation, denial and recreation to counter universal sustainable communicative action strategies.
The language of the late-fossil capital is mainly crafted in the form of tropes, that is, figurative or metaphorical uses of a word or expression.
Tropes are used in a non-literal sense to create powerful and vivid climate images.
With the use of tropes and climate rhetoric, the language of the late-fossil capital shifts the blame from real carbon sinners to ordinary consumers whose carbon footprint is insignificant but readily detectable, while real polluters are silent about their large-scale global carbon emissions.
The language of the late-fossil capital is what United States President Donald Trump uses when he vows to tap America’s “liquid gold” and “drill baby, drill” to tap America’s oil reserves to power the economy.
While the climate mantra is to keep fossil fuels locked underground, Trump wants to unlock large amounts of carbon stored underground and accelerate global warming.
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While the whole world has invested in collective approaches to phase out fossil fuel mining, Trump uses the language of defiance and insolence by re-emphasising that “liquid gold will make America a rich nation again” by ending the “green new deals” enacted before him.
Trump is not alone in the language of the late-fossil capital revival and he represents many defiant polluters committing environmental atrocities in the background.
The US president, through his language of appeasement and capitulation to disinform, has revived fossilised thinking and far-right-wing inequities. The language of the late-fossil capital has been resurrected, and it is used by those obsessed with fossil mining, especially in Trump’s own words, “the rare earth minerals”.
Proponents of the language of the late-fossil capital also mix their language with the everyday discourse of sustainability just to confuse the audience, capture more attention and many projects.
The intention is to be viewed as real climate champions, yet they are climate phony and dwellers of plastic palaces.
The language of the late-fossil capital is designed to manipulate, exploit and control mindsets towards their perspectives. This language is also used as a marketing and advertising tool for big fossil fuel conglomerates to expand their negative footprint and be seen in a good light.
In this view, green propaganda and disinformation narratives have similar characteristics of investing in word-archeology and real climate interventions.
Through a careful selection of linguistic tools for deceptive green advertising, the aim is to greenwash and foreground communication massaging.
Proponents of the language of late-fossil capital are well-resourced companies and organisations that rely on the power of money, language, and influence to get things done their way. They are brutal, provocative and intimidatory in their ways of doing things.
This new breed of climate bullies and tricksters is strategically situated and positioned on social media handles because they cannot miss an opportunity to disinform and want to be seen as genuine and pro-climate to influence the public information spheres.
Due to the overwhelming communication overload at their disposal, the public finds itself in a quandary and has limited choices, thereby limiting their climate participation and interventions.
It is, therefore, difficult for the disinformed, muzzled and manipulated to realise that they are being shortchanged into believing that they are real climate stewards in the context of climate linguistic bribery, deception and machinations.
The language of the late-fossil capital uses a wide range of infomercials to reach out and penetrate public spheres. They conform to the use and abuse of language and translanguaging as instruments and tools of communicative and information fraud with deceptive and alluring power.
The language of the late-fossil capital continues to gather momentum as forms of diversion and distraction to depart from real climate justice issues, to divide attention, cause loss of focus and retard environmental governance and stewardship issues.
The investment into global language use of trickery is designed to destroy human thinking and retard climate growth, interventions and create challenges of delivering humanity from climate ignorance to climate wisdom through sustainable choices and confidence building.
Finally, language has been used since time immemorial to destroy the people’s culture and worldview through linguistic imperialism, which this time has been repackaged in the form of development discourse.
