The phrase that has come to define the Trump administration's message on climate change was born in Durham, New Hampshire, on December 16, 2023.
Surrounded by flannel-clad supporters holding “Live Free or Die” signs, then-candidate Donald Trump wished the crowd a Merry Christmas before launching into what he considered the current administration's biggest mistakes. He took aim at President Biden himself (“Crooked Joe”) and at the state of the economy (“Bidenomics”). About 10 minutes later, he got to Biden's climate policies, which he said are “wasting trillions of dollars on Green New Deal nonsense.”
But Trump was not satisfied with his choice of insult, perhaps acknowledging that echoes of the Green New Deal had strengthened his opponents' climate action. rally cry. So in front of the crowd, he started thinking of ways to undermine her in real time.
“They don't know what they're doing, but you'll be sitting in the poorhouse to fund his big government Green New Deal, which is a socialist scam. And guess what? You have to be careful. It's going to get us all in big trouble,” he said. He said. “The Green New Deal that doesn't work. It's the New Green Scam. From now on, let's call it the New Green Scam.”
The crowd roared, shaking their signs in approval. “I love that term and I just made it up,” Trump said. “The New Green Scam. It will forever be known as the New Green Scam.”
Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Trump's cleansing of climate change language is getting a lot of attention, and for good reason: government officials are tiptoeing around vocabulary they once used freely. “Clean energy”, “climate science” and “pollution” are on the list “woke” words federal agencies advised employees to avoid such incidents. Recently, the memo has been distributed The Department of Energy's renewable energy office advised staff to remove or rephrase key terms including “climate change,” “emissions” and “green.” But the administration is doing more than just making those phrases disappear. It also introduces new language designed to undermine the foundations on which trust in climate science and policy is built.
In the nine months since Trump began his second presidency, the phrase “The New Green Scam” (always capitalized) has appeared in newspapers. White House Fact Sheets And press statementsechoed throughout federal agencies and by Republicans in Congress.
“He's very effective at creating memorable phrases and using repetition to reinforce them,” said Renee Hobbs, a communications professor at the University of Rhode Island, who wrote book about modern propaganda. “It's a classic propaganda strategy, right? You repeat the phrases you want to stick to and downplay, ignore, minimize or censor concepts that don't fit your agenda.”
It's part of a broader effort to erase information about how the planet is changing. In recent months, the administration has abolished whole pages about climate change and how to adapt to it, said Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. 400 experts working on the government's next climate report were firedthen all past reports have disappearedtoo much. The administration proposed stopping long-term projects that monitor carbon dioxide levels, and the Environmental Protection Agency no longer collects data on greenhouse gas emissions from polluting companies.
You can think of this as a three-pronged strategy. First, erase language related to climate change. Second, destroy the scientific basis that supports it. Third, fill the void with a message that aligns with Trump's policy priorities—like the “New Green Scam.”
“We have always understood that language shapes reality, and language can create unreal reality,” Hobbs said. “And I think that’s what Trump is doing with climate change.”
In Trump's growing anti-climate arsenal, the phrase “New Green Scam” remains a potent weapon. The Green New Deal concept has become a ripe goal for Trump because it serves as a rallying point for progressive positions, said Josh Fried, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Third Way think tank. “It was a goal that I think Trump honed in on and turned it into a script and turned it into a vulnerability and a catchphrase for what he thought the public would see as extreme positions,” he said.
Trump took this idea to an international audience. In his speech at the UN General Assembly Last month, he spent a full 10 minutes ranting about climate policy, ridiculing renewable energy and international efforts to address climate change. “If you don't get rid of this green scam, your country will fail,” he told the world leaders present.
In the same speech, he called climate change “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the world.” He also stated that “the carbon footprint is a hoax created by people with evil intentions.”
Conspiracy theories are a common propaganda tool, Hobbs said. “Conspiracy theories are catnip because they postulate that there is a malicious actor who is secretly doing something to harm people, and people are hardwired to pay attention to things like that,” she said. Research shows that fake news about climate change more convincing to people than scientific facts.
However, Trump is fighting an uphill battle trying to portray climate change as a hoax. ABOUT 70 percent of Americans acknowledge that global warming is happening. Meanwhile, recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans do not trust Republicans on environmental issues. 23 percent favoring the party's plan to address environmental issues.
But if a phrase is repeated often enough, it can begin to distort reality, even if it is inaccurate. This is a rule that Trump intuitively understands and is the driving force behind his linguistic prescriptions. “I have a little policy in the White House – never use the word 'coal', only use the words 'clean, beautiful coal,'” Trump said in his UN speech. “Sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?”
Coal can be dirty in general each criterion people use it to decide whether something is clean, but the phrase “clean coal” can still change people's associations with that fuel. “If you can control the vocabulary, you control the thoughts,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied campaign techniques for decades. “Once we adopt a new set of terms, those words start doing the thinking for us,” she said. People absorb the assumptions embedded in them, often without even noticing it.
Jamieson says it's part of a broader strategy to increase the use of fossil fuels over renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. The Trump administration canceled billions of investments in clean energy projects simultaneously expedited permitting for new pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Last month, the Department of Energy announced that it would for $625 million to save the coal industry, which was dying as natural gas and renewable energy developed.
“The administration is trying to reconcile the vocabulary with which we talk about the environment with the policies that correspond to increased drilling,” Jamison said. “You don’t have to work hard to see the relationship between politics and language.”
As for how to respond to propaganda, Hobbs said appealing to the facts – as scientists and journalists often do – is not the most effective strategy. Research has long shown that feelings are more important than facts in changing people's consciousness. “You fight propaganda with propaganda, right?” she said. Climate advocates are increasingly linking climate change to inflation and rising costs of living in an effort to reach Americans struggling with high energy bills.
On a micro level, Hobbs said she was successful in online experiments where people had candid, open conversations about a variety of advocacy topics, from free speech rights to the role of social media influencers. The format encouraged people to talk about the conspiracy theories they encountered, how the stories made them feel, and which ones were harmful. Participants were encouraged to openly talk about their insecurities and where they came from, and in doing so they were often self-aware that their beliefs could be influenced by propaganda. Hobbs said people have reduced their fear of others who think differently and become more critical of the information they receive.
“We cannot help but be exposed to propaganda,” Hobbs said, “but how we respond to it is up to us.”
