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Remember the climate crisis? The relentless, escalating threat to human health and safety that was once the main driver of clean energy policy?
You’d be forgiven if it’s all a bit hazy, given how swiftly the term was dropped from the energy-transition lexicon this year.
Starting on Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump not only eviscerated climate policy but completely upended the way Americans talk about energy. Though Trump seemed more concerned with taking down ideological rivals than helping constituents’ bottom lines, his new lexicon got a boost from consumer concerns about soaring energy prices that had people casting around for quick fixes. Climate change was out. Talk of “energy dominance,” “energy abundance,” and “unleashing American energy” rushed in. The shift was like “6-7” taking over a fourth-grade classroom: inexorable and irresistible.
The new terminology made the scene on Trump’s first day back in the White House, when he signed an executive order with a grab bag of fossil-fuel giveaways under the title “Unleashing American Energy.” A few weeks later, he used another executive order to create the National Energy Dominance Council. Both orders touted the country’s “abundant” resources.
Clean energy advocates quickly began invoking similar terminology in an attempt to shoehorn solar power into the new narrative. The Solar Energy Industries Association even passed out stickers with the phrase “energy dominance” on Capitol Hill as part of its lobbying efforts.
Some media outlets followed suit in deemphasizing climate. In November 2024, five major U.S. newspapers published a total of 524 stories about climate change; in the same month this year, those papers ran just 362 climate change articles, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder — a drop of almost a third. (Both numbers are way down from the October 2021 peak of 1,049 climate articles.)
A number of Democratic politicians embraced the vibe shift in their own ways. “All of the above” crept in among leaders — notably New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey — who wanted to signal they are open to the changing conversation, but not ready to give up on renewables entirely. In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger ran successful gubernatorial campaigns with hardly any mention of climate change; likewise, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani spent little time on the topic.
Most notably, Democrats this year prioritized the issue of energy affordability, an increasingly urgent concern among voters — and one that Trump is belligerently dismissing.
Two liberal groups, Fossil Free Media and Data for Progress, put out a memo in November that endorses this affordability focus, suggesting it’s a way for Democrats to reconcile the new discourse with the old. The memo encourages them to promote the benefits of renewable energy as a cheap source of power in 2026. The headline: “Don’t run from climate — translate it.”
Though Republicans are failing to reckon with the issue of soaring energy costs, there’s still something seductive about their energy rhetoric. It suggests an economy teeming with possibility, held back only by those meanie Democrats with their snowflakey concerns about climate and their insufficient will to dominate. The language implies there are easy answers to at least some of our woes. Worried about soaring energy bills? Unleash the beautiful coal. Concerned about grid reliability? Exploit those abundant energy supplies. Never mind that fossil fuels are most definitely not the cheapest sources of electricity.
The vocab shift, particularly around “dominance,” also captures a vibe that has always appealed to Trump supporters: “That language does have this bravado and machismo that is important to his movement,” Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, told a reporter for Grist earlier this year.
What vocabulary will seize the collective imagination in 2026? Likely, more of the same (though Trump does have a seemingly inexhaustible ability to surprise us all with word choices). The bigger question for me, though, is which version of this new nomenclature will gain the most traction in the months to come. Will the left’s translations catch on, convincing people that clean energy too can be unleashed, abundant, and affordable? Or will the fossil fuel–loving MAGA crowd continue to corner the enticingly muscular language of supremacy?
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