“The end of natural gas has to start with its name,” according to the headline of a recent piece in Vox. Supposedly the reason we use natural gas and do not take more strident action to curtail the use of natural gas is not that natural gas is plentiful and useful and economic. No, the reason is about language: “For over a century, the gas industry has marketed natural gas as “clean,” “renewable,” and “responsible.” Hence climate activists, including the author of the Vox article, argue it’s time for a rebrand. After all, “[s]ome climate advocates have already dropped the ‘natural’ moniker in their legal filings, advertising, and communications, when talking about methane. They favor calling it ‘fossil gas’ or ‘methane gas’ — anything that’s more descriptive for a dangerous and explosive substance.”

Never mind that the explosiveness of natural gas is sort of the point if you are using it to, say, drive a turbine in an energy plant that replaces a much more emitting coal plant or that it’s not really that explosive if you are using it to roast a chicken. Never mind also that since the shale revolution (OK, fine, call it the “fracking revolution,” if you wish), switching to natural gas has been responsible for more than half of U.S. reductions in carbon, something electric cars can’t even hold an LED bulb to. Never mind that largely because of natural gas, at the end of the Trump presidency, the United States had reduced more in total carbon-equivalent emissions than any country that remained in the Paris Agreement. In the minds of people who want everything to improve all at once and therefore can’t accept the existing solutions we have available to us, it’s all a matter of language and public perception of terms. Per Vox: