…and how to get it back

With the Ukraine war, the MAGA faction back in power, and the rearming of Europe, the so-called Green Transition is already lost. But it’s not lost because we need more guns to keep Russia in check, or because Tony Blair came out and made a mea culpa. It is lost because it began as a revolutionary idea and ended up as a reactionary, never-ending, capricious policy.

The fight against climate change—which now sounds like an old revolutionary slogan—has adopted a doomed vocabulary: transition. We hear it everywhere—”Green Transition,” “Energy Transition,” “Just Transition.” But words shape perception, and perception drives action. The problem is not just rhetorical. It’s existential. We can debate the scale of the crisis, but not its essential nature.

Transition is a term historically associated with instability, loss, and crisis. Think: transition of power—someone has lost an election or a war. Transition governments—often weak, interim, unelected. Gender transition—a path loaded with risk, stigma, and social resistance. Property transition—loss, inheritance, liquidation. It’s a word soaked in the psychology of rupture. It signals to the collective mind that something is being taken away before anything is given. It taps into our fears, not our desires. No one wants transition. Everyone wants better living.

In contrast, the business world avoids transition like contagion. It speaks in terms of updates, upgrades, optimizations, next-gen platforms. Even when businesses lay off workers, they call it a “strategic upgrade to efficiency.” In this language, movement is never loss. It’s gain. Aspiration. Progress. A better version of what you already use, own, or live in.

By calling it a Green Transition, the climate movement has accidentally made it sound disruptive, complicated, risky, costly, bureaucratic. And so, it breeds defensiveness, not initiative. People don’t want to “transition away” from gas heating. They want to upgrade to clean, silent, affordable electric comfort. They don’t want to “transition” to a new car—they want to upgrade to a sleek, instant-torque electric vehicle that never needs oil changes. This isn’t manipulation. It’s moral psychology.

This may sound like demagogy, but words are structures. If the structure is built on fear, even the noblest goals collapse. If built on aspiration, it becomes inhabitable. We must abandon the word transition immediately. Instead, speak in the language of shared elevation. Let’s upgrade our homes to a place where you can have fun naked in every room in the middle of winter. Let’s upgrade our transport systems to quiet, fast, and clean buses—like trains already are. Let’s upgrade our cities to walkable and cooler environments, where children can once again play in the streets. For every sector, every one of us, every policy—frame it not as sacrifice, but as ascent to luxury. And it will be luxury.

Another trap is the moral burden of saving the planet. It feels too large, too abstract. People don’t wake up wanting to be planetary saviors; they wake up wanting comfort, health, security, pride—for themselves and their children. Don’t burden truck drivers with another moral campaign—they are already saving the planet one kilometer at a time. The message must shift from grand, guilt-based imperatives to pragmatic, shared benefits: clean air, not carbon targets; cheaper bills, not punitive taxes; beautiful neighborhoods, not technocratic graphs and creepy smiling people in EU pamphlets and advertisements.

Words are the infrastructure of our future. The green movement’s defeat is linguistic. It chose the wrong metaphor. And metaphors are not decorations—they are mental blueprints for action. We must not build our future on the language of doom, fear, and loss, but on the vocabulary of improvement, clarity, and dignity. And why not: walking around naked in your house when it’s -15°C outside; going to school on an electric bus that doesn’t smell like an oilfield—that’s a dream everyone wants in on.

Stop transitioning. Start upgrading.