After all, they are just words, a sustainability's vocabulary shift

“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The eagerness with which most of us juggle the term that has been elevated to the hype of the moment, often unhindered by the absence of any adequate understanding of it, is as great as the gratuitousness with which the same term is banished when a new one takes its place. The previously so enthusiastically embraced term then remains orphaned and eroded and returns, while the new hype—have you met my AI agent?—is eagerly followed, back to those who, averse to the fashions of the day, skillfully delve into it and plow on undisturbed.

In 2021, a sustainability expert with a doctorate advised his audience to stop using the term "Triple Bottom Line" or TBL because it had long since become outdated, and to instead talk about "ESG". The undersigned was in attendance and chose to disregard the recommendation at the time and continues to do so to this day. This negation was not driven by a desire to be correct, but rather by the firm belief that the "triple bottom line" concept is deeply intertwined with the integration of sustainability into business strategies.

According to a recent bibliometric study by Noruiega et al. (2025), the number of academic publications on TBL grew by 23.23% annually from 2001 to 2023. The authors describe the influence of TBL on business strategy as multifaceted and significant, and do not consider TBL to be passé. On the contrary, they see a promising future for it and argue that embracing TBL principles can increase resilience, stimulate innovation and improve overall business performance, aligning business strategies with broader sustainability goals.

Regarding ESG, Noruiega et al. (2025) argue that environmental, social and governance criteria should be considered complementary to TBL and suggest that combining TBL and ESG frameworks can lead to more robust and effective strategies for sustainable business. However, on July 17, 2024, the Financial Times released a film entitled: “Who crashed the ESG party?” The party obviously refers to the hype of ESG as a buzzword and all the money that seemingly effortlessly found its way to ESG investments. When the credibility of ESG fund managers takes a serious hit due to objectives not being achieved, greenwashing and the political attack on ESG in the United States, this investment flow is jeopardised. Today, ESG has been dismissed, and “resilience” is the buzzword in financial circles when it comes to investments in renewable and clean technologies. After all, valuable infrastructure deserves to be protected from climate-related extreme weather and climate activists.

In the United States, however, ESG has been banned for other reasons. In 2021, Texas became the first state to ban investments in ESG funds by state and local government institutions by law. More specifically, two laws that have been passed prohibit these institutions from investing in companies that boycott fossil fuels and firearms for ESG reasons. Following the example of the state of Texas, 37 other American states have now taken similar initiatives. On July 6, 2024, the Texas Public Policy Foundation announced on its website that the anti-ESG laws “are working as intended,” namely that the laws are not causing economic damage to the state of Texas and that energy and firearms manufacturers remain protected.

Since taking office, the second Trump administration has been quick to ban, expunge and erase a whole series of terms from official communications. After all, there are other reasons why terms are being removed besides the loss of appeal. The list includes words and concepts such as climate change, climate science, diversity, justice, LGBTQ+, systemic racism, social justice, women, female, minorities, cultural heritage, socioeconomic, and underprivileged. This incomplete list is part of a broader action by the current administration to eliminate influence from the radical left.

The repeated departure from the Paris Agreement by the US and the appearance of Mr. Edward Heartney, Minister-Counsellor for ECOSOC at the US Mission to the United Nations, during the 58th plenary session of the UN General Assembly on March 4, 2025, in which he noted that the United States “rejects and repudiates” the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Mr. Heartney emphasised that globalist efforts such as the SDGs have been defeated at the ballot box—in other words, voted away democratically—and are contrary to US sovereignty.

Between words, terms and concepts that disappear into the background because they lose their sex appeal and those that the government banishes, prohibits and wipes out as if they never existed, a gigantic, wide and deep chasm yawns. In the first case, one can euphemistically dismiss the word carousel as the result of progressive insight and continue on one's way. In the second case, as the writer Anne Applebaum states in her book 'Autocracy, Inc.', it is about one of the key strategies of autocratic regimes that aims for nothing less than to undermine the opposition, control the public debate and suppress dissenting opinions.

Triple bottom line, ESG, resilience, sustainability, DEI, climate science, social justice, in the end they are just words. And they act like a red rag to a bull for those who benefit from these words not leading to the actions they call for.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.