Trump Can’t Even Do Climate Change Right
By 
Trump wants all the climate change. But he can’t even burn fossil fuels correctly, instead creating the atmosphere for green energy through his idiotic war with Iran, which of course he also can’t benefit from because he’s a moron.
Donald Trump calls climate change a “hoax,” a “scam,” and a “con job.” He has (twice) withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate agreement, and he has pulled the plug, or tried to, on “the Green New Scam,” which is what he calls President Joe Biden’s extensive subsidies to alternative energy in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. (The Green New Deal, as Trump well knows, is a separate and never-enacted set of decarbonization policies advocated by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey.) Trump’s energy motto is “Drill, Baby, Drill”; he’s showered the petroleum industry with $80 billion in subsidies, and his Iran war is delivering sky-high windfall profits to the oil industry.
Nevertheless, through a combination of stubbornness, incompetence, and senility, Trump is inadvertently boosting the fortunes of alternative energy to a degree not seen since Biden was president. If he keeps this up, the Natural Resources Defense Council may have to erect a statue in his honor.
As I write, the international benchmark price of Brent crude is trading around $108.50 per barrel, and gasoline is priced, nationally, at an average $4.56 per gallon. In Washington, D.C., where I live, and where members of Congress in vulnerable districts have been known to gas up, the price is an even higher $4.67 per gallon. By attacking Iran, Trump prompted that nation’s ruling regime (very predictably) to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has made it unaffordable for Americans to fill their gas tanks. That’s bad. But the silver lining is that sky-high gas prices are a blessing to the environment. “Renewable Energy Is Booming Again,” says Barron’s. “Trump May Not Be a Fan of Clean Energy, but Iran War Is Accelerating Global Shift From Oil and Gas,” says The Guardian. “The Iran War Is Driving a Clean Energy Wake-Up Call,” says the climate-focused Canary Media. You can call it “The Only Good News From Iran” (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times), or you can call it “Donald Trump’s Green New Deal” (Tej Parikh, Financial Times). Parikh’s headline irritated me because that’s the one I pitched to my editor. It was already taken because the characterization is true.
Regrettably, this clean energy boom is happening mostly outside the United States, and especially in China, which was already cleaning our clock on renewable energy. Still, Planet Earth doesn’t care where carbon reductions originate, so long as they originate from someplace.
Trump laying the groundwork for China to supply green energy for the world would in fact really sum up Trump governance. Of course, Americans will never accept things like green energy. Can’t roll coal on the hippies that way.