Trump the environmentalist? How his Iran war exposed the fragility of dirty energy — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Global fossil fuel emissions are set to fall 0.5% this year, the first annual drop outside economic crashes or Covid, per Carbon Brief, as Strait of Hormuz disruptions pushed oil near $100/barrel
- IEA now says oil consumption may peak this year — four years earlier than its previous 2029 estimate — as countries from the UK to India to Thailand accelerated renewable buildouts to escape price shocks
- Exxon forecast the world will still burn 105 million barrels of oil per day in 2050, up from 100 million last year, with two-thirds of the global energy mix remaining fossil fuels at mid-century
- Trump's domestic record stands in stark contrast: his administration eviscerated pollution limits, funnelled taxpayer cash to fossil fuels, and unilaterally cancelled renewable projects, even calling environmentalists 'terrorists'
- Eight largest oil and gas companies netted more than $90 billion in just the first three months of the war, prompting even Trump to complain they were 'making too much money'
- Gavin Newsom called Trump the 'greatest gift' to the environmental movement for 'waking the world up to how vulnerable we are to petro-dictatorships'; Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson called that framing 'tunnel vision'
- Solar adoption is exploding in developing nations, with Al Gore citing 100,000 panels installed daily in Africa and 'three panels and an inverter' replacing goats as a bride's dowry in parts of Pakistan
Why it matters: Oil majors pocketed $90bn while consumers paid ~$100/barrel for months, and that price shock — not climate policy — is doing what decades of advocacy couldn't: shifting capital toward renewables worldwide. But with Exxon projecting 105 million barrels/day in 2050 and AI data centers driving gas demand, the emissions dip could prove temporary once prices normalize.
Ask SkimNews
