Engin Akyurt/Unsplash
President Donald Trump’s unprovoked and illegal attack on Iran has sent crude oil, gasoline, and diesel prices through the roof. In addition, farmers are facing sharp increases in the cost of fertilizers produced from oil and gas.
But while the costs mount for regular people, the administration’s allies in the fossil fuel industry stand to profit handsomely. And that seems to be exactly the point.
The war’s worst costs are human lives. U.S. and Israeli attacks have indiscriminately killed thousands of Iranian civilians, including school children. Bombings have destroyed schools, hospitals, pharmaceutical plants, and water desalination plants—in a country experiencing a water crisis. The bombing of oil refineries and storage facilities has led to massive plumes of toxic smoke, effectively poisoning the civilian population. And the economic hardship caused by rising fuel and fertilizer prices will harm people around the world—from the Asia-Pacific region and Africa to the United States itself.
Rising fuel prices obviously impact the cost of living for drivers. According to one estimate from Brown University, the war has already cost Americans $17 billion at the gas pump. Rising fuel costs also drive up the cost of living for everyone. The price of diesel impacts the cost of all goods that are transported, including essentials such as food.
While fuel prices have fluctuated since their peak wartime levels, high prices are here to stay for the foreseeable future because refineries and other infrastructure in the Middle East have been damaged and will take time to repair. Because the market for oil is global, the United States is not insulated from the high prices in spite of being currently the world’s largest producer and a net exporter of oil.
Before the war, some countries, such as Pakistan and Spain, had already started investing in renewables to wean their economies off fossil fuels and their volatile pricing. Others, such as France and South Korea, seem to have learned the right lessons from this crisis by announcing new efforts to do the same.
Under Trump, however, the United States is stubbornly locking the country into fossil fuel dependence by seeking to benefit the fossil fuel industry and undermine its competitors. His administration has eliminated the legal basis to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, expanded the fossil fuel industry’s access to resources and weakened automobile fuel efficiency standards.
Taken together, these moves make Americans more, not less, dependent on oil and gas—and more vulnerable to economic shocks from their inherent price volatility.
These are bad decisions, but the administration knows exactly what it’s doing. On the campaign trail, Trump openly solicited—and received—contributions from fossil fuel oligarchs. He clearly sees the industry as a key political ally, and even installed former fracking CEO Chris Wright as his Energy Secretary.
Trump’s actions on fossil fuels aren’t a bumbling series of mistakes. They’re a calculated set of moves to enrich an industry that backs him—and to entrench its political and economic power.
The attack on vehicle fuel efficiency standards is a striking example, because it benefits literally no one except Big Oil. The attack on Iran may have had other causes, but it’s also resulted in windfall profits for the fossil fuel industry.
This is a government that clearly does not care about the lives of people in Iran and elsewhere, and is willing to commit war crimes for geopolitical ends. So it’s not a stretch to argue that it also doesn’t care about regular people in this country—and is more than happy to inflict pain and destabilize the economy as long as it benefits their allies in the fossil fuel industry.
The American people, and people around the world, deserve a real transition to renewable energy—not wars and disruptions that benefit only a tiny elite.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.