<\/p>\n
D<\/span>Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone alive. Fossil fuel companies funded his presidential campaign to block that shift. However, when helping an unstable narcissist who cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you should not expect to control the outcome.<\/p>\n Not that fossils are still suffering. With prices soaring since President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Iran, oil company executives have been selling their stocks at eye-popping prices, with Chevron’s CEO, for example, cashing out $104 million so far this year. President Vladimir Putin has also received a significant increase in the budget for the invasion of Ukraine. As promised, Trump gutted clean energy rules and programs, green alternative energy, and environmental science. Two weeks ago, he said this with his usual pile of evidence (zero): “Environmental activists, I mean, they’re terrorists…I call them eco-terrorists.”<\/p>\n But Trump’s illegal war, waged at terrible cost, has also attracted the attention of governments around the world. This shows that not only can the Orange Emperor not be trusted, but fossil fuels can’t be trusted either. Concentrated in certain regions, in the hands of unreliable allies, potential adversaries, or outright enemies, dependent on long supply lines that are easily disrupted, and susceptible to price fluctuations that can cause regime change in nearly every country that relies on supply lines, they now look more like liabilities than lifelines.<\/p>\n Again, it is true that the short-term response of some governments is to support fossil energy through fuel tax cuts and increased subsidies to alleviate the cost of living crisis. But at the same time, many people are trying to reduce or break their dependence. The logic of switching to renewable energy seems inevitable.<\/p>\n This is certainly how their voters see it. The war sparked a surge in global demand for electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, heat pumps, and other fossil-free technologies. Since the attacks on Iran began, inquiries about purchasing EVs have increased by 23% in the UK, 50% in Germany and 160% in France. Similar interests exist in India, Southeast Asia, and South Korea. Even in the United States, where President Trump has been doing everything he can to disrupt the technology, interest is 20% higher than before the war.<\/p>\n The same goes for home solar panels and heat pumps. The people of this country are not so ignorant of their own interests as the Mail and Telegraph like to pretend.<\/p>\n The growing enthusiasm for green technology coincides with some notable advances. As climate change advocate Bill McKibben points out, battery technology is advancing at an astonishing rate that defies even recent predictions. Grid-scale batteries can quickly eliminate the need for fossil fuel plants as a power source of last resort. This will significantly reduce your electricity bill. Solid-state batteries may soon be able to charge anything, anywhere, at lightning-fast speeds, with much longer storage times and much longer ranges (in cars). Quantum batteries are now starting to look like a realistic possibility and could change the system once again.<\/p>\n We are in the midst of a major step change in energy supply and storage. Countries that fail to respond remain trapped in the fossil age, facing high bills and security concerns, while others transform their economies. Last week, Chinese carmaker BYD announced plans to build a network of super-fast chargers in the UK that can charge car batteries from 10% to 70% in five minutes. Gasoline and diesel automakers developing new models may as well invest in typewriters and rotary telephones.<\/p>\n The government should aim to electrify everything that can be electrified, and to abolish much of what cannot be electrified. Instead of trying to extract the last remnants of fossil fuels from the moribund North Sea oilfields, which can supply only a fraction of future demand and leave us dependent on foreign countries, as the gasbags claim, Britain should now focus its efforts on developing grid batteries, heat pumps and induction cooktops.<\/p>\n Half-hearted measures will only result in delays and unnecessary costs. After fully fossil cars are phased out in 2030, it makes no sense to continue selling new hybrid cars. An electric typewriter is still a typewriter.<\/p>\n This is also the best time to invest in energy savings and efficiency. One of former Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo’s notable achievements was to enable people to meet their needs more cheaply, more conveniently, and with significant reductions in carbon dioxide and air pollution through 15-minute city planning. This is one of many examples of how you can do more with less. Instead of trying to extend the long century of fossils, switching to 21st century technologies and solutions can not only protect us from price shocks and dictators, but also improve lives, create jobs, and prevent climate destruction. But today, with Trump doing the talking for us, we hardly need to point it out.<\/p>\n I believe his attacks on every possible environmental measure are motivated as much by billionaire nihilism as the demands of his sponsors. He may actually believe he is God, as his recent posts suggest. How could he prove it to himself? By ending the lives and living conditions of mortals, with the stroke of a pen, or with a lightning strike from a B-1 Lancer bomber. Destruction is not just a means to an end. It’s also the end.<\/p>\n The influence of his mad emperor stage spills outward. President Trump’s support for Viktor Orb\u00e1n may have contributed to the collapse of the Hungarian dictatorship. This would eliminate a vast financial infrastructure that funnels profits from Russian oil into propaganda networks across Europe and the United Kingdom. We are just beginning to understand how much of this country’s anti-environmental movement was funded in this way.<\/p>\n Long dismissed as “idealist” and “unrealistic,” the Green Party now appears to be hard-headed realists and true patriots. They are years ahead of their rivals in demanding a sensible transition at every level: environmental, economic and political. And unlike the far right, the hard right, and much of the rest of the political spectrum, they are not seduced by foreign funding that corrupts our politics.<\/p>\n Attacking Iran is not what any of us wanted. But the unintended consequences of Trump’s senseless wars could help sink Trumpism and the corrupt, filthy industries that prop it up everywhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #thought #fossil #fuel #user #Trump #spark #green #revolution #George #Monbiot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DDonald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone alive. Fossil fuel companies funded his presidential campaign to block that shift. However, when helping an unstable narcissist who cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you should not expect to control the outcome. Not that fossils are still … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1116,773,1121,1119,1122,1120,1118,1115,934,1117],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fossil","tag-fuel","tag-george","tag-green","tag-monbiot","tag-revolution","tag-spark","tag-thought","tag-trump","tag-user"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}