I know readers of my blog do not expect absolute consistency, blog by blog, but you may be somewhat surprised to see Donald Trump excoriated one week as the “Destroyer of Hope” and the next as “The Great Illuminator”! But here’s the thing: he’s inadvertently becoming the Great Illuminator (as in shedding light on the suicidal workings of the global economy today) precisely by virtue of applying himself so ruthlessly to destroying people’s hope for a better world.
Let’s start with the easy bit: day by crazy day, Trump’s war with Iran strips bare the true cost of our continuing addiction to fossil fuels: oil at $100 – $150 a barrel; chokepoints and straitened dependencies; multi-billion dollar fossil fuel investments brought low by a few home-grown drones; increasingly costly energy security; a rolling cost of living crisis, and, depending on what happens over the next couple of weeks, the very real possibility of a global recession.
That’s the downside. And it could be utterly horrendous.
The upside? Why would any single country on Earth (apart from the USA, Russia and the dozen or so petrostates that make up today’s fossil fuel incumbency) hesitate for a single second in expediting a transition strategy out of fossil fuels? If some have failed to understand the imperative rationale for this (and we all know why that’s the case!), there’s now not one residual doubt available to them.
The geopolitics of this is extraordinary. Conjure up for a moment the near-permanent beam on XI Jinping’s face as he gratefully accepts the free pass that Trump has given him to dominate the ‘post-fossil fuel energy economy’ as ruthlessly as the USA has dominated the fossil fuel energy economy.
(This may be a bit geeky, but check out what’s happening — as a direct consequence of the war in Iran — in the battle between the Petrodollar and the Petroyuan!).
Most people don’t appreciate this, but the renewables revolution is all but done, in large part because of China. It’s just a question of how long it takes. The batteries/storage revolution is in full swing, massively fast-tracking the renewables revolution in the process. And the wider ‘electrify everything revolution’ is gearing up nicely. In five years time, we’ll be wondering what took us so long!
Shine on, Donald!
Beyond that, five weeks into the war, The Great Illuminator’s spotlight is now moving on to reveal the reality of the suicidal food and agricultural system on which the world depends — every aspect of which is itself dependent on historically cheap fossil fuels.
Courtesy of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee we now have some cracking scenarios to show us how this ‘food insecurity crisis’ goes: the cost of essential inputs into today’s intensive agriculture (primarily fertilisers, pesticides and fuel, all of which depend on production in the Gulf — including about 35% of the world’s supply of fertilisers) continues to rise. And then rise again. Even if the war ends soon, costs stay high as producers struggle to repair the massive damage to infrastructure and supply chains that the war has already done.
Many experts believe that ‘an unprecedented global food crisis is now inevitable’. Equally inevitably, it will be the poor of the world who suffer most. The World Food Programme talks of “shock waves across the globe”, anticipating that the number of people who will experience acute food insecurity could soon exceed 350 million.
What the World Food Programme has not pointed out is the very meaty elephant in the room: prices for these inputs will now stay high for a long time, primarily because demand will stay high, primarily to maintain high yields of those commodity crops to feed the billions of animals that our meat-obsessed food economy depends on.
A bridge too far, perhaps? To suggest that today’s addicted beef-eaters are as threatened a species as addicted petrolheads? That per capita meat consumption will need to decline at least as rapidly as per capita dependence on fossil fuels?
Probably – but before we move on, have a look at one of the most eloquent summaries I’ve ever seen of why our dependence on animal-based protein is the principal cause of ecosystem collapse (https://www.plantist.org/briefing/)
Back to The Great Illuminator! And here you need to give your imagination full rein.
Have you spotted the emerging transition from TACO (Trump Always Cops Out) to TISOP (Trump Increasingly Shits on Our Parade)? An endorsement from Donald Trump these days is already something of a mixed blessing, but what if it soon becomes an out-and-out poison pill?
Many believe that Mark Carney only won the Canadian general election in 2025 because Trump so enthusiastically endorsed his neoliberal opponent (Pierre Poilievre), who was otherwise on track to do to the Canadian economy what Trump continues to do to the US economy.
In Italy, one imagines that Georgia Maloney will be a lot less lovey-dovey next time Trump is looming over her, having lost the recent ‘Trump inspired’ referendum in Italy to weaken the independence of the Italian judiciary.
And have you noticed, here in the UK, how Farage is rapidly transitioning from Arselicker-in-Chief to ‘Donald Who?’.
The most important test of this poison pill hypothesis takes place in 10 days time. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, has been Trump’s thuggish Mini Me ever since Trump was first elected president back in 2016. It’s touch and go whether Orban’s adulation for Trump exceeds even his adulation for Putin.
If his opponent, Peter Magyar, wins on April 12th, this will be recognised around the world as a massive ‘up yours, Orban’, and, at one degree removed, ‘up yours, Putin’, and (please God!) ‘up yours, Trump’. (These days, I spend quite a lot of time transmitting positive vibes to Peter Magyar).
Shine on, Donald!
There’s one final speculative reason to be a bit more hopeful about the future than might be warranted by the horrors of the world today. Not least those going on in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Lebanon, courtesy of Trump and Netanyahu’s genocidal endeavours.
It’s this: what if Trump were to become THE poster child for the entire Billionaire Class dominating the world today?
I think most of us already have some seriously strong antipathy to the likes of Elon Musk, Jim Ratcliffe, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, etc., etc. But what if Donald J Trump Jnr (a rather lowly and inadequate billionaire, as it happens, if it’s sheer size that you’re looking for) were to become THE poster child for the entire Billionaire Class? In all his maximally corrupt, lethally psychopathic and irredeemably narcissistic glory?
Shine on, Donald, shine on!
2 April 2026
