Netanyahu's amanuensis

Israel wanted a war with Iran and had little trouble talking guileless, gullible Trump into it. Tyrant Trump was so keen to wield the USA’s firepower (and distract from Epstein) that he made a fatal mistake.

If your chosen war will sabotage the world’s oil supply, you should first check if the home town has sufficient domestic storage of fossil fuels. Which it doesn’t. Not nearly.

At the end of February, the USA had 415 million barrels of oil in storage, its ‘strategic petroleum reserve', the lowest level in 40 years, well below the minimum baseline of 500 million barrels for safe storage in peacetime.

By contrast, China had 1.5 billion barrels (billion with a b).

There is no more explicit indication that Trump hurriedly went to war at Netanyahu's behest than to understand that he was completely unprepared at home.

The cost of living with fossil fools

The world’s most volatile area is its centre for oil and gas. The war now involves a dozen nations, including Qatar, the second-greatest exporter of LNG (USA first, Australia third). The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz shuts off 20% of the world’s oil.

We’ve long known the nonsense of relying on fossil fuels from the Middle East, but now we are seeing it with 20/20 vision.

The sudden shortage of oil dramatically increases the price. Americans, the greatest consumers of petrol, see the USA Bowser as the illuminated advertisement of the cost of living. Watch for the revolt.

Ending fossil fuel reliance will accelerate EVs replacing ICE vehicles everywhere. And benefit the planet. Sustainability wins one.

Trump mistakes his miss takes

Trump wages war on sustainability on so many fronts: climate denier par excellence, attacking the UN consensus, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, ending automobile efficiency regulations, and forever saying “drill, baby, drill”. He thinks personally, never nationally or globally.

Americans already hate the foreign war (59% opposed) and the phoney reasons given for it. How much worse with troops on the ground? Or when they discover that the USA is shooting $4m Patriot missiles at $20k drones? “Firing gold at plastic.”

What will happen when the POTUS for ‘no new wars’ makes his own Iraq / Afghanistan / Vietnam? When the body bags with US flags are unloaded at US bases?

The overwhelming sentiment of the American population will be that he is not good for them. Or for their hip pocket.

The war will be the final nail in Trump's coffin at the midterms. The doubling of revolt will effectively end his presidency 2 years before its due date, no matter how much he may try to corrupt the elections. Trump ends with a barrel of oil, not the barrel of a gun.

Goodbye to the greatest climate denier of all time. Will reverse the damage he’s wrought. This allows the better forces of the USA to resume the pursuit of sustainability alternatives to address not only climate change but also better air and water. Sustainability win two.

The 1973 show all over again

You can argue all you like for the better angels of our nature to move forward. That politicians and leaders will respond to clear proposals for improvements to our society over the enticements of the economy.

But morals and ethics won’t work by themselves. Don’t believe me? I have precedent on my side.

Some of the greatest thinkers of the 1960s (Rachel Carson, Barbara Ward and Jane Jacobs) were pleading for withdrawal from our dependence upon a single material for transport, power, plastics and fertilisers. And what happened? Less than nothing.

Cars got bigger, public transport declined, pollution increased, and we kick-started our climate decline.

Then, in 1973, the ‘Arab Oil Embargo’ caused a shock that woke the world to its reliance on fossil fuels. In response, the sustainability movement started life as ‘alternative technology’.

My experience was in a series of hippy communes in the American south-west, experimenting with solar and wind, documented and supported by the Whole Earth Catalogue. Worldwide action started.

The same call to arms of the last decade has met with even more vigorous resistance from the political-industrial-military complex.

But the hard reality of oil hitting $100 a barrel and the consequent inflation to the cost of living will once more transform society as we again turn towards ‘alternatives’. Electrification of everything, organic farming and net-zero housing.

One sour point: 50 years later all those hippie communes, once the home of forward thinking, are now home to ‘preppers’.

Isolationists, fearing the end of days, which Trump might just be foregrounding. Let’s hope the optimism for something other than desecration is not misplaced.

The last word

I will defer to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph: “For the 80 per cent of the global population living in countries that depend on net oil and gas imports, this wild episode is an unanswerable reminder of why it is folly to rely on a costly and technologically obsolete source of energy from the least stable region of the world.”

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, formerly of Tone on Tuesday. Amateurs draw plans, professionals draw sections – never at cross purposes.

Tone Wheeler

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