Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive. Fossil fuel companies bankrolled his presidential campaign to stop the transition in its tracks. But when you back a volatile narcissist, unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you shouldn’t expect to control the outcome.

It’s not that the fossils are suffering yet. As prices have soared since Trump and Netanyahu attacked Iran, oil executives have been selling shares at gobsmacking prices: the CEO of Chevron, for example, has cashed $104m so far this year. Vladimir Putin has also received a massive boost to his Ukraine invasion budget. As promised, Trump has gutted clean energy rules and programmes, green alternatives and environmental science. A fortnight ago, he stated, with the usual quantum of evidence (zero): “The environmentalists, I mean, they are terrorists … I call them environmental terrorists.”

But Trump’s illegal war, waged at terrible cost, is also focusing minds in governments around the world. It’s a demonstration not just that the orange emperor cannot be trusted, but also that fossil fuels cannot be trusted. Concentrated in certain regions, in the hands of either unreliable allies, potential opponents or outright enemies, dependent on long supply lines that can easily be disrupted, subject to price volatility that can trigger regime change in almost any country that relies on them, they now look less like a lifeline than a liability.

Again, it is true that the short-term response of some governments has been to favour fossil energy, through cutting fuel taxes or raising subsidies to help ease the cost........

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