Finally, Trump does something good for the planet. He just didn’t mean to |
Finally, Trump does something good for the planet. He just didn’t mean to
March 31, 2026 — 7:30pm
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It’s not often that climate advocates find themselves quietly grateful to Donald Trump for anything. And yet, here we are.
Not because of anything he set out to do. But because in a world shaped by conflict, strongman politics and economic brinkmanship, something has become increasingly obvious. Fossil fuels aren’t just a climate problem. They’re an economic liability.
Recent global events have delivered what the UN climate chief called “an abject lesson” that fossil fuel dependence is “ripping away national security and sovereignty, and replacing it with subservience and rising costs”.
That’s not activist rhetoric. That’s financial reality, and it’s now a pattern.
Over the past five years, we’ve seen the same story repeat itself. A geopolitical disruption, a war, a blockade, a diplomatic fracture, and suddenly, energy markets lurch, prices spike, and governments are forced into costly interventions just to stabilise supply.
These shocks don’t just affect wholesale markets. They flow directly through to households, small businesses and national budgets. They shape inflation, interest rates and ultimately household finances. In that world, the question is no longer simply how we reduce emissions. It is how we reduce exposure.
The European Union alone spent more than €420 billion ($685 billion) on fossil fuel imports in 2024. And when conflict flares in Ukraine or the Middle East, energy prices spike, inflation returns and entire economies wobble. Including Australia’s. Households and businesses will continue to feel the aftershocks of a global crisis that is now pulsing through our economy for as long as we depend on fossil fuels to power it.
This is the part of the climate story that, despite decades of campaigning, we have often struggled to land. For years, climate change has often been dismissed as a moral or social issue, a question of duty to future generations, of saving the planet. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies and their advocates have successfully positioned coal and gas as matters of economic necessity, practical, and essential to prosperity.
While our duty to future generations matters, appeals to environmental concern have not been enough to win the argument across the bulk of the community, especially in difficult economic times.
Research we have undertaken shows that pro-climate arguments framed only around environmental concern often miss the mark, especially under inflationary pressure. When framed in terms of financial benefits and risks, people lean in.
We’ve survived oil shocks before – by changing our energy use. We must again
Nick O'MalleyEnvironment and Climate Editor
Environment and Climate Editor
That is the shift we are now seeing globally. Not because people suddenly care more about emissions. But because they care, understandably, about stability. And fossil fuels, it turns out, are anything but stable.
They tie economies to volatile global markets, exposing households to price shocks amid inflation and increasing pressure on household budgets.
Or, as United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell put it with admirable bluntness: “Sunlight doesn’t depend on vulnerable shipping straits.”
For decades, fossil fuels have been defended as the stable backbone of modern economies, reliable, proven and essential. But that assumption was built in a different era, one of relatively predictable geopolitics and stable supply chains.
That world is gone. Today, fossil fuels behave less like a foundation and more like a risk multiplier, amplifying the financial consequences of every geopolitical tremor.
By contrast, renewable energy systems are inherently more contained. They are generated domestically, distributed locally, and largely insulated from the kinds of external shocks that now define global markets.
As a nation blessed with an abundance of natural resources, we should seize the chance to chart our own economic destiny.
Whereas fossil fuels are increasingly tied to volatility, geopolitical risk and economic exposure, renewables offer something rare in this current world, predictability. Through domestic supply, lower long-term cost and insulation from the whims of global conflict.
The impact of the war on oil prices is bound to accelerate a trend I am already observing in our research. Australians are increasingly taking a pragmatic approach to energy policy and less of an ideological approach.
Trump’s war is failing and Iran’s in for the long fight
Peter HartcherPolitical and international editor
Political and international editor
If Donald Trump’s brand of global disruption has done anything, it has stripped away the illusion that fossil fuels are a safe foundation for modern economies.
The task now is not to convince people that climate change is happening or that renewables are a better form of energy, especially given more than 70 per cent of Australians already agree.
It is time to start talking about renewables as the safe bet, the energy that can power a strong and secure nation. A future built on the back of a solar panel, not reliant on the decisions of unstable leaders in nations that no longer have our best interests at heart.
This is no longer a debate between environment and prosperity, but what kind of system we choose to build.
One that remains exposed to global shocks, price volatility and decisions made far beyond our borders. Or one that is more self-reliant, more stable and better able to deliver affordable energy over the long term.
For a long time, the politics of climate change has been stuck in a loop, caught between moral urgency on one side and cost-of-living fear on the other.
What this moment offers is a way through. Not by asking people to choose between the planet and prosperity. But by showing, clearly and consistently, that in an increasingly unstable world, they are now the same thing.
Dr Rebecca Huntley is a leading Australian social researcher and Director of Research at 89 Degrees East. An expert in social trends and climate communication, she led the development of the Climate Compass and authored numerous books, including ‘How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way that Makes a Difference’.
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