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Throughout his second term, President Donald Trump has been on a relentless push to boost fossil fuels, undermine renewable energy, and end all federal regulation to address climate change. The administration claims that this push will help people in the U.S. save money.

But in reality, the opposite is true: Fossil fuel dependence makes life more expensive.

Thanks to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, crude oil prices are soaring — leading to sky-high prices for gasoline and diesel. With that war, Trump has set off a domino effect, showing how deeply the fossil fuel industry has baked its prices directly into the U.S. economy.

For example, the price of food had already been increasing before the U.S. began its war. But now, economists have said that trend upwards will continue in coming months. One reason for that is the price spike for fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers providing nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, are made using natural gas. And around 10 percent of the world’s supply of urea, a common nitrogen fertilizer, comes from the Middle East — and is impacted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, because most food products are distributed using diesel-powered trucks, we’re seeing the impact of diesel prices on rising food prices in real time.

Trump’s unprovoked war would have been a disaster in any context. But people in the U.S. and worldwide, especially in the Asia-Pacific region and in Africa, would have felt a whole lot less economic pain if we hadn’t been so dependent on oil and gas in the first place. Experts forecast that the worst impacts are yet to come.

Residents of Polluted Areas Say Trump’s Rollbacks Are “Getting Really Scary”

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said back in March that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could cause a global........

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