Oil refinery near Ashland, Kentucky. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s anti-environmental “Drill baby, drill” stance, now may not seem the time to champion a greener future, but we have no choice if we want the earth to remain habitable. Across the globe, the politics of oil continues causing conflict, millions of people die each year from pollution, while rising global temperatures devastate more and more communities. Perhaps we can look to Trump himself for the solution after he noted in his January 20 inaugural speech, “Sunlight is pouring over the entire world.” Yes, it is – 170 petajoules every second. More than enough to power the future.

Much of today’s fractured geopolitics can be dated to 1960 and the formation of OPEC, when a group of oil-rich countries led by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela decided they wanted more wealth – their own wealth as they noted – which until then had mostly accrued to the so-called Seven Sisters petroleum giants. The bickering hasn’t stopped amid fake gluts and shortages. Today, the oil market is a multi-trillion-dollar business, where seven of the top 50 global companies are oil majors (Forbes), while the partially public Saudi Aramco is the third richest in the world with almost $500 billion in annual sales and a $2 trillion market value (behind JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway). Ten of the top 100 are also car companies, led by Toyota with $310 billion annual sales and $270 billion market value.

Conflict is also the norm when it comes to oil and money: Nigeria, Ecuador, Iraq, Venezuela, and the Middle East, to name a few. In 1973, the “oil weapon” was used for the first time to restrict exports to the West after the United States sent $2.2 billion in arms to Israel, because of Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack to regain lost territory in the 1967 Six-Day War. The price of oil rose from $2.70 to $11.00 per barrel, a.k.a. the First Oil Shock. The Second Oil Shock came after the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979, further raising prices from $13 to $34. Call it “petronomics” as transactional as any Trump tariff or quid-pro-quo land deal.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is also about oil and natural gas, especially the control of pipelines into Europe and transit fees, while conflict with China is ratcheting up in the West partly because of the increased flow of oil from the Caspian region to Xinjiang, China’s “Gateway to Europe.” China’s financial interest in the Panama Canal is also being cited as a potential flashpoint if access to American LNG tankers or warships were to be restricted in time of strife or from increased fees (roughly $1 million per ship). South Sudan is suffering its own horrors because of restricted pipeline access to the coast, while Yemen has become a pirates’ haven in what The Economist called a “Red Sea protection racket.”

Even Gaza can be seen as a petroleum war with trillions of dollars in play after a natural gas field was found 35 km off the coast in 2000 and another nearby in 2011, holding ten times Britain’s North Sea reserves. Split among Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean could become the next oil hot spot as competing nations attempt to transport their branded liquid gold to market with the added twist that Lebanon and Israel don’t have an agreed border, while an ongoing territory dispute exists between Greece and Turkey, who grudgingly share the island of Cyprus. Forget the obvious canards designed to hog the news cycle and enrage non-MAGA followers, Trump’s proposed Gaza land grab has oil written all over it. The interest in Gaza is about territorial rights, not non-existent international “Riviera” resorts. Clearly, the United States is no longer interested in being considered an honest actor on the world stage when one has to play follow the peanut without the peanut.

The health problems associated with fossil fuels have been known since we first started burning coal. According to the

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