Oil Dependency, Trump's Iran War and Paths to Sustainable and Secure Energy Alternatives
Chris Gloninger, a senior scientist in climate and risk communication at Woods Hole Group in Bourne, Mass., is also a fine communicator, as you’ll see via his Weathering Climate Change Substack, his X output, on Tiktok and elsewhere.
On Monday, as oil markets reacted to President Trump’s war on Iran, Gloninger posted a video riff on X that immediately recalled something I wrote in 1991, when the United States entered another Middle East war after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
Here’s Gloninger’s video, followed by the op-ed article that was my first New York Times byline (which, as I’ve noted wryly, ran adjacent to a Mobil Oil ad).
As he states:
Oil just spiked 13% because this guy started bombing Iran. Thirteen percent. Overnight. That’s your “reliable” energy. Twenty percent of the world’s oil flows through one narrow strait controlled by Iran. One chokepoint. One war. And your gas bill explodes. This isn’t a hypothetical - it’s happening right now.
You know what didn’t spike 13% today? Sunlight. Wind. The sun doesn’t care who’s president. No dictator controls it. No navy can blockade it.
The International Energy Agency confirmed solar is the cheapest electricity in history. Costs dropped 89% in a decade. In 2025, renewables hit 26% of all U.S. electricity. 88% of every new power source built in America last year? Renewable.
People told you renewables were “unreliable.” But the only thing that’s unreliable is an energy supply that crashes every time a missile flies over the Persian Gulf.
Every solar panel is a barrel of oil you never need from a war zone. That’s not idealism. That’s national security. That’s math.
Another Persian Gulf oil war
I wrote this op-ed while researching my 1992 book Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast and watching the palls of black smoke rise from Kuwait’s oil fields.
It still blows my mind that the oil ad ran alongside the story - part of what was Exxon Mobil’s decades-long strategy of buying such space to influence opinion. Amy Westervelt’s Drilled podcast did a marvelous job exposing this history.
What If the Oil Just Burned Away?
First published January 24, 1991 in The New York Times
I had a little daydream as I watched the latest television reports from the war in the Persian Gulf. As plumes of black smoke rose from the blasted refineries in Kuwait and Iraq, and Saddam Hussein promised to blow up still more, I found myself briefly imagining what would happen if all the oil beneath the desert sands of that troubled region were set ablaze by this war.
Just imagine the startled looks on the faces of all the generals and politicians and economic pundits as they looked around after the last flickering flames had died down and the last clouds of smoke dissipated.
Suddenly, they would see the swamps of Iraq and the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula in a different light. All around would be an inhospitable landscape unsuited for the production of anything except dates and camel dung. Everyone would just pack up and go home.
Even Saddam Hussein.
After all, why did he invade Kuwait to begin with? He was fighting with the Emir over the vast pool of oil that straddles their common border, 10,000 feet underground.
Once all the oil burned, things would get interesting on the home front as well. With the world deprived most of its known reserves, oil prices would jump, let's say, fivefold. Suddenly, President Bush wouldn't have to worry about crafting an energy policy because the country would have one instantly, born of necessity. Who would need Government incentives to conserve oil with crude going for $125 a barrel and gasoline hitting $7 a gallon at the pump?
The millions of commuters who take their cars to the office every morning might finally have to opt for mass transit. Maybe then they’d be willing to put some of the money they spend on parking and gas into improving those woeful trains and subways.
Car manufacturers might even be forced to start putting those unsightly gas mileage figures back in their sleek magazine ads again. And the Japanese -- who have recently put all their efforts into outdoing the Americans at building high-performance, eight-cylinder, gas-guzzling luxury sedans -- might have to lead Detroit back to small cars again.
Maybe the worldwide population explosion of automobiles would be slowed. It had better slow down. There are 500 million cars on earth. In 35 years, that number is expected to quadruple. Two billion cars. More oil wars.
Maybe American businesses would finally learn to use fossil fuels efficiently. After all, the Europeans and Japanese already get twice as much industrial production out of a gallon of oil as we do.
Maybe Americans would finally replace some of their leaky windows. More energy escapes through the poorly insulated windows of American homes each year than flows through the Alaska pipeline.
Maybe more people would screw in those new compact fluorescent bulbs that throw the same amount of light as standard incandescent bulbs but consume a fourth as much energy and last 10 times as long.
Maybe solar power would no longer be scoffed at as a pipe dream. With the price of plastics -- which are made from oil -- skyrocketing, maybe Americans would finally put an end to the throw-away age.
It was a nice dream while it lasted. But the days wore on, the casualties mounted and the ground war began. There were plenty of fires in the Middle East, yes. And the smoke posed a grave environmental threat. But most of the oil still lay safe, beneath the sand.
There it will stay, patiently waiting for the day when peace returns. After the last of the fallen soldiers and civilians are buried, the Saudis and Kuwaitis -- and the Iraqis -- will return to the battered oilfields, uncap the wells and let it flow.
And we in America, Japan, Europe and the third world will write them a check, breathe a sigh of relief, and slake our relentless thirst.
And of course read Bill McKibben:
And for when you have time, Tomas Pueyo has posted a long review of his many assessments of Iran - kind of what we used to call an “all known thought” piece at The New York Times:
