Democrats urged to link clean energy to affordability as Iran war hikes up prices | Climate crisis

Democrats should make a stronger case for the affordability and resilience of clean energy in the face of global shocks, according to some of the party’s leading voices on climate.

As the war in Iran hurts economies by increasing the cost of oil and gas, countries are seeking to accelerate their transition to cleaner energy. But in the United States, Donald Trump has sought to eliminate any alternatives to fossil fuels, while opposing Democrats have been reluctant to link the conflict to any action on the climate crisis.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, following the US and Israeli attack on Iran, caused a surge in energy prices around the world. In the United States, the cost of gasoline has soared above $4.10 per gallon nationally, with Trump admitting that costs could even be “a little bit higher” by November.

Democrats pointed to this as further evidence of the US president’s broken promises to lower the cost of living for Americans. But there have been few calls for a radical shift away from volatile fossil fuels to clean energy in response to the conflict, much to the chagrin of those who support action on the climate crisis.

“There is a timely clash on climate and costs that Democrats can win, provided we have the courage to actually join the fight,” said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who added that “true energy independence will be achieved by powering our economy with renewable energy, whose fuel sources are unlimited, free and independent of geopolitical events.”

“Democrats will continue to lose the just and winnable fight for the future of clean energy if we cede the battlefield to the fossil fuel liars and misguided climate advocates in our own party,” Whitehouse said.

Climate “silence,” in which politicians and businesses downplay or ignore the need to reduce the planet’s heat emissions, has been widespread in the United States during Trump’s second term. A crushing defeat in the 2024 election and lingering concerns about inflation — polls show that gasoline costs are Americans’ top concern over the Iran war — have left Democrats grappling with a critique of affordability rather than the planet’s imperiled habitability, despite the obvious connection between the two.

“Unique moment of opportunity”

The war in Iran offers Democrats a “unique moment of opportunity” to tout the benefits of cleaner options like electric cars, but the focus should be on “reducing costs to the consumer, which should have been the message on climate protection all along,” according to Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House.

“I don’t think they’ve seized the political opportunity yet,” Bledsoe said. “They need to stay really focused on how these next-generation technologies will provide a benefit to the consumer. When you present clean energy as reducing costs for the consumer first and improving the overall economy second, people are happy to reduce emissions third.”

Translating that into a winning policy message has been a struggle for Democrats, who under Joe Biden’s administration passed sweeping climate legislation to spur clean energy job creation, but the bill was gutted by Republicans who now control Congress. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, has proposed a partial resurrection of clean energy incentives if his party returns to power.

But Democrats must do better to present solar, wind and battery technologies as a way to reduce U.S. exposure to international fossil fuel costs driven by world events, according to Ro Khanna, a senior Democratic member of Congress. “I really believe we missed a moment to get there with the war in Ukraine,” he said. “We should have tied the clean energy program to Americans’ economic security and our national security, and we should do it again.”

Longer term, Khanna added, the United States needs to “wean itself off petrostates. We need a clean-tech boost.”

Such a move away from fossil fuels, which scientists say is imperative if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts, has been blocked by Trump, who has implemented a “drill, baby drill” approach to oil and gas extraction and taken extraordinary steps, even amid the Iran crisis, to shut down domestic clean energy production that he has called a “scam” and “scam.”

Soaring oil prices could even be beneficial, Trump suggested, because “when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” That money goes mostly to big fossil fuel companies, with the world’s 100 largest oil and gas companies making more than $30 billion an hour in unearned profits in the first month of the war.

Trump’s approach differs radically from that of other countries that have sought to quickly reduce their exposure to a distant conflict. Electric car sales have boomed in South Korea and Malaysia, while in Pakistan, electric rickshaws are out of stock. “This is a wake-up call,” Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said recently. “We are going to convert all motorcycles to electric motorcycles. All cars, all trucks, all tractors must [also] be electric.

The European Union also plans to accelerate the deployment of clean energy to help reduce electricity bills. “Any delay in investing in the energy transition risks leading to higher costs for society at a later stage,” says a draft proposal from the European Commission. The plan comes ahead of a conference this month in Colombia, where representatives from 85 countries will meet to develop a road map on how to move beyond the fossil fuel era.

The war in Iran is a textbook case illustrating the need to achieve this transition, according to the United Nations. “Clean energy is the antidote to the chaos of fossil fuel costs because it is cheaper, safer and faster to market,” said Simon Stiell, UN climate chief. “Wars do not disrupt the supply of sunlight for solar power, and wind power does not depend on vulnerable shipping straits.”

The growing toll of the climate crisis, however, is the main reason to abandon coal, oil and gas, advocates say. Such impacts are increasingly apparent in the United States, as well as the rest of the world, with the country experiencing the hottest and driest start to the year on record, with record heat in March and bouts of drought, heat and wildfires ravaging much of the western United States.

Despite the Trump administration’s dismissal of climate science, two-thirds of Americans are worried about global warming, a poll shows, with most Americans underestimating how concerned others are about the topic as it has faded from media coverage.

There has been “surprising silence” from Democrats and climate activists that clean energy is cheaper, inexhaustible and more locally controlled than fossil fuels, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, a Yale University academic who studies public perceptions of the climate crisis. “And, by the way, it reduces the carbon pollution that causes global warming,” he added.