The horrific and illegitimate U.S.-Israeli imperialist war on Iran has entered its second month. It is a war of massive destruction and dislocation, of continuing war crimes and rising civilian deaths, and immense environmental damage. 

In the face of a war in which Donald Trump has threatened the “obliteration” of Iranian civilization, a number of environmental and antiwar activists are seeing a possible silver lining. They argue that the disruption of oil supplies and the sharp rise in oil and natural gas prices might spur governments to get off fossil fuels. Writer-activist Bill McKibben put it this way: “any leader with a brain would be trying to build up their clean energy to avoid the kind of fossil fuel squeeze now underway.”

This is delusional and dangerous thinking that blinds people to the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system that is at the root of this war and the global environmental emergency. This is a system governed by the competitive drive for profit and more profit based on global exploitation and plunder of the planet. It is a system driven by the competitive quest of imperialist powers to dominate regions and control raw materials. 

The notion that the war on Iran might speed up the transition to renewable energy also leads people away from recognizing the only real solution that could give humanity a chance to decisively confront and act on the environmental crisis: the revolution to overturn this system and to forge a sustainable socialist economy and revolutionary society that can go to work on repairing and protecting the planet. 

SOME BASIC TRUTHS 

1) The war on Iran in the short run is actually increasing dependence on fossil fuels. 

Energy shortages are impelling many countries to look towards cheaper, “at-hand” energy sources. Coal use, which is highly polluting, has increased globally through the war. At the same time, the spike in oil prices is making it more attractive/profitable to expand oil and natural gas drilling—along with investment in infrastructure, like new terminals to load and ship liquefied natural gas.

These short-term “fixes” have the effect of further locking-in the economies of this world system of capitalism-imperialism to carbon-emitting sources of energy. Keep in mind this fact: despite the increasing adoption of renewable energy like solar and wind, fossil fuels still supply 80 percent of global energy demand! The new “green investment” in the U.S. is an add-on to, not a replacement of, the massive and still growing fossil-fuel energy base of the U.S. economy.

2) Fossil fuels are not simply sources of energy; they are also weapons of geopolitics and great-power rivalry of imperialism. 

Oil and natural gas play a strategic role in the balance of power and competition among the imperialists. This is one of the reasons that there is no rapid transition away from fossil fuels. 

The U.S. is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world, and is not so directly dependent for its domestic energy needs on oil from the Middle East. But its military dominance in the Middle East and the fact that oil is priced in dollars in global markets... these and other factors give U.S. imperialism tremendous leverage over the world economy. 

The point is that control over oil and natural gas are weapons of rivalry. Russia cut off most gas supplies to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine. For years, the U.S. has blocked Iran, an ally of Russia, from exporting and selling much of its oil. So the question of who calls the shots in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil is shipped, has enormous implications in the great-power rivalry within the imperialist world system. 

There's something else of strategic importance about oil and the U.S. empire. The U.S. military runs on oil--it is the world's largest institutional consumer of oil and a top emitter of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

3) Wind and solar power are being developed within the framework of imperialist exploitation, rivalry, and war-making. 

Renewable energy cannot escape the global dynamics of capitalism-imperialism. One of the barriers under this system to transitioning away from fossil fuels is the huge investment in fossil fuels in exploration, extraction, refining, engineering, and the financing of this and more. Those investments must be profitably recouped (in other words, the investment has to be made back, with a profit). That's how capitalism works. 

And solar and wind power under this system must answer to the dictates of profitability. Raw materials like cobalt, coltan, and copper, essential for solar power battery storage, are subject to competition to cheapen costs. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a major source of some of these materials—and the supply chains providing those materials pivot on vicious super-exploitation, often involving child labor. 

Civil and regional wars of mass and horrendous killings and destruction have been stoked by local and external powers seeking access to, control over, markets for these minerals. China dominates the global processing of these minerals; the U.S. is scrambling to secure mining rights; Russia is trading military support for mining concessions. Over a million people in the Congo were displaced in 2025 alone as a result of mineral-related violence. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is incorporating solar power into its arsenal of death and destruction. From a recent academic study: “Together with private partners, the Army has developed more capable battery technology to be used in communication devices, drones, electric vehicles and ground robots. Similarly, the Navy develops and tests solar-propelled ‘eternal drones’ with integrated battery storage, creating unmanned aerial vehicles that never need to refuel.” 

4) The capitalist-imperialist system is taking humanity to the brink... BUT a different way of living, a far better system, is possible. 

The danger of world war, of nuclear war, is increasing. Oceans are warming at a quickening rate; glaciers are melting more rapidly; sea levels are rising faster than climate scientists had previously projected. The Trump fascist regime is rolling back regulations to curb carbon emissions and using federal resources to ramp up the production of oil, natural gas, and coal. Climate summits of the world's governments have miserably failed to take decisive and meaningful action to address the climate crisis. 

A radically different future is possible. Through a real revolution, a new society could be established that is organized to meet human needs sustainably and to repair, as much as possible, the damage already done to Earth.

The vision for a whole new system to be put in place of this one is concretely laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. This provides a framework for a society that puts internationalism, the flourishing of humanity, and the survival of the planet at its core—on the basis of overthrowing the existing system and establishing a liberating state power. The revolutionary government would take control of and establish socialist public-state ownership of the means of production (no more GM or Exxon Mobile or JPMorgan Chase!) and forge a consciously planned and sustainable socialist economy. 

Day 1, we start to dismantle the global network of military bases. Right away, the new economy will work to restructure away from fossil fuels in manufacture, transport, and agriculture, with massive investment in renewable energy. The new system will put an end to U.S. imperialism’s life-destroying/pollution-intensive supply chains of global exploitation. The new society will work to unleash scientific know-how and cooperation—and promote international initiatives as part of rising to this unprecedented challenge of protecting and repairing the planet. The new society will struggle for a sense of responsibility to the planet... and mobilize people from all walks of life. This will be a society of great debate and dissent over the the biggest questions before it and all of humanity.

No longer will profit and the needs of empire be in command. The new society will use its strengths and resources to promote revolution throughout the world. To free humanity and create the global foundations that provide a real chance to deal with this global-planetary environmental crisis.

That vision is not a vague hope. We are in a rare time when this revolution is more possible. Now is the time to learn about and become part of this revolution.