Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:
The debate is over.
Clean Energy has won the argument, and the global energy transition will now proceed at warp speed.
“Those who’ve fought to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels are inadvertently supercharging the global renewables boom,” UN official Simon Stiell recently told a conference of nations,
Future generations will look back on the ill considered and incompetently managed Iran war as the global shock that triggered, finally, a massive rush to renewable energy.
It’s happening now, not because nations have awakened to the urgency of climate change — but rather because the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has finally driven home the critical unreliability of fossil fuels.
Globally, leadership has been making this point clearly.
“What gives us control is renewables, our own homegrown energy — which is more secure and more independent. I think we should go further and faster to renewables,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated recently.
Lee Jae Myung, President of South Korea was equally blunt, saying, “‘Right now, there is chaos worldwide due to energy issues. Frankly, the situation is so serious that I cannot sleep… the reality is worse than one might think. South Korea must swiftly transition to renewable energy.’
The Washington Post reports that the conflict “has left nations determined to insulate themselves from future military conflicts or countries that wield their exports as an economic weapon, like the United States.”
Not just Prime Ministers, but everyday people across the US have made the connection.
Between fuel and fertilizer price hikes caused by the Hormuz closure, the average Michigan farmer could pay $22,000 in costs more this season.
Muskegon County farmer Mike Cockerill, who has fought against misinformation and ignorance for the right to site solar on part of his land, told me that clean energy can help him keep his family farm secure from foreign influence.
“With solar, what happens on the other side of the world will not affect me,” he said.
Countries like Pakistan and Spain, which have been aggressively building out solar and renewables, are much better positioned at this moment of crisis than their neighbors.
Germany, which has presciently lead the Green transition, looks to redouble it’s efforts in the wake of the war.
In the United States, the renewable transition is roaring despite the best efforts of the fossil-fueled Trump administration to curb it.
Even before the war, S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index fund rose 44% in 2025, handily beating a 11% gain in the S&P Global Oil Index, which was expected to be the big winner in a “Drill Baby Drill” era.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that 93% of new capacity added in 2026 will be from solar, wind, or battery storage.
Markets are speaking more loudly than MAGA.
“Europe Canada Australia, Africa Latin America, all of them will be linking energy sources to national security,” energy analyst Anas Alhajji told CNBC.
According to Alhajji, the build-out of solar, wind, EVs and storage batteries was, up till now, often justified by concerns about catastrophic Climate Change.
“Now, they don’t have to use the argument any more. They are using the argument of national security to implement all the plans for climate change, simply because you cannot argue that anymore,” Alhajji said. “These changes are going to be permanent, and they will be extremely powerful.”
It won’t be easy, there will be obstacles and hurdles to overcome, but the direction is now set.
The current war demonstrates, with no more room for debate, that every wind turbine not installed, every solar panel not deployed, will be paid for in blood, not just by US Service people in yet another Middle East meat grinder, but by innocent men, women and children caught in the cross fire between the oil barons, Ayatollahs and oil sheiks struggling to control fossil fuel riches.
Those still opposing the clean energy transition are choosing to lock America, and their own children, into the cycle of endless want, violence, and forever wars for toxic, polluting fossil fuels and the billionaires that own and manipulate them.
Anyone willing to repeat this cycle again, again and again, needs to take a long, hard, and deep look in a mirror.