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AMERICA’S FUTURE: FOSSIL FUEL ISLAND IN A GREENTECH WORLD?  
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Jeremy Brecher
September 15, 2026
Strike! Jeremy Brecher's Corner
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_ What does the global Greentech revolution mean for the American
people? It could open new vistas of a Greentech New Deal. But as long
as the US opposes rather than joining the Greentech revolution, it
portends not only climate catastrophe, but econo _

Collage (Art: alonesbe, Envato , Photo Credit of Trump: Gage
Skidmore, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

As we have seen throughout this series, the Greentech revolution is
transforming energy production and use worldwide. Along with its other
advantages, fossil free energy has become radically cheaper than
fossil fuel energy. More than 90%
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of utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 delivered
power below the cost of the cheapest new fossil-fuel plant built in
their market. Natural gas energy is currently 3–4 times more
expensive
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than solar and wind. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are increasingly
vulnerable
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to disruptions like the Ukraine and Iran wars, which destabilize whole
economies with shortages and higher prices for energy, food, and other
necessities of life.

Donald Trump and the US government are doing everything possible to
shut down fossil free energy and to expand our dependence on fossil
fuels. That is already having a devastating effect on American workers
and communities, and it is likely to get far worse in the future. We
are being marooned on what two energy experts
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call a fossil fuel “energy island” as the rest of the world turns
to an “electric world order.”

If Trump and his fossil fuelers succeed in defeating the Greentech
revolution in the US, the result is likely to be a growing
affordability crisis; devastation for the most fossil-fuel dependent
industries like autos, coal, iron, and gas; a general decline of the
fossil-fuel intensive US economy; disinvestment; a loss of
international competitiveness; and macroeconomic effects like
inflation and recession or both.

These trends can sometimes be seen in the day-to-day operation of
markets, like the decline of the US and European auto industries or
the worldwide shift to renewables after the closing of the Strait of
Hormuz. But paradoxically, they can also be concealed by short-term
fluctuations. For example, the sharp rise in the cost of oil after the
closing of the Strait of Hormuz produced a boom in oil company
profits. Similarly, the rising demand for electricity for data centers
created a boom for natural gas generators. Such developments might
appear to refute the argument that the fossil fuel-based US economy is
increasingly uncompetitive and in danger of becoming a stranded asset.
However, amid all the price gyrations, nothing seems to refute the
fundamental underlying fact: Fossil fuel energy is and will remain
more expensive and less secure than fossil free energy. I have seen
nothing that indicates otherwise.

The long-term decline of the fossil fuel-based economy is manifested
in many ways. In this commentary I will examine two impacts on
Americans of our country’s failure to join the Greentech revolution:

* It makes prices higher for Americans
* It makes US-produced goods and services more costly and therefore
less competitive at home and abroad

CRASHING AUTOS

 
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ELECTRIC CAR AT CHARGING STATION | PHOTO CREDIT: SOFIIASHUNKINA,
ENVATO
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The headline example of eschewing the Greentech revolution is the US
auto industry
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For decades, the industry – supported by US government policies —
failed to invest in EVs and concentrated instead on its highly
profitable gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Briefly under the Biden
administration the federal government invested in EV charging
infrastructure and a $7,500 consumer tax credit
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Electric vehicle sales grew 60%.

Then Trump abandoned pro-EV policies and subsidized fossil fueled
vehicles with a panoply of strategies. EV sales plummeted. The
industry began shutting down its EVs factories. In 2025 Stellantis
wrote down $26 billion in EV-related losses; Ford reported a $19
billion loss. The auto journalist Martin Padgett told the _New York
Times_, “We pulled a U-turn while the rest of the world was pushing
forward.”

Fossil fuel dependence is costly for American car owners. Here’s
what gas dependence means in dollars and cents for auto drivers: In
January 2026, _before_ the disruptions caused by the Iran war, the
cost to drive 100 miles in an electric car was $5.77; in a gas car it
was $11.23. By summer — after the closing of the Straight of Hormuz
— to drive 100 miles in the electric car cost almost the same as
before, $5.89, but in the gas car it cost $16.69 –three times as
much as the EV.

Its failure to develop EVs and its addiction to gas guzzlers has made
the US auto industry non-competitive domestically
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In 1965, US companies produced more than 90% of new cars purchased in
the US; today, barely a third are built by the Big Three.

The failure of the US auto industry to adopt Greentech is at least
equally significant internationally. A quarter of all vehicles sold
globally in 2025 were battery powered. (That figure is projected
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to reach 29% in 2026 due to high gas prices caused by the Iran war.)
Bloomberg analysts predict that by next decade fewer than half of cars
sold globally will be gas-powered. China, which provides 30% of the
global car market, has seen sales of internal combustion vehicles
plummet by nearly two-thirds
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since 2017. China now makes 75 percent of all EVs sold worldwide; the
United States makes around 5 percent. Susan Helper
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a professor at Case Western Reserve University who was chief economist
at the Commerce Department under President Barack Obama, told the _New
York Times_ that in the worst-case scenario the US auto industry will
become a “shrinking island of ICE (internal combustion engines),”
churning out outlandishly large trucks and not much else. At which
point, the _Times_ noted, the obsolescence of the mighty U.S.
automobile industry” would be “all but guaranteed.”

About three million Americans
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parts manufacturers and dealers. About 24 million jobs depend on
spending by car manufacturers, their employees, or car owners.

Vehicle and parts makers shed about 21,000 U.S. jobs in the last year,
despite Trump administration tariffs designed to force them to
manufacture domestically.

THE FOSSIL FUEL ISLAND

 
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WIND FARM SHANXI, CHINA, NOVEMBER 4, 2015. PHOTO CREDIT:
HAHAHEDITOR12667
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WIKIPEDIA COMMONS, CC BY-SA 4.0
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The global shift from gas guzzlers to EVs is part of a more general
long-term shift from fossil fuels to fossil free energy which is
rendering the US a fossil fuel island. Two energy experts summarized
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the current phase of this process:

“Global clean energy investment reached a record $2.2 trillion
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twice the flow into fossil fuels. In 2024, 91 percent
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of newly commissioned utility-scale renewable projects produced
electricity more cheaply than the cheapest new fossil fuel
alternative, and battery storage costs have fallen 93 percent
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since 2010, allowing utilities to use batteries to store solar and
wind power even when the weather is uncooperative. In 2025, fossil
fuel electricity generation
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fell in both China and India.

“Before the Iran war, this green transition was also spreading
beyond wealthy markets. In 2024, Chinese solar exports to developing
economies surpassed
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shipments to advanced economies. Pakistan imported approximately 17
gigawatts
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of Chinese solar modules that year, equivalent to almost half
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of its grid-connected capacity. In Indonesia, Thailand, and Mexico,
the cheapest Chinese-made EVs have reached price parity
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with the cheapest internal combustion options.”

In July, China announced
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binding targets to increase wind and solar power generation by more
than 50% over the next five years.

How the Greentech transition will develop in the future is of course a
matter for speculation, but BloombergNEF’s (BNEF)_ New Energy
Outlook2026_
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provides one plausible projection:

* Solar will become the world’s single largest source of
electricity in the next six years, due to a major supply glut,
technology advances, and falling prices.
* If countries continue on their current path of rapidly deploying
economically competitive clean technologies, they stand to cut their
reliance on imported fossil fuels and ultimately strengthen their
energy security.
* Many countries that depend on fossil fuels are now able to reduce
their economic exposure to energy commodity imports by adopting
low-carbon technologies.

Energy investor Rob Carlson recently drew the implications
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for the US economy: Continuing to burn fossil fuels is a
“self-imposed financial penalty” which will “ultimately degrade
the country’s long-term global competitiveness.” The same applies
to any nation or polity that “chooses to continue burning fossil
fuels in any application in which electricity could instead be
provided more competitively with renewables.”

The replacement of fossil fuel energy by Greentech has been greatly
accelerated by the war in the Persian Gulf region. According to a June
30 report
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by NPR, “The Iran war and high oil and gas prices have supercharged
the adoption of renewables and EVs worldwide. Global investors say
these technologies make financial sense and increase energy
security.” As fossil fuel prices soared, countries are “turning to
these technologies that are basically impervious to whatever happens
in the Strait of Hormuz. Solar batteries and EVs have gotten a lot
cheaper.” Chinese battery exports rose 69% in March compared to
2025; their solar exports in March are up 84% compared to 2025.

The NPR report concluded,

“It doesn’t look good for oil long term. With all these new EVs,
that means a lot less people filling up their cars with gas around the
world. Before the war in Iran, the International Energy Agency was
expecting global oil demand to rise this year. But the disruptions
caused by the Strait of Hormuz led them to downgrade expectations to a
decline in oil demand this year. In some ways, the U.S. is becoming an
outlier in the global energy transition.”

In the face of the Iran war energy shortages some countries have been
turning to coal. But analysis by the thinktank Ember
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found that even a worst-case return to coal would raise global
coal-fired generation by no more than 1.8 percent
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in 2026 relative to a no-crisis baseline; indeed, global coal
generation could still fall this year.

Currently there is little reason to expect the Straight of Hormuz to
be reopened any time soon, or for fossil fuel prices to return to
their levels before the Iran war. And there are plenty of reasons to
expect further disruptions with further fossil fuel gyrations in the
future.

The US trend towards ever greater fossil fuel dependence and the
consequent rise of its energy prices is being further aggravated by
the expansion of gas, oil, and even coal to provide energy for
hyperscale data centers. That is likely to further increase the
isolation of the US as a high-cost fossil fuel island.

If the US becomes ever more a fossil fuel island in a Greentech world,
the consequences are likely to be dire. Bill Hare, chief executive of
the thinktank Climate Analytics, said
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“Any investment in new fossil fuels now is a fool’s gamble, while
joining the race to renewables can only bring benefits – not just
jobs and cheaper energy at stable prices, but energy independence and
access where it’s needed most.”

Is the US doomed to be a fossil fuel island? Our next series of
commentaries will lay out an alternative: The Green New Deal 2.0.

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Jeremy Brecher 

 

 

* Fossil Fuel; Future of Energy; Greentech;
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