By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and effectively removing any environmental constraints to businesses exploiting energy resources, Trump is safeguarding the US as the global hegemonic oil and gas producer, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The development of oil and gas resources in Alaska means that the US can export across the Pacific to Japan, South Korea and other East Asia energy importers, competing directly with Middle East oil and gas which must be shipped via the Malacca Straits.  

The geopolitics of climate change is ultimately about which governance model will pay and manage the transition to net zero.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright’s pathbreaking 2019 book, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of our Planetary Future, saw four political models to deliver net zero. These are “Climate Leviathan, Climate Mao, Climate Behemoth and Climate X.”

Climate Leviathan envisages the present capitalist system that tries to overcome (unsuccessfully) the collective action problem of working together to achieve net zero. Climate Mao has the same objective, but uses an anti-capitalist order.  

“Climate Behemoth describes a global arrangement animated by a chauvinistic capitalist and nationalist politics that denies – until it can only denounce – the threat climate change poses to national capitals.”  Climate X is a bottom-up movement that is non-capitalist and pursues global climate justice in an effort to deliver net zero.  

With Trump 2.0, we can update and relabel the Mann-Wainwright models as Climate Trump, Climate CRINKS, Climate Europa and Climate X or Rest of the World.  Climate Trump is ruthlessly capitalist and business friendly, ditching social inclusivity (DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion) or any moral misgivings.  

Climate CRINKS comprise the countries that the US has designated foreign adversaries, namely, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, as well as Cuba and Venezuela. These countries do not necessarily have the same climate and environmental policies, but they are forced to work in tandem by the perceived threat of US sanctions and tariffs.

Climate Europa is geographically the European Union and like-minded nations that prefer the rule of law, current net-zero policies and UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). Climate X is the rest of the world, who increasingly feel that they are left on their own, with less and less international aid.  The old mantra of “trade, not aid” has no meaning when trade is more protectionist and aid is no longer forthcoming without strings.

Neoliberals and green activists lament the shift away from a global consensus on climate action, such as the Paris Agreements. But Climate Trump is a wake-up call for all economies and communities to deal with the top-down ambition of net zero by using bottom-up self-help strategies.  

The former approach, such as the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), in which the leading banks, fund managers and insurance companies would refuse to lend or invest in companies or countries that do not comply with net-zero policies or ESGs, was always more stick than carrot. With Trump pushing for deregulation, including in finance, it would not be surprising that more financial institutions and corporate captains retreat in ESG efforts.

Net zero and social justice are ideals that would be at best contentious, and at worst outright fractious, as the swing to the populist right in recent elections shows.

In Germany, the Green Party has lost ground, and the Nordic countries have cut back on aid for developing countries. As the Chinese record has shown, Beijing changed from one of the most polluted cities to become one with clear skies as tough policies on moving away from coal to alternative energies have taken root.

Globally, there is awareness particularly among the young that climate and social justice goals are increasingly one and that good governance are what deliver more social fairness and a cleaner, greener environment. The neoconservatives who are hawks would simply like to retain military, technological and monetary power to show that might is right.  

The bottom line is how futurist Buckminster Fuller saw in the 1960s and 1970s that Spaceship Earth is transversing a delicate trajectory between nuclear disaster and burning planet.

There is no simple path to low carbon economies. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest report, China accounted for 60 percent of the new renewable capacity added worldwide in 2023 – and China’s solar PV generation alone is on course to exceed, by the early 2030s, the total electricity demand of the US today.

The global rivalry is not just about raw energy power, but the power to print money (energy used for mining cybercurrencies), technology, artificial intelligence and military power, as well as power to invest in green infrastructure and transition to net zero.

The electrifying power of energy is power to dominate or to change, mitigate and adapt to new planetary challenges. The emergence of cheaper and smaller nuclear plants means that more nations will have cheaper nuclear energy with all its inherent risks.  Nuclear technology also proliferates possible nuclear wars waged by smaller countries.

Hence, despite Trump’s sometimes chaotic and inexplicable verbal exclamations, his actions seem fundamentally anti-war, especially his calls for stopping the Ukraine war and Gaza conflicts. His call for halving defense spending between the US, China and Russia appears on the surface an instinct for stepping away from the nuclear brink.

In short, if there is controversy over whether net-zero policies will actually help reverse climate warming, there is also controversy over whether a cut in defense spending to divert resources to non-military uses will be good for the world.

The answer is that we really do not know. The best AI models will not answer these profoundly human questions.

Many of us may not welcome Trump as a friend, but we have to grudgingly admit that he has shaken our current beliefs to the core and may yet reshape the international order into a more brutal, but more realistic world with less ideals and more hard uncomfortable truths.

The confrontational world means we must confront the reality that we either eat lunch or be lunch.

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The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute and chief adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission. The views expressed are personal.