As I have already noted this morning, the current fossil fuel crisis that we are facing delivers an urgent reminder that the world has to finally come to terms with its fossil fuel dependence, and begin to wean itself from it because of all the consequences that it has politically, economically and environmentally. I believe that any rational person would agree.

However, we then have to give up the assumption that the world is populated by rational people, particularly in its upper echelons of power. The FT reports this today:

The Trump administration is seeking to halt the remaining offshore wind projects in the US, offering buyouts to companies that are developing them in exchange for fossil-fuel investments.

The Department of the Interior had held talks with several companies with offshore wind leases to persuade them to enact deals such as the one agreed with TotalEnergies on Monday, people familiar with the matter said.

Under that agreement, the French oil company will be reimbursed the nearly $1bn it had poured into its offshore wind lease, and invest the funds in oil and gas projects.

Such is the madness (no other word will do) of the Trump regime (no other description is appropriate) that at a time when the world is facing all the consequences of fossil fuel dependency, the USA is spending billions of dollars to increase that dependency while simultaneously increasing the threat from climate change by destroying sustainable alternative sources of energy.

There is no rational justification for this course of action.

What, then, is the explanation for this profound irrationality? There appear to be three.

The first is deep-seated denial of the fact that the biggest threat that we, as a human race, face has arisen from neoliberal economics deliberate refusal to take into account the external consequences of human action when promoting itself as the optimal standard for managing an economy.

The second is a refusal to accept that the consequent control of a considerable proportion of the world's wealth that has arisen as a result can only be explained and justified on the basis of the abuse and degradation of the world's environment at real cost to every human being now alive, and all of those he had to come.

The third is another denial, and that is the cost of dealing with this issue must as a result be born by those who have been unjustly enriched by its creation, or in other words that massive wealth redistribution is an essential and inherent part of the process of managing climate change, because unless that is to happen, the cost will of this crisis will be born, again, by those who have suffered as a consequence of its creation.

My suspicion is that those advising Trump do, deep down, know the reality of this issue, but are so invested in the hierarchies of power and wealth that environmental abuse has created that they will do all they can to deny the truth and to abuse the processes of government to ensure that it is not addressed. There is no other explanation for what Trump is doing, but we should all take note that those on the far right in the UK and Europe will seek to replicate the threat he is creating to our well-being.

What we have to accept as a result is that the struggle for planetary survival, which necessarily requires that we beat environmental and biodiversity degradation, is profoundly structural in political-economic terms.

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