Peace and Oil: What Happens to the Climate When a War Ends?

That's the trap, isn't it.

The crisis is painful enough to cause real damage but not quite painful enough to force a genuine restructuring.

You get the worst of both worlds.

Así es.

That's right.

Y ahora viene la pregunta más interesante: si realmente hay un alto el fuego, si el estrecho se abre de nuevo, ¿qué pasa con el clima?

And now comes the most interesting question: if there really is a ceasefire, if the strait opens again, what happens to climate?

Porque hay dos posibilidades muy distintas.

Because there are two very different possibilities.

Una: los precios del petróleo bajan, la gente respira aliviada, y la presión política para acelerar las renovables desaparece.

One: oil prices fall, people breathe a sigh of relief, and the political pressure to accelerate renewables disappears.

Dos: algunos países, los que han sufrido más, aprovechan este momento para reorientar su política energética de verdad.

Two: some countries, the ones who suffered most, use this moment to genuinely reorient their energy policy.

History doesn't give us much reason to bet on door number two.

After every major oil shock I've covered, from the aftermath of the Gulf War to the price spikes after the Iraq invasion, the pattern is the same.

The emergency ends, prices drop, the political window slams shut.

Bueno, pero hay una diferencia importante esta vez, y es el precio de las energías renovables.

But there's an important difference this time, and it's the cost of renewable energy.

En el año 2000, la energía solar era prohibitivamente cara.

In the year 2000, solar energy was prohibitively expensive.

Hoy, en muchos lugares del mundo, ya es más barata que el gas natural incluso sin subsidios.

Today, in many parts of the world, it's already cheaper than natural gas even without subsidies.

Así que cuando un país decide ahora mismo instalar paneles solares o aerogeneradores, no lo hace solo por razones ideológicas;

So when a country decides right now to install solar panels or wind turbines, it's not just doing it for ideological reasons;

lo hace porque tiene sentido económico.

it's doing it because it makes economic sense.

That cost curve is genuinely one of the more remarkable things that's happened in energy in my lifetime.

I remember writing a piece in 2004 about solar being the technology of the future, and a source laughed at me.

Said it would never be cost-competitive with fossil fuels at scale.

He's had a bad twenty years.

El problema es que la transición energética no es solo una cuestión de costes.

The problem is that the energy transition isn't just a question of costs.

Es también una cuestión de infraestructura, de política, de poder económico.

It's also a question of infrastructure, politics, and economic power.

Los países del Golfo, incluyendo Irán, tienen economías que dependen al ochenta o noventa por ciento de los ingresos del petróleo.

Gulf countries, including Iran, have economies that depend eighty or ninety percent on oil revenues.

Para ellos, un mundo que usa menos petróleo es una amenaza existencial.

For them, a world that uses less oil is an existential threat.

And you could argue that's actually part of the context for this war.

Not the immediate trigger, obviously, but the long-term anxiety.

The window for oil wealth is closing, slowly but clearly, and that creates a kind of geopolitical desperation that didn't exist in 1973.

Es una perspectiva interesante y creo que hay algo de verdad en ello.

It's an interesting perspective and I think there's something true in it.

Muchos analistas hablan del concepto de 'carbon lock-in', que es la idea de que las economías que han construido toda su infraestructura alrededor del petróleo tienen un incentivo estructural para mantener el sistema actual, aunque sea perjudicial para el clima global.

Many analysts talk about the concept of 'carbon lock-in', the idea that economies that have built all their infrastructure around oil have a structural incentive to maintain the current system, even if it's harmful to the global climate.

Carbon lock-in.

That's a term I want to come back to.

But first, let's be concrete about what the emissions picture actually looks like during this war, because I think people intuitively understand that war is bad for the climate, but they might not know why.

A ver, hay varias razones.

Well, there are several reasons.

Primera: los aviones militares, los barcos de guerra, los vehículos blindados consumen cantidades enormes de combustible fósil.

First: military aircraft, warships, and armored vehicles consume enormous quantities of fossil fuel.

El ejército estadounidense es, por sí solo, uno de los mayores emisores institucionales del mundo.

The U.S.

Segunda: los ataques a infraestructuras petroleras, como los que hemos visto en esta guerra, provocan incendios que liberan millones de toneladas de CO2 directamente a la atmósfera.

military is, by itself, one of the world's largest institutional emitters.

The burning oil infrastructure piece is one that I don't think gets nearly enough attention.

When a refinery or a terminal catches fire, you're not just looking at an economic disruption.

You're looking at an uncontrolled carbon release that no emissions accounting system was designed to capture.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y hay una tercera razón que es más indirecta pero igual de importante: la guerra destruye las instituciones internacionales que necesitamos para combatir el cambio climático.

And there's a third reason that's more indirect but just as important: war destroys the international institutions we need to fight climate change.

Cuando los países están en guerra o en tensión geopolítica, las cumbres del clima se convierten en teatros diplomáticos vacíos.

When countries are at war or in geopolitical tension, climate summits become empty diplomatic theater.

Es muy difícil negociar reducciones de emisiones con un país al que acabas de bombardear.

It's very hard to negotiate emissions reductions with a country you just bombed.

That diplomatic disruption point lands hard.

I covered COP negotiations in the 2000s and even then, before any of these more recent conflicts, you could see how bilateral tensions would freeze entire negotiating blocs.

Imagine trying to get the U.S.

and Iran in the same room for climate talks right now.

Es imposible.

It's impossible.

Y eso tiene consecuencias reales.

And that has real consequences.

Los acuerdos internacionales sobre el clima requieren que países que se desconfían profundamente se comprometan a cumplir promesas que no se pueden verificar de forma sencilla.

International climate agreements require countries that deeply distrust each other to commit to promises that can't be easily verified.

Para que eso funcione, necesitas un nivel mínimo de buena fe diplomática.

For that to work, you need a minimum level of diplomatic good faith.

La guerra lo destruye.

War destroys it.

So if a ceasefire actually holds, and that's a real if given the history of this region, what does the climate community need to do in that window before the political pressure evaporates?

Pues hay varias cosas urgentes.

Well, there are several urgent things.

Lo primero es que los países que han sufrido más la crisis energética, los que han pagado precios altísimos por el gas y el combustible, tienen ahora mismo un argumento muy fuerte para hacer inversiones en energías renovables.

First, the countries that have suffered most from the energy crisis, the ones that paid very high prices for gas and fuel, now have a very strong argument for investing in renewables.

El argumento de la seguridad energética es mucho más poderoso políticamente que el argumento climático en muchos países.

The energy security argument is much more politically powerful than the climate argument in many countries.

That framing shift is real.

I've watched it happen.

In the seventies, it was oil shocks that built the political will for the first serious U.S.

energy efficiency standards.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof, famously.

Then Reagan tore them down, also famously.

The window opened and closed within a decade.

Es un ejemplo perfecto.

It's a perfect example.

Y fíjate que en ese caso la tecnología todavía no estaba lista.

And notice that in that case the technology wasn't ready yet.

Los paneles solares en los años setenta eran ineficientes y carísimos.

Solar panels in the seventies were inefficient and very expensive.

Hoy la tecnología sí está lista.

Today the technology is ready.

El problema ya no es técnico ni económico;

The problem is no longer technical or economic;

es político.

it's political.

Y eso es lo que hace que este momento sea potencialmente diferente, si los gobiernos tienen la voluntad de actuar.

And that's what makes this moment potentially different, if governments have the will to act.

Let me push back a little, though.

You're describing a best-case scenario.

The realistic scenario, based on the political economy of most major oil-consuming countries, is that when Brent crude drops back below eighty dollars, the urgency evaporates.

Voters stop noticing.

The lobbyists go back to work.

No te voy a contradecir en eso porque tienes razón en la mayoría de los casos.

I won't contradict you on that because you're right in most cases.

Pero hay excepciones importantes.

But there are important exceptions.

Mira lo que ha pasado en Europa en los últimos años.

Look at what's happened in Europe in recent years.

Después de la crisis del gas ruso, la instalación de energía renovable en Europa se aceleró de una manera que nadie había previsto.

After the Russian gas crisis, renewable energy installation in Europe accelerated in a way nobody had predicted.

Alemania, que todos criticamos por volver al carbón, también batió récords de instalación solar en 2024 y 2025.

Germany, which we all criticized for going back to coal, also broke solar installation records in 2024 and 2025.

Both things at once.

That's actually a more honest picture of how energy transitions work.

They're not clean pivots.

They're messy, contradictory processes where you burn more coal AND install more solar at the same time, and hope the trajectory eventually bends in the right direction.

Bien dicho.

Well put.

Y ese es el problema con el debate público sobre el clima: tendemos a querer narrativas simples.

And that's the problem with the public debate on climate: we tend to want simple narratives.

O ganamos o perdemos.

Either we're winning or we're losing.

Pero la realidad es mucho más compleja y lenta.

But the reality is much more complex and slow.

Los sistemas energéticos tardan décadas en transformarse porque requieren inversiones masivas en infraestructura que no se pueden cambiar de un año para otro.

Energy systems take decades to transform because they require massive infrastructure investments that can't be changed from one year to the next.

There's a concept in infrastructure studies, path dependency, the idea that early choices constrain future options in ways that compound over decades.

A city that built itself around the car in 1950 is still paying for that decision in 2026.

A country that built its electricity grid around coal in 1980 is still disentangling itself.

Y lo mismo vale para los países del Golfo.

And the same applies to Gulf countries.

Irán ha construido toda su economía, sus instituciones, su poder político, alrededor de los ingresos del petróleo durante más de cincuenta años.

Iran has built its entire economy, its institutions, its political power around oil revenues for more than fifty years.

Incluso si Irán quisiera hacer una transición energética rápida, que no es que quiera, no podría.

Even if Iran wanted to make a rapid energy transition, which it doesn't, it couldn't.

Las estructuras son demasiado profundas.

The structures go too deep.

Which is, I think, one of the deeper tragedies embedded in this whole story.

The countries most threatened by climate change in the long run, and the Gulf states are going to be almost uninhabitable at sustained temperatures above fifty Celsius, are the same countries whose economic survival depends on producing the thing that's causing the warming.

Es una contradicción que ya se empieza a ver en las cifras.

It's a contradiction that's already beginning to show in the numbers.

En los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, en Arabia Saudí, las temperaturas estivales son cada vez más extremas.

In the United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, summer temperatures are becoming increasingly extreme.

El año pasado hubo días en los que el aeropuerto de Kuwait registró 54 grados.

Last year there were days when Kuwait airport recorded 54 degrees.

Algunos estudios dicen que para 2070 ciertas partes del Golfo serán inhabitables sin aire acondicionado durante semanas enteras en verano.

Some studies say that by 2070 certain parts of the Gulf will be uninhabitable without air conditioning for entire weeks in summer.

Fifty-four degrees.

I've been in Beirut in August, which is brutal, but that's a different universe entirely.

At that temperature you can survive for maybe twenty minutes without shade.

And you're running air conditioning on what, fossil fuel plants.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Es una espiral muy difícil de romper.

It's a spiral that's very hard to break.

Más calor requiere más energía para refrigerar.

More heat requires more energy for cooling.

Más energía fósil produce más emisiones.

More fossil energy produces more emissions.

Más emisiones producen más calor.

More emissions produce more heat.

Y mientras tanto, la guerra o la inestabilidad cortan el suministro de esa misma energía y hacen que todo sea aún más caro y más difícil.

And meanwhile, war or instability cuts the supply of that same energy and makes everything even more expensive and more difficult.

So where does that leave us with the ceasefire proposal?

If it holds, if the guns actually go quiet, what's the realistic climate outcome in the next two to three years?

Realista, no optimista.

Realistic, not optimistic.

A corto plazo, los precios del petróleo probablemente bajen.

In the short term, oil prices will probably fall.

Eso reduce la presión inmediata sobre los gobiernos para invertir en alternativas.

That reduces the immediate pressure on governments to invest in alternatives.

Pero algunos países, sobre todo en Europa y en Asia oriental, ya han tomado decisiones de infraestructura que no van a revertir porque son a largo plazo.

But some countries, especially in Europe and East Asia, have already made infrastructure decisions they won't reverse because they're long-term.

Así que diría que el ritmo de la transición se ralentiza un poco, pero no se detiene.

So I'd say the pace of the transition slows a bit, but doesn't stop.

The trajectory bends a little in the wrong direction but doesn't reverse.

That's probably the honest answer.

Not satisfying, but honest.

Y hay una última cosa que me parece crucial: la reconstrucción.

And there's one last thing that seems crucial to me: reconstruction.

Cuando este conflicto termine de verdad, habrá que reconstruir infraestructura en Irán, en la región.

When this conflict truly ends, infrastructure in Iran and in the region will need to be rebuilt.

Eso es una oportunidad, si hay voluntad política, de construir sistemas energéticos más limpios desde cero.

That's an opportunity, if there's political will, to build cleaner energy systems from scratch.

Pero también puede ser una oportunidad para que las compañías petroleras internacionales vuelvan a entrar en el mercado iraní y refuercen exactamente el sistema que necesitamos cambiar.

But it can also be an opportunity for international oil companies to re-enter the Iranian market and reinforce exactly the system we need to change.

That reconstruction moment is something I've watched play out before, in Iraq after 2003, in Libya after Gaddafi.

And the pattern is not encouraging.

The international money flows toward what's already profitable, not toward what's necessary.

Es que el capitalismo tiene muy mala memoria para las lecciones del pasado.

Capitalism has very bad memory for lessons of the past.

Sabe muy bien calcular el beneficio a cinco años pero le cuesta mucho más calcular el coste a cincuenta.

It knows very well how to calculate the profit at five years but finds it much harder to calculate the cost at fifty.

Hard to argue with that.

Though I'd note that the insurance industry has been pretty good at calculating fifty-year risk, and they've been screaming about climate costs for years.

The problem is that the people making the investments and the people paying the eventual costs are not the same people.

Eso es exactamente el problema central del cambio climático como desafío político.

That's exactly the central problem of climate change as a political challenge.

Los que toman las decisiones ahora no vivirán las peores consecuencias.

Those who make the decisions now won't live through the worst consequences.

Y los que vivirán esas consecuencias todavía no han nacido o son demasiado jóvenes para votar.

And those who will live those consequences haven't been born yet or are too young to vote.

Es un fallo estructural de la democracia representativa tal como la hemos construido.

It's a structural failure of representative democracy as we've built it.

That's the thing that keeps me up at night, honestly.

Not because I'm a pessimist about human ingenuity, but because the governance problem is harder than the technical problem.

We can build the panels and the turbines.

What we can't seem to build is a political system that makes decisions on behalf of people who don't yet exist.

Oye, antes de terminar quiero volver a algo que dijiste antes: 'carbon lock-in'.

Hey, before we finish I want to come back to something you said earlier: 'carbon lock-in'.

En español no tenemos una traducción perfecta;

In Spanish we don't have a perfect translation;

algunos dicen 'dependencia del carbono' o 'inercia fósil'.

some say 'dependencia del carbono' or 'inercia fósil'.

Pero me interesa más el verbo que usaste antes en inglés, 'to lock in'.

But I'm more interested in a construction I used earlier, when I said the Iranian structures are 'demasiado profundas'.

En español diríamos 'fijar' o 'consolidar'.

Did you notice that?

Usé algo parecido cuando dije que las estructuras iraníes son 'demasiado profundas'.

¿Notaste esa construcción?

I did notice.

You said 'las estructuras son demasiado profundas.' Too deep.

In English we'd probably say 'too entrenched' or 'too deep-rooted.' But you used 'profundo', which I think of as physical depth, like deep water.

Is that a common way to use it?

'Profundo' en español funciona en los dos sentidos, el físico y el abstracto, de manera completamente natural.

'Profundo' in Spanish works in both senses, the physical and the abstract, completely naturally.

Puedes decir 'un lago muy profundo' y también 'un cambio muy profundo en la sociedad', o 'una crisis profunda', o incluso 'tiene una voz muy profunda'.

You can say 'a very deep lake' and also 'a very deep change in society', or 'a profound crisis', or even 'he has a very deep voice'.

En todos esos casos suena perfectamente normal.

In all those cases it sounds perfectly normal.

La profundidad en español se mueve bien entre lo concreto y lo abstracto.

Depth in Spanish moves easily between the concrete and the abstract.

English does the same with 'deep', actually.

'Deep trouble', 'deep roots', 'deep sleep'.

But 'profound' in English has drifted toward the abstract and sounds a bit formal.

You wouldn't say a lake is 'profound'.

In Spanish, 'profundo' still does both jobs without any stuffiness.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y es un adjetivo muy útil para hablar de política, de historia, de cambio social.

And it's a very useful adjective for talking about politics, history, social change.

Si quieres sonar natural en español cuando describes algo que va más allá de la superficie, ya sea una crisis, una transformación, una diferencia cultural, 'profundo' es casi siempre la palabra correcta.

If you want to sound natural in Spanish when describing something that goes beyond the surface, whether a crisis, a transformation, a cultural difference, 'profundo' is almost always the right word.

Mucho más natural que decir 'fundamental' o 'básico', que a veces suena a traducción del inglés.

Much more natural than saying 'fundamental' or 'básico', which sometimes sounds like a translation from English.

So the next time I'm trying to describe something that goes beyond the surface and I reach for 'fundamental', I should probably just say 'profundo'.

That's actually useful.

Although knowing me, I'll try to use it and say something is 'very pregnant' instead.

Fletcher, mientras sigas siendo capaz de cometer ese error, tengo material para los próximos veinte años de programa.

Fletcher, as long as you remain capable of making that mistake, I have material for the next twenty years of the show.