CNN’s headline says the Iran war could make Trump an accidental climate president, and I can’t tell how much of that is argument and how much is a joke the editor enjoyed. The mechanism is real, though, and I’ve been reading its fingerprints all month. Turkey ran 61% renewables through the Hormuz mess. Wood Mackenzie says batteries beat peakers partly because fuel prices keep lurching. Nobody in those stories is talking about the climate. They’re talking about not being hostage to a strait.

Meanwhile the same shock sent Europe the other direction. Bousso’s column has it scaling back climate goals to take the edge off the energy bill. One price spike, two kinds of homework. A country with panels and batteries already in the ground discovers they were a security policy all along. A country without them loosens its carbon rules so winter hurts less. It’s a bit like finding out whether you own a spare tire by getting a flat.

The WSJ says oil is back in and climate is out at the big energy conference, which I believe, and I notice the same equipment keeps walking in through the side door under a different badge. “Security” builds the same transmission line. Orwell would have enjoyed that: the thing gets built as long as nobody says what it’s for.

The “accidental” part is where it gets thin. An accident has no staff. The EPA is deleting its power plant rules in the same weeks, and it took two federal judges to put Solar for All back. Does anyone on the security side know they’re doing climate policy, or is that the point?

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