One of President Donald Trump’s top-tier fixations is to heap ridicule on both climate science and all projects committed to combating the global climate crisis. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last September, Trump declared that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” For good measure, Trump regularly invokes “The Green New Scam” as a go-to epithet.

Despite this, some of Trump’s most important priorities, especially his war of choice in Iran, are generating the unintended effect of bringing new levels of support for the very climate stabilization/green transition project he scorns. Thus, a Financial Times article from early May titled “Donald Trump’s Green New Deal” reports that the spike in oil prices caused by the Iran war has produced the strongest month of electric vehicle (EV) sales on record in Europe, a 20 percent jump in search traffic for EVs in the United States, and the highest level of solar panel installations in the United Kingdom since 2012.

As such Green New Deal developments continue to gather momentum globally — now benefiting from Trump’s unintended assistance and despite his fully intended hostility — it is critical that the project maintains a first-order commitment not only to producing abundant clean energy, but equally to advancing the well-being of the US working class.