When he’s on full blast, Donald Trump (not so long ago the “drill, baby, drill” candidate for president) is distinctly a furnace. And he seems intent on turning this planet, our only world, into a version of the same. But here’s the strange thing: When it comes to almost anything — from war in Iran to suddenly firing two key women, former US Attorney General Pam Bondi and US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, in his government (but certainly not the no-less-chaotic men) — there’s no minute, it seems, when he’s not flipping himself on his head and then spinning or stumbling or catapulting off in a new direction. There’s only one exception I’ve noticed, and sadly, that’s climate change, where everything he does — every single thing — is guaranteed to be a disaster for our children and grandchildren.

Recently, of course, he’s launched a nightmarish war, by definition a gigantic producer of greenhouse gases, that’s literally been all about oil and natural gas, thanks in part to the now chaotic, largely blocked Strait of Hormuz through which a quarter of humanity’s seaborne oil and a fifth of its natural gas used to pass. And if you don’t believe me about it being a nightmare, just check out the most recent prices at your neighborhood gas station.

Consider it an irony, then, that his disastrous Iranian war will undoubtedly lead in a direction — to the use of more green energy globally — that, if he ever thought about it, he would hate more than just about anything else. He has, of course, referred to environmentalists as “terrorists.” And in this country, over his two presidencies, he’s done his damnedest to attack and try to block wind and solar power projects in every imaginable way, even though green power is growing fast globally and getting ever cheaper.

And here’s the reality of our moment for which we do need to give Trump credit: Once upon a time, you couldn’t have made any of this up — or have made up Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!). If you had, it would have seemed like the least believable science fiction novel ever written. Not that I drive a car in New York City (the subway and buses work fine for me), but as I was writing this piece, the price of gas had also edged up in my city to almost $4 a gallon. A possibly global recession is also on the horizon. Thank you, Trump!

Of course, in launching his recent war against Iran, however incoherently, “the PEACE PRESIDENT” (and yes, he’s into CAPS when it comes to himself) was, sadly, in good company, historically speaking. Since victory in World War II, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran (to mention only the big conflicts of that all-American era), our presidents have had quite a knack for starting wars, none of which has ended in anything faintly like victory. And it’s already obvious — you don’t need to have the slightest knack for seeing into the future to know this — that Trump’s version of the same in Iran will prove to be a global disaster, made worse by the fact that, in the process, whether he grasps it or not, he’s also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth.

And the worst thing is that I feel I’ve written all of this before. And before Trump — well, “leaves” is far too mild a word for it — abandons the presidency, I could end up writing it again and again, and we would still be in the world — all too literally his world — from hell. Of course, for all we know, Trump could decide to crown himself president and try to launch a third term in office that would, if successful, turn the constitution into a historical relic.

“The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly”

The other week, feeling as I do about “our” president, I went to New York City’s No Kings rally. It was gigantic (though you wouldn’t have known that, had you read my hometown paper, the New York Times, in the days that followed). It started on 59th Street where Central Park ends, with masses of marchers on both Seventh and Eighth Avenue, heading for 34th Street. By getting there early, I made it to the front of the crowd on Seventh Avenue at the head of that vast mass of protesting humanity. Once it started, I wove my way in and out, back and forth, downtown and uptown again, jotting in a little notebook some of the thousands of homemade signs people were carrying.

When I finally reached Broadway and 42nd Street, I stepped up on the sidewalk and looked back. To my amazement, I could see all the way to 57th Street where we had begun, and that significant-sized avenue was still totally — and I mean totally — packed right back to Central Park. And mind you, this old man was just one of an estimated more than eight million Americans who turned out at over 3,000 rallies across the US that day, in communities huge and microscopic, to protest the world Trump has dumped on, spilled all over and is continuing to roil and broil.

And, yes, it did seem like every third person (even the two demonstrators dressed as plastic tigers) was carrying a homemade sign. I doubt I had ever seen so many of them at any past demonstration. I scrawled a number of them down in a little notebook; they ranged from “Fight Truth Decay” and “Grandma says, ICE is not nice!” to “It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this” and “The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly.”

And then there was the one carried by a bearded man that caught my attention: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” And I thought to myself, boy, is that painfully accurate. In his own fashion, among the things he hasn’t succeeded in accomplishing, he has indeed been blowing it all up in a striking fashion and, unfortunately, potentially damning my children and grandchildren (and yours) to a literal planet from hell.

And sadly, as crazed as Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as US president. After all, in these decades, war has been this country’s middle name, and we’ve been burning fossil fuels to fight them as if… well, as if there would indeed be no tomorrow. And in his two terms in office, Trump and crew have gone with a passion after any form of clean, renewable energy that wouldn’t blister us all. Only recently, for instance, The Guardian, which is superb when it comes to climate-change coverage, was the only publication I saw that reported on new research in Nature magazine. The research found that this country has caused “an eye-watering $10tn [yes, that’s trillion!] in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself.”

Consider it something of an unintended irony, then, that the crew Trump and his administration have put so much of themselves into goes by the acronym ICE. In fact, wouldn’t you have thought that “ICE” would be a curse word for Trump and that, when it comes to creating an immigration hell on earth, his crew of manic enforcers would have been known as “HEAT?” Which reminds me that, at the No Kings rally, I noted an older woman carrying a homemade sign all too appropriately saying: “Deport Trump! Make ICE useful.”

And thanks to his brutal assault on Iran, this planet is only going to get hotter yet, as war releases staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Honestly, back in 2016, even if you had let your mind run in wild and unbelievably crazy directions, you simply couldn’t have made up Trump’s planet as it is now, could you? Who could have imagined that the president of the US, after launching a war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, would attack European countries for not joining him, saying, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

And remind me, who has Trump been there for, other than the major fossil fuel companies that backed him so radiantly in the 2024 election and are now getting a remarkable return on their investment?

Giving decline new meaning

Of course, to put all of this in some kind of perspective, sooner or later great imperial powers do fall. The US has been the number one imperial power on this planet since the end of World War II, with its only true competitor (until China rose well into this century) being the Soviet Union, and that collapsed in a heap in 1991. So it shouldn’t be surprising that this country, which, singularly in human history, once reigned more or less supreme on Planet Earth, should finally have begun its own decline, while turning over investment in present and future green energy to China.

But of course, there’s decline and then, in ICE terms, there’s DECLINE!!! And Trump is threatening to turn imperial decline, something known throughout history, into a distinctly new phenomenon. Even declining imperial powers haven’t usually had such a mad ruler or leader. And he does seem remarkably intent, in his own increasingly confused way, on taking this country down with him. The difference, historically, is that until now no imperial ruler had the chance to take down not just his country, but our planet, too. And he does seem remarkably intent on continuing to fossil-fuelize our world in a disastrous fashion.

At this very moment, we’re all watching his approval ratings generally — and particularly on the economy — begin to tank. (Oh wait, my mistake! A tank is a war vehicle, and right now that reference only applies to Israel, which recently lost a remarkable number of tanks in southern Lebanon.) But “our” president has also focused a significant part of his administration on ending anything that could benefit the climate, while burning fossil fuels in a manner that should be considered beyond incendiary. That includes recently agreeing to offer almost $1 billion to the French energy company TotalEnergies to abandon construction of wind farms off the East Coast of the US (as long as it was willing to reinvest that sum in future oil and gas projects here instead).

Yes, someday he could well be seen not just as the president of decline but potentially of ultimate devastation. That flaming red tie of his could end up having a symbolic significance that, once upon a time, no one might have imagined. No wonder that sign I saw on the No Kings march — and let me repeat it here one more time: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” — sticks in my mind. It predicts the very future that, unbelievably enough, 49.8% of American voters ushered in again in 2024.

Once upon a time, who could ever have imagined Trump as president of these (increasingly dis-)United States? And who could have dreamed such a disastrous fate for the world?

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.