The environmental politics of Donald Trump: re-framing Trump’s wars through a focus on energy

The past year has seen radical and unforeseen geopolitical changes, driven largely by President Trump, including the imposition of tariffs, the trade wars that followed, and ceasefire negotiations and FDI-led conflict resolution in Gaza. The seeming invasion of Venezuela has also raised concerns, particularly about its implications for Greenland.

Political analysts have focused on Trump's personality, politics and the specific internal context of US politics to make sense of many of these changes which are contrastingly global in nature.

Our panel centres the crucial and geographical issue of energy transitions in making sense of these changes. Our speakers bring unique and differing perspectives of how to reframe Trump’s actions through the wider context of energy wars and climate change.

They will focus on grounding geopolitical events in strategies centred on energy production, thinking about land, labour and capital in the remaking of the world order, and reinvigorating our perspective on recent events.

They will also examine current changes and future directions, looking to new spaces of extraction and how these will shape events in years to come. 

About the speakers

Dr Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute.

Her research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left, explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020).

Dr Patrick Schröder is an international sustainability expert at Chatham House, specializing in climate change, resource governance, the circular economy, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He works at the intersection of science, policy, and media to advance evidence-based policies, communicate complex sustainability issues, and promote equitable governance solutions at the multilateral level.

He is a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Assessment Report 7 (WG III – Mitigation), Coordinating Lead Author for the UN Global Environment Outlook 7, and a member of the International Science Council Expert Group on Plastic Pollution. 

Dr Sean Kenji Starrs is a Lecturer in International Development and King’s College, London. His research explores US Imperialism and hegemony in the world order, the capitalist rise of China and the BRICS, techno nationalism in relation to semiconductors, state theory, the geopolitics of capital and critical political economy.

He is renowned as a public intellectual on these issues, having written for and/or been cited/interviewed by Bloomberg News, CNN, The Financial Times, Politico, South China Morning Post, local Hong Kong radio and TV, Voice of America, Jacobin, The Real News, Washington Post, among others. Sean has written reports for the Transnational Institute and regularly contributes to their work. 

Booking information

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