“Future historians may well see the Iran war as the moment the US unwittingly ceded leadership to China” as the world’s pre-eminent superpower, writes Jonathan Watts in a reported essay in The Guardian published earlier this week. The piece came out on the heels of Donald Trump’s departure from Beijing after his summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Analysts in Washington have argued for decades over what to do about China’s rise as a global power, but the debate has focused on issues of economic strength and military might. Watts, who spent years in China as a correspondent for The Guardian and is now the paper’s global environment writer, instead emphasizes energy: the lifeforce that animates those economies and militaries. “One of the cornerstones of geostrategic thinking since the start of the Industrial Revolution, 250 years ago, is that the country that controls energy supply controls the world,” he points out. “For most of the past century, that has centered on oil.”

But the era of oil is ending, Watts contends, as the global economy “shifts from molecules to electrons”—or from burning oil, gas, and coal to generating solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. The implications are profound, not least for the chances of limiting global temperature rise to a survivable level.

Watts presents his argument across a broad intellectual canvas, ranging from Britain’s opium wars against China in the 1850s to the gargantuan short-term riches that oil companies are gobbling as the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked to the plummeting costs of clean energy, all which illustrate that the fight to preserve a livable planet cannot be understood outside its social contexts. For journalists, the essay is a reminder that the stories we report about, say, the Iran war or climate change–fueled extreme weather surges are not happening in isolation. They are part of a larger narrative, a narrative that makes them each all the more interesting as news stories.

The core of Watt’s argument is that history demonstrates that when “humankind taps new power supplies, new empires rise and old ones fall.” Today, “Beijing’s bet on renewable power and EVs over the past two decades is paying enormous dividends…buffer[ing] its economy from the gas price shocks caused by the conflict in the Middle East, while opening up huge new export markets for solar panels, wind turbines, smart grids and electric vehicles.” China’s clean energy sector is now worth a staggering $2.2 trillion, bigger than all but seven of the world’s economies.

Yes, Watts notes, China still burns more coal than any other country. But its embrace of renewables (China has more wind turbines than the next 18 countries combined) has meant its annual greenhouse gas emissions have been flat or falling the past two years. Equally important, he says, is the fact that “the scale of its renewable industry means Beijing has a growing stake in the success of global climate negotiations. Not just because it is good for the planet, but because it makes solid business sense.”

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Meanwhile, Trump is determined to revive the fossil fuels that powered the US’s own rise to dominance in the 20^th century. The US’s possession of vast oil reserves was a major reason it emerged from World War II not only victorious but incomparably more powerful than its rivals in Europe and Asia. That oil also enabled the post-war construction of suburbs, interstate highways, and car culture that fueled the greatest economic boom in history, strengthening US global supremacy.

But things have changed. Solar and wind technologies now generate “the cheapest electricity in history,” according to the International Energy Agency, and economies of scale and technological learning curves make it cheaper all the time. Watts is not alone in contending the Iran war has driven another nail in oil’s coffin. IEA executive director Fatih Birol recently said the price spikes and supply interruptions resulting from the war have forever changed countries’ risk calculations, permanently turning them away from oil and gas, and toward more secure, and cheaper, renewables.

China’s intentions are not necessarily “any more benign” than those of other empires, Watts cautions, and “petro- interests still have political, military and financial might on their side, and they are using that to try to turn back the energy clock.” On the other hand, the devastating impacts of climate change are ever more evident; clean energy is “the fastest growing, greatest job creating chunk of the global economy,” and “throughout the world, a huge majority of people want their governments to take stronger action on the climate crisis,” as CCNow’s 89 Percent Project has been reporting.

However it unfolds, it’s a tale of high drama, immense stakes, and abundant villains and heroes. In other words, a great story, both for journalists and the public we serve.