Hands up if you would like petrol prices to go up?  I’m guessing not too many hands.  The cripplingly high costs of energy (both fuel, whether petrol, diesel, gas or coal as well as electricity) have posed a huge challenge for households and firms all around the world.  Massive increases in these costs, driven by the weaponization of energy by Putin after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have plunged some households into poverty – forcing them to choose between heating and eating.  Businesses have laid off workers and scaled back activities because of the crippling price rises. 

Read the full blog from Dr. Neil McCulloch on Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet

In this second blog, Sam Bickersteth, climate change expert at The Policy Practice, reflects on what has been achieved at the 27th UN conference on climate change, and the political economy barriers to saving our planet by reducing emissions.  

The annual UN conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention has kicked off in Egypt and it is getting attention like never before. When the UN Secretary General tells us that we are close to irreversible tipping points and “climate hell” then we should be sitting up and listening. 

But what can we hear through the hubbub of statements from Heads of State, multiple side events, news reports and pre COP blogs? What will hold our attention and that of our leaders preoccupied with recession, food and energy price hikes, the war in Ukraine and the impending northern hemisphere winter?

Read the first blog by TPP Principal, Sam Bickersteth.