Nafeez Ahmed sees the current energy crisis as a symptom of a deeper malaise – reliance on Russia and fossil fuels – which could lead to spiralling inflation and a perfect global economic storm
“… the problems we are seeing are temporary. We’re experiencing bottlenecks in all kinds of things – huge stresses – as the world wakes up from COVID. It’s like everybody going to put the kettle on at the end of a TV programme.”
But Boris Johnson is wrong.
The current price hikes are a warning sign of a deeper shift: a turning point of global proportions that requires a very different approach from business-as-usual. Though no longer rich in fossil fuel resources, consistently poor policy choices mean that the UK and Europe as a whole remain dependent on them. The failure to recognise the implications has set us up for increased geopolitical dependence on Russia, and a future of intensifying, intertwined cyclical climate and energy crises that will amplify the chance of triggering a series of shocks that could devastate the global economy.
To understand what’s happening, we need to go beyond banal headlines and simplistic reductions of the crisis to one or the other factor, and instead attempt to understand the crisis through a whole systems lens.
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