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Adam Currie is Campaign and Movement Support Manager at 350 Aotearoa. In this piece, prompted by a photograph of the glacier collapse on the Tibet/Nepal border, Adam reflects on grief, scale, and the difference between despair and honest reckoning — and issues a gentle challenge: one climate commitment, made and kept, this September.

Credit: Chinese mountaineer Zhia Yitie

Take a look at this photo. It isn’t remarkable until you look closer. It shows the aftermath of the tragic glacier collapse on the Tibet/Nepal border. The pale stream running down the center is where the ice came away.

What made me double-take wasn’t what had fallen, but what remains.

Look closely at the glacier. Almost all of it is still there. Then think of the tens of thousands of other glaciers across the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. Picture yourself running away from a surging torrent caused by a collapsed glacier – as thousands in Nepal actually did. Imagine a circle widening across the globe from this one place: rivers, coastlines, towns, ecosystems and lives, all shaped by how much more warming we allow. And it’s so easy in our detached lives to not think about any of this – although perhaps less so for the increasing numbers of us struck by climate-fuelled disasters across the world.

It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of the damage still ahead of us, and there is plenty to grieve; not least the 1300+ folks killed by the flash floods. Our hearts and prayers go out to everyone affected — those who lost loved ones, homes, and communities in this disaster.

But let’s resist the urge to give up before we’ve truly lost. Because the same image also tells us something hopeful: there is still so much damage we can prevent.

The climate crisis isn’t a cliff we either fall off or don’t. There’s no single line that, once crossed, seals our fate — and no single line that, if held, saves us. It’s more like a boulder rolling down a long slope: it’s already moving, and we can’t stop it outright, but we can still shape how fast it goes and how much damage it does on the way down.

A recent UN report confirmed that the world is now set to breach the 1.5°C warming threshold within the next few years. That’s real, and it’s serious. But the same report makes a crucial point: breaching 1.5°C is not the same as losing. How far the boulder rolls, and how much it flattens on the way, is still being decided — by the emissions we cut or don’t cut, starting now.

That’s why every fraction of a degree matters: each one changes what happens on the way down, a slightly worse drought, a stronger storm, another flooded town. And that’s why every tonne of carbon we keep out of the atmosphere matters too — not because any one tonne will stop the boulder, but because collectively, our tonnes decide how hard it lands.

I am writing from New Zealand, where there is a whakataukī – or saying – “Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua” or “I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past,” has always resonated with me, and never been more relevant toda

I remember the solidarity after the climate-fuelled destruction of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. People flooded into the area with shovels, food, generators, boats and above all, kindness. Roads were cut off and homes were destroyed, but communities still found ways to reach one another. Hope in moments like that one was never about pretending the damage is small; but is refusing to let the damage be the only thing that defines what happens next.

As I wrote in 2020, there’s no point in a ‘climate sprint’ into the future without learning from and honouring the climate-fuelled disasters that have already happened, or forgetting the mātauranga and ways of living that communities have carried for generations. Sure, a few technological ‘advancements’ may or may not give us a bump. But the key solutions are in the past – living within our means, leaning into hard work/discomfort, sharing, living in the right relationship with others and the land.

None of us controls the whole picture. But everyone reading this has some small piece of it within reach.

So, as September and spring begin, I encourage us all to make one new climate commitment for this month. Just one thing you will actually do differently. The commitment could be anything. Write to someone dealing with a climate disaster here or overseas. Turn up to a planting day. Donate to 350.org. Ground yourself in your community. Volunteer for a climate org. Reach out to someone you’ve lost touch with and pull them a little closer into your community.

The glacier in this photograph is partly gone, but most of it is still there. It’s the same with our humanity. This government and the philosophy behind it are doing their best to undermine the bonds that tie us to each other, and make us retreat into our shells. We’ve lost a lot. But most of us are still here. Monty Python might say, “Always look on the bright side of life.” To that I would add: if we truly believe in the bright side, we have to walk towards it.

Credit to Chinese mountaineer Zhia Yitie for the photo, and 350.org pioneer Bill McKibben for bringing our attention to it.

The post Finding Steady Ground on a Glacier still Standing: A Letter from Aotearoa appeared first on 350.

What does the Pacific Ocean have to do with the electricity you need to charge your phone?

Quite a lot, actually.

Scientists are monitoring the development of El Niño, a natural climate pattern that begins with unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific. It might seem a long way from South Africa, and it is, but changes in the Pacific can influence weather patterns thousands of kilometres away.

For Southern Africa, that can mean hotter and drier conditions, putting more pressure on water supplies and agriculture while increasing the risk of fires.

In the Western Cape, officials are already warning that the months ahead could bring higher temperatures, increased fire risk and greater pressure on water resources.

We don’t often connect what is happening with the climate to what is happening in our energy system. But we should. Our electricity system doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It operates in a world that is getting hotter, drier and more extreme. That changes things.

More extreme heat can drive up electricity demand as households and businesses try to keep cool. Fires, floods and severe storms can damage power lines, substations and other infrastructure used to distribute electricity. Water shortages can create additional challenges for parts of the electricity system that depend on reliable water supplies.

These impacts can have very real consequences. Damaged infrastructure can leave people without power. Rising demand can put an already stretched system under even more pressure. Repairs and replacements can increase costs. When the grid is under pressure, electricity becomes scarcer and more expensive.

When we connect the weather and electricity, one thing becomes clear: climate change is changing the conditions in which our electricity system has to operate.

South Africa’s electricity system isn’t exactly starting from a position of strength. We’ve spent years dealing with loadshedding, load reduction, breakdowns and expensive diesel backup, all of which have made the system unreliable, unaffordable and inaccessible.

Unpredictable weather caused by climate change adds another layer to these challenges.

At the same time, South Africa is in the middle of a major reform of its electricity system. We’re talking about electricity market reform, new generation, transmission infrastructure, electricity pricing, the future of Eskom, the role of renewable energy, and how to make electricity more affordable and accessible.

These decisions will shape our energy future. That means we can’t just ask, “Will the lights stay on?” We also need to ask, “Will the energy system we’re building be resilient to climate change?”

We may not have all the answers yet. But the current reforms give us an opportunity to think beyond simply producing more electricity and start thinking about the kind of energy future we want and need.

One that is reliable.

One that people can afford.

One that everyone can access.

One that can withstand a changing climate.

Written by: Boitumelo Masipa for 350.org

Sources:

Western Cape warns of El Niño risks as summer heat, fires and water pressure loom 

Transforming our energy system to ensure reliable and affordable electricity for all | South African Government 

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On August 26, 2026, a catastrophic flash flood swept down from the Bhote Koshi River near the Nepal-Tibet border, tearing through Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts in Nepal and destroying entire villages within minutes, leaving thousands missing and hundreds dead. This account is by Dikshya Subedi, a local in Kathmandu who has spent the past seven years working in climate advocacy across the Himalayan region. She is the country lead at SHE Changes Climate and founder of the youth-led organization Youth Action For Sustainable and Eco Nepal (YASEN), and writes here as someone whose own family was directly affected by the disaster.

That Wednesday morning started like any other. At around 9:30 AM, I saw the first news of a massive flood in Rasuwa, the beautiful mountainous district on the Tibet border. Lined with brightly coloured houses and where the Bhote Koshi River enters Nepal, Rasuwa is located a few hours from Kathmandu. Feeling confused and unsettled, I scrolled on, the way we sometimes do when something feels too big to look at directly. A few minutes later, my eyes landed on Facebook again, and this time the news was impossible to scroll past. The flash flood had hit  Devighat, Nuwakot, a quiet riverside town further downstream where my husband was born and grew up in, the place that held his entire childhood.

I called my aunt, who lives in Nuwakot. Her voice on the phone was shaking, terrified. “Nothing is left,” she told me. “Everything is destroyed.” Somehow, my uncle, aunt, and brother Manzil Rimal managed to evacuate from that flooded area just before the massive flood.  But that phone call broke something in me. The place where we used to visit my husband’s hometown for festivals, where we gathered as a family, where his memories live, turned into mud in ten minutes.

An aerial view shows houses covered in mud after flash floods at Devighat, Nepal’s Nuwakot district. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

I’ve worked in climate advocacy for several years. I’ve explained flood risks to government officials, helped authorities understand the danger maps for glacial lakes, and used the phrase “climate crisis” more times than I can count. But watching the impacts of the climate crisis arrive at your own doorstep, was beyond anything I could have imagined. I have spent years telling other people this could happen to them. I never imagined I would be the one making the phone call, listening to my aunt’s voice break on the other end.

There is a saying in Nepal: disaster won’t come by making noise. On that Wednesday, the people of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading learned exactly how true that is. And so did I, not as an advocate this time, but as a daughter-in-law of that soil.

A sudden, catastrophic flash flood surged in from the Bhote Koshi River near the Nepal-China border on the morning of August 26. It tore downstream through Timure, Syaphrubeshi, and Betrawati in Rasuwa district, sweeping away entire villages within an hour. The floodwaters continued down the Trishuli River corridor, devastating communities further downstream in the districts of Nuwakot and Dhading. Devighat, my husband’s village, was severely affected.

Floodwaters caused severe devastation in Devighat. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

While the exact cause is still being investigated, scientists have traced the flood back to an over 2,000-foot-wide (approx. 600 meters) chunk of glacier that sheared off high in the Himalayas and plunged 7,000 feet (over 2 kms) into the Lhende Khola a tributary of the Bhote Koshi River, sending a flood wave downstream at speeds of up to 193 km/h. This is exactly the kind of event climate change triggers. Warming shrinks glaciers and makes them more likely to break apart. 

The death toll from the devastating Bhote Koshi flood in Rasuwa has reached 939, while 3,925 people remain out of contact, according to the latest update from National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA). The highest number of bodies, 279, was recovered in Chitwan, followed by 216 in Nawalparasi Purba, 169 in Nawalparasi Paschim, 95 in Nuwakot, 65 in Gorkha, 55 in Dhading, 38 in Tanahun, and 23 in Rasuwa. Search and rescue teams, along with relief and medical response units, are still working around the clock. The government has set up dedicated teams for rescue, relief, health, communications, and infrastructure restoration, but the scale of destruction will take a long time to fully understand, let alone recover from.

The floodwaters along with mud and debris completely destroy homes, reaching levels above the rooftops. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

For me, this is not something I am following from a distance through headlines. My husband’s home is in Devighat, Nuwakot, one of the places hit hardest. My uncle, aunt, and brother were there and saw the destruction with their own eyes: houses swept away, communities losing almost everything in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, my close relatives are safe. We have not lost anyone in our own family. But we have lost our house and factory, which is the main source of income that my parents and Uncle Aunt took many years to built on is swept away in  seconds. The place where we held countless family gatherings, where all of my husband’s childhood memories live, no longer exists.

Caption: Dikshya’s husband’s family home, buried under mud and debris from the flood. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

The reports coming out of Devighat now are hard to read. A village once known for its bustling market and Jalpa Devi temple one of the very popular temple is buried under mud so complete that only the upper floors of houses still break the surface – uprooted trees flung onto rooftops, electric pylons snapped like twigs. Search teams there are still pulling bodies from collapsed homes, working through mud so thick that sometimes all that’s visible of a victim is a foot. Survivors who’ve come back describe standing in the wreckage of houses they spent their whole lives building, with nothing left to salvage but the clothes on their backs, unsure whether the land is even safe to rebuild on. Watching what has happened to our neighbors, to the village that shaped my husband’s childhood, is heartbreaking in a way I don’t fully have words for.

The destruction left in Devighat in the aftermath of the flood. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

This is the part that people rarely talk about when they discuss climate advocacy: the work is never as abstract as it looks from the outside. I have spent years building the language – resilience, adaptation, loss and damage – that is supposed to help policymakers understand disasters like this one. Advocacy taught me the facts. This flood taught me what the facts actually cost.

Houses in Devighat left destroyed as mud and debris reach rooftops. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

This disaster is a brutal reminder that climate change is not something we can keep filing away as a threat for later. We are already living its consequences here in the Himalayas. 

Global heating is melting the permafrost, the “glue” that holds our mountains together, and that’s raising the risk of glacier collapse more and more likely. A survey published within a day of this flood has now mapped over 3,600 glacial lakes across our river basins, 47 of them classified as potentially dangerous, and this one wasn’t even on the list, because the lake that burst didn’t exist the morning before. That’s how fast this hazard is moving.

Climate change makes flashfloods like the one above in Nuwakot more likely due to glacier collapse triggered by global heating. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

What makes this especially unjust is the imbalanced cruelty of who pays: Nepal is responsible for roughly 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it ranks among the 10 countries most affected by climate change on the Global Climate Risk Index. Nepal’s finance minister, Swarnim Wagle, has put the initial rebuilding cost at US$4–5 billion, nearly a tenth of the country’s entire economy. But that estimate assumes this is a one-time cost. It isn’t. With the region’s glaciers and permafrost continuing to destabilize, a disaster like this one is not a low-probability outlier, it is the shape of what is coming again.

In the middle of all this grief, something has genuinely moved me: the response of young people.Within a day, young volunteers across Nepal had organized themselves into the Rasuwa Relief Group, tracking who was missing, making sure support reached those who needed it, even volunteering for risky ground operations. 

Locals and volunteers provide support and rescue in Devighat after the flood. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

I’ve sat in plenty of meetings where “youth engagement” was just a line on someone’s agenda, a box to check before the real decisions happened elsewhere. Watching this unfold in real time, I don’t need convincing anymore. No one assigned these young people this responsibility: they simply took it on, faster than any ministry could move, because these were their families too.

It doesn’t erase my grief. But it has given me hope.It’s proof that the years I spent showing up to advocate for the climate as it affects young people,did build something – a generation that doesn’t wait to be asked.

The flood that took my husband’s hometown moved at 193 kilometers an hour. We need to move faster. And for that, we need three things:

1. Disaster preparedness and management: Climate response and preparedness cannot be the thing we get to eventually. It has to come first, before the next village disappears. We need early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, and locally led preparedness for the mountain communities already living with this risk.
2. Locally led adaptation: Youth and affected communities must be given real, resourced roles in local adaptation and early-warning planning, not token invitations after the mourning has begun. 
3. Real climate finance: Wealthy nations, most responsible for the climate crisis, need to stop treating funding as a favor delivered on their own timeline. Nepal needs that money now, not at the next summit. It needs to come as genuine compensation, not charity, and paid out as grants rather than loans that burden our country. It must reach impacted families directly and fast.

This isn’t a wish list; it’s the difference between a village saved in time and one that isn’t. My husband’s hometown is already gone. What we do next decides how many more we can save.

Dikshya in Devighat. Photo: Dikshya Subedi

“Yesterday, this was a climate and disaster story in the news; today, it is a story happening at my family’s doorstep. But the people of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading are still here, still fighting, still helping each other. Let’s unite to rebuild together. 

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A fifth of the world’s oil passes through a strait just 55km wide. Right now, that strait is closed, and it’s not the only one. For most of us, the Strait of Hormuz, the Panama Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait are names we half-remembered from a geography lesson. But right now, all three of these critical shipping lanes, plus the Suez Canal and the South China Sea straits, are under simultaneous strain. And the causes aren’t separate stories. War, the climate crisis and a strong El Niño are compounding each other, squeezing the narrow waterways that carry the fuel, food and goods the world runs on.

That’s the warning at the heart of a report from the climate think tank E3G, Beyond Securing Supply. It makes a case that should worry anyone who cares about a just, liveable future: the world’s energy system isn’t just fragile because of any one crisis. It’s fragile because a small number of choke points now have to absorb war, sabotage, congestion and climate breakdown, often at the same time and there’s no cushion left when several hit at once.

The Strait of Hormuz. Just 55km wide at its narrowest point, this single passage between Iran and Oman normally carries roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and a fifth of its LNG. Since the outbreak of the 2026 war between Iran, the US and Israel, the strait has been effectively shut to commercial shipping. Attacks on tankers pushed war-risk insurance premiums up as much as fourfold, and freight rates on the key Gulf-to-Asia route jumped over 300% almost overnight. Oil and gas prices spiked globally within days, even hitting countries with no direct trade link to the region at all. 

The Gulf of Oman connects the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/NASA/The Visible Earth

Bab el-Mandeb, at the mouth of the Red Sea, is a vital 18-mile-wide sea lane, a primary global chokepoint where roughly 10% to 12% of international trade and millions of barrels of oil pass dailyOngoing Houthi attacks since late 2023 have made it too dangerous, pushing most Western-linked shipping to go all the way around Africa, via the Cape of Good Hope. That’s not a return to normal , it’s a new, permanently more expensive normal: longer voyages, higher freight and insurance costs, and less spare tanker capacity to absorb the next shock. Egypt runs the  Suez Canal revenues and depends on its tolls, a critical piece of its economy, that have now reportedly fallen by roughly half.

The Bab al-Mandeb Strait from space, between the Horn of Africa (left) and the Arabian Peninsula (right). Photo: by Gallo Images, Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2021/Getty Images

The Panama Canal. This is a channel where 5-6% of all global trade goes through, including critical food and gas supplies. Unlike the other two, this chokepoint isn’t shut by conflict , it’s impacted by drought. A strong El Niño, layered on top of long-term climate change, has driven Gatún Lake (the freshwater reservoir the canal’s locks depend on) to record lows for a second time in three years. Daily transits have been cut from the normal ~36–38 ships down toward the low 20s. Ships without a booked slot now face costly reservation auctions , where the average winning bid has reportedly jumped from around $135,000 to as much as $4 million. Scientists studying the 2023 Panama drought concluded it would have been “unlikely” without El Niño, and that climate change is making these swings between El Niño and La Niña more extreme and more frequent.

The Panama Canal is located directly between the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) and the Pacific Ocean Photo: GeogGlobeTales, TikTok

It would be easy to file all this under “geopolitics” and move on but climate change isn’t a bystander here  it’s a structural multiplier of chokepoint risk.

Three things are happening at once:

1. Physical disruption: War, attacks and accidents slow-down or block the routes directly..
2. “Paper chokepoints”: , Insurance companies, sanctions and shipping contracts make it hard to reroute,  even when another path technically exists. 
3. Climate change: drought, heat and extreme weather are steadily eroding the capacity and reliability of the routes that would normally offer a way around a crisis.

Crucially, these layers stack. When Hormuz  closed ships couldn’t simply detour through the Red Sea route as an escape valve from the Hormuz crisis , because that route was already too dangerous.. When shipping gets rerouted around Africa to avoid the Red Sea, that adds pressure on tanker capacity everywhere else. And when the Panama Canal , one of the few large alternative corridors for Asia-bound US cargoes , is running at reduced capacity because of drought, there’s less slack left in the whole system to absorb the next shock, wherever it comes from.

In other words: the more the climate crisis narrows our margin for error, the harder every other kind of shock , war, sabotage, an accident, a blockage , hits.

The costs of this don’t land evenly, and that’s the injustice at the centre of it.

While governments of oil-exporting countries may actually see revenues rise when prices spike; Ordinary households, especially in import-dependent countries, see the opposite: higher fuel and shipping costs pushed straight through to food and energy bills. A 10% rise in fuel prices is estimated to raise food distribution costs by 3–5% in import-dependent economies , a burden that falls hardest on the poorest households, where food can already absorb 50–70% of income.

• South Asian economies like Pakistan and Bangladesh are the most structurally exposed of all major importers, heavily dependent on Gulf LNG routed through Hormuz, with little spare capacity to cushion a shock.
• There’s also a slower-moving hit still coming: the Gulf supplies close to half the world’s sulphur and urea (both critical fertiliser inputs) and roughly 40% of global helium. E3G’s analysis (echoed elsewhere) suggests fertilizer shortages triggered by the Hormuz disruption could take 6–9 months to show up, meaning the full effect on food prices and harvests across South Asia and East Africa may still be ahead of us. 

The instinctive response to a supply shock is to look for more fossil fuel supply, from new suppliers, new pipelines, new terminals but more supply does not remove the exposure. Oil is priced on integrated global markets, so a shock anywhere raises prices everywhere, regardless of where your own cargo comes from. Diversifying suppliers can smooth short-term bumps, but it doesn’t touch the structural vulnerability of depending on a small number of narrow physical corridors in the first place.

The one thing that does reduce exposure, durably, is needing less oil and gas to move through these chokepoints at all. Once a wind turbine or solar panel is installed, it generates power locally for 25–30 years, immune to a closed strait or a dried-up lake, in a way that no amount of LNG diversification can match. Electrification, efficiency, grid build-out and clean power aren’t just climate policies anymore , they’re energy security policy, and arguably the only kind that actually holds up under simultaneous shocks.

That’s the throughline connecting Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and Panama: three very different crises, one shared root cause , a global energy system built on continuous shipments through a handful of chokepoints, now colliding with a warming, more volatile world. The war in the Gulf will end at some point. The next El Niño will not be the last, and it won’t be gentler. Building resilience means shrinking our dependence on the fossil fuel system that keeps putting all of us at the mercy of these narrow stretches of water.

Sources:

• E3G, Beyond Securing Supply: Chokepoint Risk for Oil and Gas Importers, March 2026.
• Additional information from World Weather Attribution, Carbon Brief, and reports on the August 2026 Panama Canal restrictions.

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This is a guest post by Camilo Sánchez, a communications strategist working for Greenpeace International.

We are living through a cost of living crisis that is being treated as if it were a mysterious, purely “economic” event, when in reality it has a clear, combustible cause: our dependence on coal, oil and gas. Across the United States, Europe and far beyond, the main driver of recent price surges has not been wages or “too much money” in the system, but repeated fossil fuel shocks feeding into everything from electricity bills to food prices. When we talk about inflation today, in many countries we are mostly talking about fossilflation, a price spiral rooted in the fossil fuel system itself.

The US‑Israeli war on Iran is first and foremost a human catastrophe, with thousands of lives lost, families displaced and communities facing bombing, blackouts and water cuts across Iran and the wider Middle East. Those impacts are compounded by the environmental devastation of burning refineries, major oil spills, leaking pipelines and militarised shipping lanes, whose toxic fallout will last far beyond the nightly news cycle. At the same time, the decision to wage war in a region that carried a substantial share of the world’s oil and LNG has triggered what the International Energy Agency calls the worst energy crisis since the 1970s, sending fuel, food and transport prices soaring.

The closure and repeated disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, which controls around a fifth of global oil and gas shipping, has shown again how easily a single chokepoint can turn into a global economic weapon. Another fossil fuel chokepoint, the Bab al‑Mandeb strait, has become a flashpoint in a connected war over Red Sea shipping and Yemen, against the backdrop of the same energy shock. This strategically located transit route has enabled Saudi Arabia to boost its oil revenue during the crisis, even as missile threats and blockade politics deepen a humanitarian emergency and ripple into higher bills far from the frontline. As long as our energy system relies on oil and gas flowing through war‑prone chokepoints, war anywhere becomes a crisis everywhere.

The US‑Israeli war on Iran is not an isolated episode. Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine, earlier energy crises and repeated OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) supply squeezes have all followed a familiar pattern, fossil fuel prices surge, inflation jumps, whiteland households are left to absorb the shock through higher bills. Each time, governments and central banks talk about “temporary energy noise”, but the reality is that every fossil shock leaves a permanent mark on the price level, pushing people deeper into hardship even after headline inflation starts to fall again.

August 06 2023, Canada, Alberta. Tar Sand Processing in Alberta near Fort McMurray. © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace

Since fossilflation is driven by oil and gas, governments must cut down their countries’ dependence on fossil fuels as a response to energy shocks. But this is not what we are seeing. An analysis of seven EU countries’ responses to the US‑Israeli war on Iran shows that most emergency packages have been designed to protect fossil fuel consumption rather than to cut dependence on it. Across Europe, roughly 86% of crisis spending by governments is encouraging more fossil fuel use through fuel tax cuts, broad VAT reductions on energy (cutting sales tax on everyone’s gas and electricity bills) and untargeted subsidies (direct payments or price supports for fossil fuel costs for all consumers rather than prioritising support for the most vulnerable households. 

Spain, Germany, and Ireland have spent the most on broad fossil fuel bailouts by cutting fuel taxes across the board. This brings prices down for now, but keeps these countries hooked on imported oil and gas.

The Spanish government’s energy relief €5 billion package is a mixed bag: it includes protection for people against rising energy costs and measures towards shifting to renewables but also a massive tax break for heavy industry, making it one of Europe’s strongest renewable energy commitments and one of its biggest fossil fuel lock-ins, at the same time.

Despite its bold climate rhetoric, Germany’s actual response to the energy price shock has been almost entirely fuel tax cuts and price caps, nothing that meaningfully reduces its fossil fuel dependence.

The Netherlands and Sweden have done better, putting more money into things like energy-efficient homes, heat pump incentives, and cheaper public transport. But even they still spend heavily on fossil fuel subsidies.

Overall, none of these seven EU countries has a plan that actually ends fossil fuel dependence, all are allocating more to fossil fuel bailouts than to structural solutions.

Such measures make fossil fuels cheaper to keep using, rather than helping people use less of them which is not only inconsistent with climate goals, it also deepens inequality. Broad tax cuts and general fuel untargeted subsidies tend to benefit higher‑income households and sectors with high fossil consumption, while leaving the poorest communities with only partial relief and no long‑term protection. Only a small share of the government spending is going towards reducing fossil fuel for good, or speeding up the transition to renewables.

Instead of using limited  public budgets to insulate buildings, expand clean public transport, support agroecology and tax windfall fossil profits, many governments are effectively writing cheques to the fossil fuel industry, hoping that temporary discounts will buy social peace.

Fossilflation is not just a technical issue for central bankers, it is a justice and peace issue. Every time oil and gas prices surge, it is ordinary households, especially in low‑income communities on the frontlines of climate impacts, that pay the price through rising bills and reduced public services. In the first 50 days of the US‑Israeli war on Iran, an estimated 150 billion dollars moved from households to oil and gas companies through higher energy prices alone, while governments worldwide are on track to spend around 1.1 trillion US dollars propping up the fossil fuel industry in 2026.

Meanwhile, the social and environmental costs of fossilflation are enormous too. Air pollution from burning coal, oil and gas is linked to roughly 8.7 million premature deaths a year worldwide, and climate‑driven disasters such as floods and heatwaves add hundreds of millions of euros to energy bills in countries like France and Germany on top of lives lost. When governments choose to preserve fossil fuel profits and military alliances over people’s wellbeing, they are effectively trading peace and stability for an economy built on volatile, violent energy sources.

May 01 2002, Germany, Ingolstadt. Esso Refinery. © Jens Küsters / Greenpeace

Dependence on fossil fuel chokepoints such as Hormuz and Bab al‑Mandeb also undermines peace directly. It gives armed actors leverage over global energy prices, incentivises military protection of shipping lanes, and turns entire regions into geopolitical battlegrounds where civilians pay in parts: first through war and destruction, then through the economic fallout and ultimately, through more extreme weather. Breaking this dependence is therefore imperative not only to the climate imperative but also to peace.

August 16 2023, Indonesia, Jakarta. Electric Bus in Jakarta.© Jurnasyanto Sukarno / Greenpeace

The evidence from the US, Europe and conflict zones points to a clear conclusion: tackling fossilflation means ending our dependence on oil and gas. There is no shortage of sunlight or wind threatening our energy security, what keeps our societies vulnerable is the decision to stick with fuels whose price and supply can be disrupted at any moment by Trump’s mood, a pipeline explosion or a war.

A coherent response needs four pillars.

• Decentralised, price‑stable renewables. Wind and solar have become the cheapest forms of new electricity generation in history, with solar costs falling by around 87% and battery storage by more than 90% since 2010, and they do not depend on shipping through war‑prone chokepoints. Scaling up local energy communities, rooftop solar, heat pumps, smart grids and green storage can turn households and communities from passive bill‑payers into active participants in a resilient energy system.
• Demand reduction and fair transport. Instead of subsidising fossil fuels for private cars, governments can introduce affordable climate tickets for public transport, strengthen rail networks and night trains, and support remote working and speed limits to cut oil demand. Fair transport policies reduce emissions and shield people from future oil price spikes.

June 10 2015, Japan, Kanagawa-ken. Neighbors Visiting at Farmer’s Market in Japan © Kayo Sawaguchi / Greenpeace

• Resilient food system. Large‑scale renovation of homes, phasing out gas from buildings, and investing in agroecology to break dependence on fossil‑based fertilisers can turn cities and rural areas into climate‑resilient spaces, while making heating and food more affordable in the long run.
• Tax justice and ending fossil fuel bailouts. Ending fossil fuel subsidies and broad tax cuts, introducing permanent taxes on super‑profits and on the ultra‑rich, and banning fossil fuel advertising can help fund solutions that can actually protect people from energy shocks while accelerating the transition.

February 24 2025, Germany, Nauen. Wind Farm. © Paul Langrock / Greenpeace

Breaking free from fossil fuels is not just climate policy, it is an anti-inflation policy, social policy and peace policy. As long as we remain locked into oil and gas, we will remain trapped in repeated cycles of fossilflation, war‑fuelled price shocks and widening inequality. Shifting to renewables, efficiency, fair taxation and justice‑based solutions, is both the opportunity and the precondition for real energy independence, economic stability and lasting peace.

For us to fully tackle this situation, we have to look at both its causes and its solutions. You can start by calling it the right way: fossilflation, so that we put the light on the oil and gas addiction that is causing this crisis in the first place.

Together with that, you can also demand your government to tax those fossil fuel polluters that are reaping astronomical profits from the war. That money would fund the policies and measures that are needed to protect you and your community in this and the next crises, as well as to finance the shift towards the clean, stable and renewable energies that we so urgently need.

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