“The energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could become the worst in half a century,” Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan write in a new essay. But the turbulence in today’s fuel markets is only “a preview of the tumultuous era ahead.”
Before the war, efforts to mitigate climate change were already transforming the global energy order. Now, energy security has become just as important a concern. Acting on these two priorities at once will require “government intervention in the energy sector on a scale not seen in recent memory,” Bordoff and O’Sullivan argue. Intervention, if managed correctly, can help steer economies through the coming transition. Without it, “the world will suffer a breakdown in energy security or the worst effects of climate change—or both.”
Read more from Foreign Affairs on energy politics and climate change:
“Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy” by Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan
“The Right Way to Sanction Russian Energy” by Edward Fishman and Chris Miller
“The Coming Carbon Tsunami” by Kelly Sims Gallagher
“How Reforming Tax and Trade Rules Can Fight Climate Change” by Jessica F. Green
