Sunsets are like blazing bonfires guiding us towards darkness – whether we’re ready or not.
Dodging chaotic shade thrown jaggedly like daggers, I constantly rebuilt myself like a phoenix in the midst of smoldering midnight melancholy. The swirling backroads of Virginia’s majestic mountains both tore apart and transformed my identity, teaching me early on that transformation is unavoidable. Essentially, my climate has always been changing.
Despite its magnificent beauty, Forge Road (also known as Route 608) has always been quilted with lies, broken promises, and deception. Isolated and forgotten, older generations have sometimes referred to it as God’s landscape. It’s more like a concrete pathway to hell. In the past few decades, steadfast gentrification has blanketed the hillside, forcing farmers whose livelihoods depended on the land to completely rebuild from the bottom again. For miles, pastures were emptied and fields were plowed for the last time to make way for cumbersome suburban castles, their gates still spiking up into the sun’s raging horizon like needles in my eyes. The whittling away of those gorgeous hills once spotted with grazing cattle has covered hundreds of acres in gaudy communities. As a result, this manifested a cataclysmic split that echoed my perpetual pain. Forced tranquility seamlessly manipulated thru-travelers from denser populations as they searched for a paradise less paved.
But at five years old, I couldn’t yet tell the difference. I would have still called it an oasis.
Commonly known by locals as a racetrack for rednecks and rebels in southern Rockbridge County, Virginia, commuters typically travel Forge Road as an alternative route between Buena Vista (BV) and Glasgow. Until I was four years old, we lived in a trailer park in BV, but my mom feared my sister and I would be labeled as “trailer trash” when we started kindergarten. So, we left our well-insulated bedrooms for a drafty and cramped two-bedroom cottage at least 20 minutes from any of the neighboring towns: Buena Vista (population: 6k), Glasgow (population: 1k), and Lexington (population: 7k). My dad grew up in Lexington and Granny Elsie, his mother, maintained their family homeplace for decades. Despite the distance, Granny visited us as often as she could and helped us settle into our new home.
My mom was raised in Roanoke, the largest city in our part of Virginia. She would often tell us stories about how she’d watched farmland get sold and paved over to build a mall, parking lots, and other buildings. Joni Mitchell said it best: they’d paved paradise. But I never imagined anything like that would happen to us.
It was the summer of 1995. I had just moved into the tucked-away countryside with my mom, dad, and younger sister Sarah. Our new house, a 1930s farmette, was being freshly painted in a coat of ivory by my mom and Granny.
“Come quick!” I shrieked as the majestic fireball fiercely burned in the distance. Terrified, my Granny Elsie came running.
“What’s wrong, my dear?” she inquired, convinced of danger.
“Look,” I whispered and pointed at the screaming sky. After a moment, Granny’s face softened into a gentle smile. Wrapping our arms around each other, we fixed our gaze on the vibrant neon pink and burnt orange horizon.
I may not have been in any physical harm at that moment, but Granny saved me that day.
From that day on, it became vital for me to not only admire the world’s natural beauty, but to advocate for its existence. Years down the road, we’d sip her freshly brewed Southernly sweet tea and reflect on that evening while playing cards. Granny taught me that life is full of challenges, but she also showed me how to embrace the internalized rhythm of the natural world that pulses through my heart, spirit, and soul. For years to come, we spent countless hours celebrating our joyful adoration of the outdoors no matter the season.
Later on, Dad mirrored this sentiment. He had reluctantly left our family in 1997, but we reconnected when I was an adult. “No matter how you say it, it’s going to be a song,” he told me as we improvised a myriad of funky tunes (me on piano and vocals and him on bass or drums). And he was right.
My parents met in a rock band. Mom taught music, and Dad was a self-employed rockstar, so music was a non-negotiable part of our life. I often felt out of place around my peers. “Most likely to dig through the trash and recycle” was my so-called unofficial superlative, but it was true. In my bright stripes and funky hair, I punked my way through school, focusing more on how to save the planet than myself. I realize now those two go hand in hand.
When I was younger, I spent hours reading under the willow tree, swimming in Buffalo Creek, or writing furiously in a composition notebook. I’d wave and grin from the backseat in my mom’s car at old farmers on their rusty tractors. But, sheltered from modern culture, my sister and I also became socially awkward and immensely lonely. We spent most of our time exploring the natural world and I perfected hopping barbed wire fences and walking past grazing cows. Avoiding patties and thorny vines with finesse, we frequently hiked to Buffalo Creek to wade into the gently flowing water.
For my sister and I, our daily life over the years was a performance, and we were not allowed to opt out of that mindset under our mom’s watch. We were constantly putting on a show, from parades and summer theater performances to those infamous beauty pageants. Traveling to these much more densely populated locations allowed us spotty exposure to blissful modern culture, only to return reluctantly (and often begrudgingly) to our isolated home.
We had no well or city water, only an outdated cistern. It wasn’t potable, so we refilled jugs from Food Lion. When it was time to shower, we stood in tubs to collect gray water, then used it to flush (otherwise, we left the yellow to mellow). Mom would not let us keep the heat over 65 degrees in winter because of the price of propane, so I learned at a young age that fossil fuels were not sustainable. Our household’s avid reusing, reducing, and recycling led me to being intensely mindful of my habits and routines.
Our house was built on top of what used to be Mount Lydia Church. Formerly a place of worship for slaves, it transformed in later years into our homeplace. Located just down the road was Bunker Hill Mill, a plantation built on Buffalo Creek over 200 years before I learned to swim in it. And in our front yard, down the hill, is an overgrown cemetery. I would spend hours there quietly reflecting amidst the sunken, unlabeled graves. It often felt like more of a refuge than my dysfunctional home life.
Warning: this paragraph contains mention of abuse. If you find this content upsetting or disturbing, please skip ahead to the following paragraph. Like a frog in boiling water, the abuse began slowly. No one could hear the desperate screams as the cruelty intensified, nor did anyone seem to care. Like melting ice caps, I barely recognized what was happening until it was a prevalent part of who I had become: damaged. After multiple failed attempts to advocate for myself, I became overwhelmed with hopelessness. I wanted to experience what I naively believed was real: a safe world where I mattered. Stress and screams preoccupied my mind. As the violence continued to escalate, I became extremely anxious. Wandering into the woods became the only way for me to process the horrendous intensity at home. Whenever it was finally over or I found a way out, I exited however I could. Often it was through my bedroom window.
Countless nights, I slinked into the plutonium night where the ebony sky would sparkle above me. In school, I learned about constellations like Orion, Casseopoia, and the North Star from local Native American tribes such as the Monacans. I would lay outside for hours letting my imagination run away with ideas about what else existed outside of my painful reality. As I ventured down to Bunker Hill, tiptoeing carefully along fragile riparian buffers of the shimmering creek, I burrowed deeper into my mind looking for solace from the trauma and poverty that engulfed my life. In these moments, the dense shadows of piney woodland allowed me to gradually tap back into the present. I didn’t realize it then, but I had discovered a way to heal myself.
It was around this time that I first noticed the farmland shrinking away. Before long, several beloved pastures and fields were replaced with endless rows of suburban mansions. It was a stark contrast to my life in poverty. Agricultural fatigue had infected my neighborhood, and I stopped seeing as many tractors puckering down Forge Road. The myriad of rolling hills eroded into posh cul-de-sacs. New classmates on our bus made fun of my sister and I constantly for our secondhand clothing. As a result, I developed a problem with stealing in a desperate effort to fit in and feel normal.
Eventually, I began to accept my identity by embracing my passion for nature. I had been one of the first to attend a field trip to Boxerwood Nature Center, a local nonprofit that ran environmental education opportunities for young students. For the first time, I learned about the impacts of water pollution on the Chesapeake Bay. Boxerwood created an opportunity that changed my life forever, one that led me to discovering what my purpose was: to help make the planet a better place.
Ultimately, school became my safe zone. In high school, I started significantly investigating climate change. At 16, I completed a governor’s school summer program about issues affecting the Chesapeake Bay. My senior independent project “Conservation for a Better World” included organizing a solo litter pickup along Buffalo Creek. I even proudly sang a recycle rap on Earth Day with my sister to advocate for waste conservation.
Basically, I set my eyes on a career path that related to helping the environment and climate change. In the process, I slowly started learning how to take better care of myself, too. It wasn’t until decades later during adulthood that I finally learned that I didn’t have to always perform. On the contrary, I could advocate authentically for both myself and my world.
My Granny understood more than anyone else. She helped when she could. “You don’t like to let grass grow under your feet,” she later remarked with a chuckle about my road-runner lifestyle. As I matured, I spent incalculable numbers of miles driving all over tarnation, as she likes to say. Meanwhile, my mom and sister faded out of my world.
Eventually I started to live with Granny in Lexington. So many times rather than staying home with her, I’d say, “Granny, I need to get out.” I’d drive down to the Maury River to spend a few hours basking in the sun or wading away from the world. But what was I darting away from, anyway? Why didn’t I stay in one place more often? I later figured it out: my untreated mental health struggles (CPTSD, depression, anxiety, ADHD) were slowly poisoning me inside, so the whole time I was trying to run away from myself. Perhaps it wasn’t about letting the grass grow under my feet after all, but planting a garden to pollinate my future.
Granny’s incessant loyalty is and will always be as rare as a hopeful blue jewel. With her soft, calming eyes, she would watch me with the most honest admiration I have ever seen. From an observant young girl to a reckless teenager, I was a rose that grew from the cracked backroads of my broken childhood. Granny never stopped being my hero, showing up when I needed rides to appointments more times than I can count. Later, she would arrive with barely an inquisition when I needed to be picked up at night in dubious neighborhoods after a slew of poor choices. I grappled with my mental health for decades and it took a long time to get help that worked. Years of complex trauma eventually led to severe impulsivity and self-induced escapism.
Agricultural fatigue is a lot like compassion fatigue. I cared so much, so deeply, for so long, about the world around me as I simultaneously watched it crumble. Disheartened, I wanted someone to care about me like that too. In a way, my battles with not ever seeming to be able to get away from putting out fires in my life’s conveyor belt of relentlessly abrasive friction were a lot like the world today in perpetual crisis with the climate. Just like Greta, I sometimes felt like I was drowning in stress. I tiptoed around others and stopped advocating for myself for too long. But, my experiences also taught me grit.
Once I found the strength to get up again, my survival instincts brought me to develop a sense of agency for compassionate activism.
In this way, justice became a rainbow of healing in the warm sky that wrapped around me like a blanket. By focusing on who I can and have become rather than the obstacles that hindered me, I found a way to genuinely improve the sustainability of my own life and my impact on the global community. With newfound hope, I now know that I will survive if I choose love and peace.
Eventually, I moved away and started college. I studied Sociology and English (ELA), served my country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova, then established my career as an educator. I returned to academia a few years later and got my Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) with a focus in nature-based learning (NBL) in order to amplify my global impact. To this day, my pedagogy revolves around advocating and communicating for evidence-based practices and environmental education (EE). Not only that, but I have embraced my musicianship by performing on various instruments at local venues and composing albums with my father.
Ultimately, my experiences healing my trauma through nature have revealed that if I don’t share what’s important and how I need help, people won’t care or know why it matters to be supportive. Especially in rural areas like mine where mental health resources are often scarce, I have had to play an active role that took more than resilience; it took determination and self-control alongside pain, grief, and despair.
As I have watched my climate change around me, I see now that I too am the damaged wilderness on a mountain of chaos.
Like a tree branching out towards sunlight, I am continuing to reach towards brighter moments despite my twisted roots. It’s as if those pathways of agony and revolution are symbolically identical. As if without struggle, I could not have grown, nor healed alongside the transformations happening across the globe without repairing the damages present in my own environments.
In this way, my crisis and rebirth are the same. Like a phoenix, I’ve learned how to release and revitalize, then let go and fly, reaching up to rip down the barriers that have kept me apart from my needs and goals ahead. Despite being stigmatized, I’ve transformed and am taking back control, adding back what I wish to gain so I can find fresh clarity. May I continue to evolve. May my optimized self forgive my former selves who didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do so. And, may my past selves be forever proud of who I’ve become today. Growing up on chaos mountain taught me to sing my heart out. Like my dad once said, “It doesn’t matter how you say it. To me, it’s going to be a song.” And I will not be silenced.
As I move into my 33rd year on this planet, I see clearly how interconnected my mental health is with the natural world. This interconnection has taught me both why and how to actively stop climate change, as well as how to be more mindful of what I already have rather than be wasteful or inefficient. My dedication to global justice is an essential part of my wild, incorrigible spirit. Returning to Buffalo Creek whenever I can is a necessity for my mental health due to its deeply embedded sacrality in my soul. An essential part of my spirituality is optimized every time I lead myself down the hidden metal stairs with the loosely tied rope to keep me stable.
As I dip my toes in the clear fresh water, I am reminded of how brief our lives really are. Like the water, I keep moving forward, rejuvenated and empowered by the ecosystem to protect nature. Although depression and trauma still penetrate elements of my world, I’ve allowed my transformation to fuel my fire to fight for the future of our planet. My childhood escapism, which once led to a myriad of crises, eventually allowed me to find myself. I am just visiting this planet briefly, a small speck in time, but I’m still here. And the creek still flows.
Namaste.
Katrina Broughman (pronounced “Bruff-man”), a rural native from Rockbridge County, Virginia (VA), has a background in nonprofit leadership, networking/outreach, fundraising, and both English language Arts and environmental education and is an active changemaker in her communities. Katrina currently teaches in Amherst County, holds a B.A. ‘13 in English and Sociology with an emphasis in the environment from Mary Baldwin College (MBU), received her M.Ed.-EBL from MBU with additional M.A. (Sociology) coursework from Morehead State University (KY) in 2021, and has been a certified Virginia Master Naturalist with the Central Blue Ridge Chapter in Lovingston since 2018.
The post Chaos Mountain appeared first on Climate Generation.
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
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Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
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