By Anne Jellema, 350.org’s Executive Director
Anne has a rich history of working with social movements, women’s organizations, and grassroots activists across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Her career began in South Africa as a community organizer and land rights activist, embedding a people-first approach to strategy design and advocacy. Connect with Anne on LinkedIn
As polarised as people are these days, one thing that everyone agrees on is that we have a serious cost of living crisis on our hands. It triggered mass protests in dozens of countries last year, and swung a whole slew of elections against incumbents.
It’s easy to understand why people are angry. Nearly a third of people in the US, Portugal, Greece, Lithuania, and Bulgaria could not afford to heat their homes adequately last year. In developing countries, basic necessities are up by as much as 900% compared to 2022.
Many politicians, seemingly lacking real solutions to the cost of living crisis, are blaming climate action for making ordinary people worse off. They claim that extracting more fossil fuels will reduce energy prices for consumers and unleash shared prosperity. Some G20 countries – such as Brazil, the US, Australia, South Africa, Canada and Japan – have even announced initiatives to expand fossil fuel production.
With the world teetering on the brink of climate chaos, the G20 Finance ministers meeting this week in South Africa need to reject the dangerous myth of fossil prosperity.
Here are 5 reasons that solar and wind will be better for our pockets as well as for the planet:
1. “Drill, baby, drill” helps Big Oil but hurts consumers
Extracting more coal, oil and gas may raise profits of fossil fuel companies. But it will leave households with higher bills. Fossil fuels are now much more expensive than renewables (see chart).
Source: Statista
Plus, fossil fuels are internationally traded commodities, vulnerable to price shocks due to factors like wars, speculation or cartel manipulation. As the experience of Australia and Canada shows, increasing domestic fossil fuel production won’t protect consumers from price spikes. Instead, domestic prices will go up in line with export prices.
2. Ordinary people are paying for fossil fuel impacts
Every barrel of oil, every tonne of coal burned accelerates climate impacts that push up the cost of living. Climate change already affects your weekly grocery bill via soaring prices for drought-affected foods such as coffee, orange juice, and avocados. In Southern Africa, where I live, severe drought has pushed maize, our staple food, to record highs.
Extreme weather events are costing people, too. After the wildfires in California, the largest insurer wants to hike homeowner premiums by 22%. Rural women in Bangladesh are spending about 30% of their meagre income to repair flood damage or to try to prevent it.
Brutal heat waves mean that middle-class people in Delhi, Cairo and Phoenix are already spending a lot more on air conditioning. People who work outdoors are losing earnings due to extreme heat, and suffering health problems that they can ill afford to treat.
A child born in the US last year will face climate costs of up to $1 million over their lifetime. This amounts to a tax that ordinary people are effectively paying the fossil fuel companies who cause global warming.
Of course, higher costs are not the only impact of fossil fuels. Every year 4.5 million people die from the health impacts of polluting fossil energy. On top of this, climate change is expected to kill 14.5 million people by 2050.
3. Taxpayer dollars are being wasted on Big Oil
The oil and gas industry is insanely profitable: it has raked in US $2.8 billion per day in profits for the last half century. In spite of this, fossil fuel companies still receive hefty government handouts – to the tune of an astounding US $7 trillion per year by IMF’s reckoning.
By continuing to pour taxpayer funds into fossil fuels, politicians are distorting markets. They are making oil, gas and coal artificially attractive to investors even though solar and wind are now cheaper and more competitive than fossil fuels.
G20 finance ministers should lead the way by calling time on their own domestic fossil subsidies now, and ending investments in foreign fossil development. Just a small part of the savings would be enough to kickstart the clean energy revolution.
4. Renewable energy creates jobs and sustainable growth
Every dollar spent on clean energy projects generates three times as many jobs as fossil fuel project investments. The solar energy sector alone created over 2 million jobs in 2023, 40% held by women.
A transition to renewable energy systems would boost global GDP by up to 2.5%. And the climate impacts avoided by making the shift could be worth as much as US$160 trillion by 2050.
5. Decentralized renewable energy gives economic power back to people
Higher prices are not the only reason for the cost of living crisis. Normally, wages go up in line with prices. But in recent years workers have lost bargaining power. Meanwhile big companies have gained enormous economic power through market concentration. Workers’ share of total income has been going down, while profits have ratcheted sharply up.
In other words, wages have not kept pace with prices, resulting in a massive loss in ordinary people’s purchasing power at the same time as corporate profits have been soaring.
People building a solar panel in the route of the Keystone XL pipeline, as part of SolarXL. More information here
Locally-led, decentralized energy solutions can reduce market concentration in the energy sector and help to rebuild the economic power of workers and frontline communities. Meanwhile, taxing billionaires would lower inequality and raise more funds for an energy transition that leaves no one behind.
Time for a global renewables revolution
G20 countries are meeting this year under the theme “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability”. If they really want to match these words to action, the path is clear: they need to drop subsidies and investments in fossil fuels and put real and immediate money into renewable energy sources that work for all of us.
G20 countries have quite a lot of power and money at their disposal – 85% of the world’s GDP, to be precise. And with that, comes responsibility – for themselves and their population, but also to the rest of the world. Choosing to invest on a global renewables revolution is not just a tool or alternative to stop inflation and rising living costs, it is the only true and effective way to fix a system that is currently broken for most of us.
Join our movement to power up just, accessible and affordable renewables!