All commodity markets are political, you just need to understand the game that’s being played. Whether it is oil, sugar or rice or something else, government intervention isn’t too far away. Environmental markets such as carbon are a particular type of political construction in which artificial scarcity is created through…

Carbon markets are just the start of a revolution putting a price on nature. Whether its the deforestation of our rainforests, the leakage of waste plastics into the ocean, or the destruction of the coral reefs by pollution, the damage being done to our natural ecosystem is becoming clearer by…

The vast majority of 1.5°C-aligned scenarios require at least some carbon removal. For example, the 2018 IPCC 1.5°C report states that “all pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal.” The IPCC report estimates that the world will need…

The US like many jurisdictions across the globe are in the process of tightening up the rules around what climate related information companies should make public. Many companies are releasing data on a voluntary basis, but it can be difficult to compare one firms data to another. Standardised data on…

High and rising commodity prices. The natural tendency for investors is to ask what the knock-on impact will be, who benefits, who loses and how best to position our portfolios. Historically, emerging markets have been the first port of call as commodity prices rebound. Early signs of a weak dollar…

Financial markets have typically worked on the assumption that climate policy would be gradually tightened over a period of several years, if not decades. This is known as the “slow policy ramp”. Too high a carbon price at the outset for example, many reason, will be politically untenable. Instead the…

“Every society is three meals away from chaos” ~ Vladimir Lenin Violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 — commonly known as the Arab Spring — as well as earlier riots in 2008, coincided with sharp increases in global food prices. …

My measure by which I find a book useful is the likelihood that I am going to read it again and again and again. For that to happen a book has of course to be well written but has to also hold lots of nuggets of information and insight that…

The recent spike in energy prices and concerns over shortages is finally starting to highlight the difficult choices that governments face in trying to accelerate the zero carbon energy transition and meet their net zero targets. …