The latest oil price shock has exposed a problem that goes far beyond the war on Iran and its devastating human and environmental consequences. New Greenpeace International analysis shows how dependence on fossil fuels leaves household budgets exposed to volatile international markets, with price shocks feeding through into the wider economy.

Between January and August 2026, fossil fuel prices accounted for the entire 1.5 percentage point rise in eurozone inflation, according to the analysis. Without the oil price shock, eurozone inflation in August would have been 2.2 per cent, rather than 3.2 per cent.

This is fossilflation. And it is a problem that will keep returning for as long as our economies depend on fossil fuels.

When oil and gas prices rise, people can end up paying more for essentials. The war on Iran has exposed this vulnerability again. Dependence on fossil fuels leaves people’s living costs tied to conflict, disrupted supplies and volatile international markets.

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Fossil fuels keep exporting crises into our homes

People around the world already know what fossilflation feels like. When oil and gas prices rise, the effects reach far beyond the petrol station or the energy bill. They ripple through transport, food production, manufacturing and the cost of everyday goods and services.

The latest price shock has been felt globally, but not equally. While the analysis focuses on Europe and the US, the consequences extend to regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa, where households and economies often have less capacity to absorb higher prices. Rising costs can push essential goods and energy further out of reach, compounding existing inequalities.

The result is an economic system in which people have little control over the forces driving their living costs. A war or disruption thousands of kilometres away can send prices soaring at home, regardless of whether households have changed how much energy they use.

An inherent feature, not a bug

The new analysis shows just how strongly energy prices have shaped inflation in recent years. Energy prices drove 100 per cent of changes in inflation in the US and in the Eurozone so far in 2026.

Before the pandemic, the figures were already high: 71 per cent in the eurozone and 93 per cent in the US. This suggests fossilflation is not simply a temporary consequence of an exceptional crisis. It is a recurring vulnerability built into an economy that remains dependent on volatile fossil fuel markets.

Interest rate rises cannot fix the underlying problem. Central banks can try to dampen inflation by reducing demand, but they cannot stop wars, prevent disruptions to oil and gas supplies or make international fossil fuel prices predictable. Higher borrowing costs can add pressure for households and local businesses without removing the source of the shock.

As long as fossil fuels remain central to our energy systems, the next disruption will trigger another wave of price rises. The trigger may change, but the vulnerability remains.

Electrification and renewables offers a way out

The analysis also points to a different future: one in which households are less exposed to fossil fuel price shocks because they generate and use clean energy.

In a simulation, a fully electrified German household using an electric vehicle, heat pump, rooftop solar and battery storage experienced a 1.5 per cent price increase between January and August 2026, compared with 2.5 per cent for the official consumer basket.

This is an illustration of the protection that electrification and locally generated renewable energy can offer. Rooftop solar and batteries can reduce reliance on volatile energy markets. Electric vehicles and heat pumps can replace oil and gas consumption with electricity, increasingly supplied by renewable sources.

The benefits extend beyond individual households. A decentralised renewable energy system, built around clean power generated closer to where it is used, can reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels and give communities greater control over their energy supply.

But these benefits will not reach everyone automatically. Governments must accelerate the transition and ensure households can access the technologies, infrastructure and support they need. People already struggling with energy costs should not be left behind while others benefit from cheaper, cleaner energy.

Replace the system that keeps making people pay

Fossilflation reveals a fundamental contradiction in the current energy system. Governments are expected to protect people from rising living costs, yet continued dependence on fossil fuels leaves people exposed to price shocks governments cannot control.

The answer cannot be to wait for the next crisis and then try to cushion its effects. Nor can it be to treat every price spike as an isolated event. The underlying vulnerability must be addressed.

Governments must speed up the replacement of fossil fuels with decentralised renewable energy and electrification. That means expanding access to clean electricity, accelerating the rollout of solar and batteries, supporting the shift to electric transport and heating, and ensuring the transition benefits households and communities.

The latest data makes clearer what people across the world are already experiencing: fossil fuel dependence is a source of economic instability, not security. The war in Iran has exposed that vulnerability once again. Unless we replace the system that creates it, another shock will come, and people will be left paying the price.

A renewable energy system offers a way to break that cycle: cutting climate pollution while giving people greater protection from volatile international markets and more control over the energy they depend on. 

Martin Zavan is a freelance communications strategist at Greenpeace International, based in Sydney.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands – An alternative greenhouse gas accounting metric being aggressively backed by agribusiness lobbyists would allow major meat and dairy exporting nations to conceal their livestock sector’s impact on global warming by massively overstating methane emissions reductions, new research commissioned by Greenpeace International has revealed.

Sophie Nodzenski, Campaigner at Greenpeace International, said: “Rapid methane cuts give us our best shot at keeping global heating overshoot to a minimum while we decarbonise the global economy. Yet, while temperature overshoot takes center stage at COP31, the industrial livestock lobby is pushing a dangerous accounting trick to shirk its fair share. Changing the metrics to hide real emissions isn’t climate action – it’s shifting the bill for massive pollution onto those least responsible for it.”

The report investigates GWP*, a controversial metric that tracks whether methane emissions are going up or down rather than counting total emission changes. It assumes that steady methane emissions cause no extra warming because methane breaks down quickly – even though it traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in the short term and is responsible for approximately 0.5°C of global heating. 

According to modeling by the think-tank Cerulogy, GWP* allows countries to present negligible cuts in emissions as significant climate victories. A cut of a mere 0.6% in actual methane emissions by the world’s ten largest meat and dairy exporters between 2020 and 2030, could be reported as a 30% reduction under the GWP* metric.

A 30% reduction of actual emissions would allow these countries, if adopting the GWP* metric, to claim their emissions are actually cooling the planet – logging 898 million tonnes of “negative emissions” without making any real change. Under the standard metric, 2030 would still see 640 million tonnes of methane released by livestock into the atmosphere, continuing to massively drive climate heating.[1]

This bookkeeping trick wipes away real-world climate-heating gases, creating a massive 1,538 million tonne gap between reported figures under GWP* and atmospheric reality in a single year. The investigation highlights the extreme scale of these artificial ‘paper’ reductions. 1,538 million tonne of carbon is:

• More than Indonesia’s total national greenhouse gas emissions in 2024.
• 86% of total global aviation emissions recorded in 2023.
• About 6.4 times the annual greenhouse gas footprint of JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, in 2023.
• Equivalent to three times the passenger cars driving across Europe’s streets each year (780 million vehicles).

If some countries unilaterally decide to report their methane emissions using GWP* within the framework of a global climate agreement that was built with absolute reductions in mind, this would effectively wipe massive emissions off the global emissions balance sheet, surreptitiously eating up our remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C. Over the 2020-2030 period, systemic GWP* reporting from these 10 countries would create a cumulative gap of obscured emissions equal to nearly a fifth of the world’s current total annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

The report also highlights a risk of governments using these paper savings in agriculture to justify slower decarbonisation in heavy-polluting fossil fuel sectors. Australia, for example, could use GWP* to report 76 million tonnes of negative emissions to justify continued pollution in its dirty coal sector equivalent to 20 coal-fired power stations running for a year. Meanwhile, the United States could hide emissions equivalent to 86 million passenger cars.

Greenpeace International warns that GWP* is a threat to global climate goals and is urging governments to reject GWP* for national target setting and reporting, establish binding agricultural emissions reduction targets aligned with 1.5°C, and support a just transition toward ecological farming.

ENDS

Notes:

Download the Report: The Methane Scam Briefing
Download the Summary: The Methane Scam Summary

[1] CCAC Secretariat. (2022, April 8). New IPCC report bolsters evidence that methane reductions are key to preventing climate catastrophe. Climate & Clean Air Coalition. 

Contacts:

Joe Evans, Global Comms Lead at Greenpeace UK, +44 7890 595387, joe.evans@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

People power in Brazil is what hope looks like. 

For three intense weeks, the people of Brazil took to the streets and ensured their voices were heard when it mattered most. Despite disinformation, denialism, and interference by Big Tech companies, Brazil decided for Brazil to re-elect President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The people power on display in this historic election — it was the first time in Brazil a candidate who finished second in the first round has turned the tide and secured a victory —  matters to the entire world. It strengthens democratic regimes, maintains the commitment to a protected Amazon and the fight against climate change, and joins other governments that already recognise the threat Big Tech poses to national sovereignty and electoral processes.

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Resisting Big Tech’s election interference 

Leading up to the election, Greenpeace Brazil joined CTRL + Z and dozens of other civil society organisations and individuals in signing an open letter calling out the Big Tech for tipping the scales towards far right candidate Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. From AI deepfakes to shadowbans, platforms were violating Brazilian election laws and tilting the scales. 

• Unlabelled Deepfakes: A MonitorA study found 1 in 4 offensive images targeting female candidates showed signs of AI generation circulating with zero labeling.

• Foreign Ad Money: Ekō and NetLab UFRJ documented Meta reportedly accepting foreign payments for ads containing deepfakes and direct attacks on democratic institutions.

• Mass Shadowbans: Student unions, journalists, and voter rights groups reported sudden account suspensions and shadowbans after posting electoral content, without an effective or meaningful process to appeal. 

Autocrats, tech billionaires, and the far right rely on public confusion, exhaustion and cynicism to keep power. But an informed and united movement shatters that playbook every single time. ⁣

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The people have the power 

The autocrats are losing. Not just in Brazil. The same day, Serbia also rejected longtime autocrat Aleksandar Vucic in elections, following a years-long student-led opposition movement.

Autocrats and far right politicians and their tech billionaire enablers rely on public exhaustion to keep their grip. But an organised, united movement shatters their playbook every single time. Remember: we don’t just watch history happen, we build it. ⁣

Lu Sudré is Head of Communications with Greenpeace Brazil.

It’s early morning on Tuesday 20 October and in the heart of Jakarta, a small group of activists scale the iconic statue at Bundaran HI to stage a peaceful protest. They’re demanding urgent climate action and lower cost of living. Two giant banners unfurl bearing messages in Bahasa Indonesia: “Take Action on the Climate Crisis, Bring Down the Cost of Living” and “Disasters are Getting Worse, the People are Struggling, What is the Government Doing?”.

Two women in climbing harnesses and helmets rappel down the Selamat Datang (Welcome) monument, holding spherical signs bearing the slogan, No Progress Without Protest. The internet swiftly crowns them “Queens” for their bravery as they climb to defend our planet and make people look up.

Within hours, photos and videos of the protest are viral on social media prompting a government response, and media coverage has spread around the world. 

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Why are people protesting?

People around the world are protesting to demand justice, equality and a liveable planet.⁣ As the climate crisis accelerates and the everyday cost of living supercharged by fossilflation continues to rise – along with outrage at perceived ineptitude or corruption and inaction of authorities – people are filling the streets to call for change. From Indonesia to France and Albania, students are at the forefront of demonstrations to demand accountability.

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In Indonesia, millions of people are facing the worsening impacts of climate disasters such as flash floods, El Niño-charged drought, and forest and land fires that have triggered prolonged transboundary haze. It’s a crisis that requires governments and companies to accelerate a just global energy transition away from fossil fuels, the biggest driver of climate breakdown, and to end and reverse forest destruction.

The viral banners dropped by Greenpeace Indonesia at Bundaran HI came on a day of protests in several cities across the country, fuelled by anger over the worst toxic haze in over a decade that has engulfed Southeast Asia. Indonesians are demanding action to tackle the fires and toxic smoke that are harming health and claiming lives, including in Central Kalimantan, one of the worst hotspots, and West Kalimantan where conservation groups have evacuated dozens of critically endangered orangutans.

No progress without protest

As crowds and cameras gathered below Jakarta’s landmark Welcome Monument watching banners carrying their messages unfurl, Atha Rasyadi, head of Greenpeace Indonesia’s Social & Economic Campaign, explained why protest is crucial to keep up the pressure for progress: “We cannot continue to remain silent when economic growth only enriches a handful of people, especially with the greedy exploitation of nature, while the others are forced to struggle to survive.⁣”

The protest is another reminder of what hope in action looks like.⁣ In the words of one of the viral banners shared widely across social media, and even rendered as animated illustrations, No progress without protest.

We cannot continue to remain silent when economic growth only enriches a handful of people, especially with the greedy exploitation of nature, while the others are forced to struggle to survive.⁣

Timing is everything

The peaceful protests in Indonesia mark the second year of the current presidency, a time when sentiments are running high around food prices, air pollution and the climate crisis. Sentiments that resonate, not only across Indonesia, but in countries around the world. 

Extreme weather and ecological disasters not only threaten public safety and health but also disrupt livelihoods, suppress incomes and drive up food prices.

“We are amplifying the voices of the public who are urging the Prabowo-Gibran administration to acknowledge the climate crisis, which is increasingly degrading people’s quality of life,” said Jeanny Sirait, a climate justice campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia. “Extreme weather and ecological disasters not only threaten public safety and health but also disrupt livelihoods, suppress incomes and drive up food prices.”

This is what HOPE in action looks like around the world

Courage and hope are contagious. Across the world, young people are filling the streets to defend each other, their future, and the planet. This generation resists and we’re just starting to see its power!⁣

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People are refusing to accept futures they didn’t choose. From unaffordable homes and underfunded schools to systemic corruption, police brutality, and restrictions on the right to protest, people are organising to demand change. ⁣⁣

While elites feast, people are too often told to tighten their belts and stay quiet. Across Indonesia, and in countries from Albania to Brazil, Kenya, France, Serbia, the UK and the USA, protesters are demanding an end to corruption and the freedom to speak out without intimidation. An informed, united movement is unstoppable and these huge mobilisations bring hope. 

Hope isn’t something you watch, it’s something you DO. This is what HOPE looks like – share this post to help amplify beautiful moments of people rising for a different future.

Resistance Hub

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