Will Europe’s heatwave fuel inflation? - BBC Newsnight

 

a brutally hot summer for the planet and

hot prices too is there a link

some grocery data today suggests UK food

price inflation is starting to Abate yet

there are warnings that the painful

spike in food prices we've seen over the

past year has been partially driven by

global warming

some have termed it climate inflation

it's an argument that global warming is

already contributing to our cost of

living pressures what's the evidence for

it

a big driver in the spike of Global Food

prices last year was manifestly the

Russian invasion of Ukraine which

curtailed exports of grain and

fertilizer from the country which is

responsible for a large chunk of global

supplies of both

but the summer 2022 Heat Wave also led

to Drought across the continent and

damaged crop yields and this also likely

had an upward impact on food prices

researchers at the European Central Bank

recently analyzed the impact of the

European Heat Wave on prices carefully

isolating its effect from the Ukraine

invasion

this shows their estimate of the impact

of the Heat Wave on European food

inflation in 2022 around 0.7 percentage

points that's out of food inflation that

hit 20 and they estimate that by 2035 in

a high carbon emission scenario the

contribution of such a summer to

inflation would be higher and in 2060

without emissions reductions it would be

higher still possibly adding more than

two percentage points to food inflation

and that has impacts on Headline overall

inflation the researchers estimate that

the heat waves added around 0.3

percentage points to headline European

inflation last year by 2035 that's

higher if emissions don't come down and

by 2060 such a heat wave could add one

percentage point to overall inflation

now that might not sound like a lot but

bear in mind that central banks have a

target of two percent so this would be

accounting for around half of that the

main takeaways that we're able to

identify that historical increases in

temperatures do in fact have cause

upwards pressures on inflation across

different economies of the world and in

particular when we start to evaluate

those impacts looking forward into the

future what we find is that future

global warming is going to cause

persistent increases in in prices in

particular food prices but also General

prices

this does have implications for the UK

despite brexit we are very much part of

the wider European food system just

under half of the food consumed in the

UK comes from abroad and around a

quarter 28 you can see it there in pink

comes from Mainland Europe

recall that we felt the impact of this

dependence during the winter when freak

cold weather hit Spain and North Africa

contributing to the severe shortage of

salad vegetables on UK Supermarket

shelves it's sometimes implied that

tackling climate change is divorced from

everyday concerns that global warming is

a long-term problem while inflation and

Rising bills are a problem for the here

and now but science and economics

increasingly suggest a connection

English (auto-generated)

AllMore from this storyFrom BBC NewsClimatePolitics NewsRelatedListenableRecently uploadedWatched