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This is the second of two blogs looking at the impact and importance of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Part 1 was an overview of the issue and its potential geopolitical importance. Part 2 looks at the potential implications in detail. Modern economies burn hydrocarbons. They build with them, wrap and package with them, fertilise with them, cool with them, fly with them, clean with them, seal with them, lubricate with them, and sterilise with them. Medicines and medic

This is the first of two blogs looking at the impact and importance of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Part 1 is an overview of the issue and its potential geopolitical importance. Part 2 will look at the potential implications in additional detail. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz places the world at risk of a major global economic and geopolitical shock. The closure is not merely an “oil shock”, affecting the global supply of oil and natural gas. It is already

This blog is the third in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. In the first two blogs, we argued that net zero has been absorbed into realpolitik and defence strategy. Climate action survives because it now

This blog is the second in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. In the first blog in this series about our Sustainable Innovation Pathways (SIP) initiative, we argued that net zero has moved from being an e

This blog is the first in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. It has become fashionable to say that climate has “slipped down the agenda”. The headlines are about war in Europe and the Middle East, defence

What happens to climate action when the political weather turns populist: more inward-looking, more suspicious of experts, more focused on growth and national pride than on multilateral promises? That’s no longer an abstract question. Across the West, parties and leaders with nativist or “majoritarian” instincts are either in office or within reach of it. Meanwhile, China is doubling down on renewables and exporting the kit to the rest of the world. If you work in energy, ind

Ask a minister how we’re going to pay for pensions, fund healthcare, equip the armed forces, support innovation, or build green...

Introduction It has become a fashionable provocation to assert that "China is going to win, so the question is how America is going to...

This is an edited version of the presentation which Jonathan Blanchard Smith delivered to the Futures4Europe Conference 2025, held in...

For the past many years, future and foresight practitioners have been able to base their work on ground that is stable enough to support...

Finding paths through the “World in Oak” These days you may find yourself waking up in the morning, switching on or logging into the...

A tool which futurists often want to introduce into any comprehensive futures study is some form of feedback loop – run the outputs of...