Will is joined by Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, to discuss her latest book, Disorder, Hard Times in the 21st Century (OUP, 2022). Since the 2008 financial crisis, many analysts have scratched their heads to make sense of the crisis of liberal democracies, the decline of neoliberal hegemony, and the emerging multipolar world where the West’s dominance is challenged by China and Russia. Professor Thompson argues that a key factor driving these interlocking geopolitical, economic and political crises, are the predicaments around energy—how it is produced, distributed, and consumed. As the climate crisis makes structural change an existential necessity, how much of the coming world will change, and how much of it, will stay the same—especially, for the global South, which is rich in clean earth metals, the energy resource of a green future?

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