War and Climate Change

 

“The European Union is about to push hard to get Europe off of Russian fossil fuels… 

[As long as European nations are still buying oil and gas from Russia,] they are funding the war machine.”

Kristine Berzina, senior fellow and head of the geopolitics team for the German Marshall Fund — a think tank in Washington. 

With Russia as the fourth largest polluter on earth, climate change cannot be meaningfully implemented without Moscow’s cooperation. As the United Nations recently reminded us all, humanity sits “on the brink” of disaster. The world faces a bleak reality. While Russia’s environmental efforts in the Arctic have, to date, been uncharacteristically cooperative (currently suspended because of the war on Ukraine), the rest of Moscow’s efforts have been relatively half-hearted. Coastal cities may disappear, forests my incinerate, agricultural lands may dry up and blow away and floods may decimate other regions. War makes horrible worse.

As we watch explosions and fires burn from bombing, missiles and artillery shells in Ukraine, “[s]cientists are already reporting reductions in shared research and communications with Russian counterparts. Policymakers and scientists say Russia’s aggression will surely delay efforts to find consensus and focus on climate-related issues.

“‘The war will distract us from climate action around the world,’ said Rob Jackson, Earth system scientist at Stanford University and an expert in global greenhouse emissions. Although Russia has been a foot dragger in phasing out fossil fuels, he said, it is one of several major nations crucial to any pact to slash emissions.

“With its enormous energy fields, Russia is the world’s fourth-largest source of greenhouse gases, the third-largest supplier of coal and the largest emitter of methane [Siberian permafrost is melting, releasing millennia of accumulated trapped methane] — a gas that dissipates faster in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but is 25 times as potent in trapping heat…

“When Scotland hosted the COP25 climate summit late last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to attend. At that summit, the Biden administration and the European Union launched the Global Methane Pledge, aimed at cutting emissions by 30% by 2030. More than 110 nations have since signed the pledge, but Russia has declined, as have China, India and Australia, among others.

“Even before the conflict, Russia was trying to sell more gas and coal to China, its ally in standing up to U.S. influence in Europe and Asia. To help Russia weather Western sanctions, China may be more eager now to purchase Russian gas and coal, some analysts warn…

“In recent years, public opinion surveys have shown the Russian people are growing increasingly concerned about climate change, although not as fearful — or willing to make sacrifices — as their European counterparts.” Susanne Rust writing for the March 7th Los Angeles Times. Greenhouse gasses are not the only relevant toxins being released into the environment from this war.

Russian shelling of a very large nuclear powerplant in Ukraine (pictured above) seemed to make a possible major meltdown, with a concomitant release of radioactive materials into the air, a clear and very real focus. The fires were doused, and the meltdown avoided, but Russian forces have also taken the contaminated Chernobyl site, raising pollution safety concerns at that site as well. The release of explosives, the rage of fires and rising rubble of decimated buildings, the shutdown of sewage treatment plants, as well as the destruction of bridges and coastal port structures seemed to threaten the environment with a flood of toxic pollutants. A horrible price to pay amidst a tsunami of death and injury, a migration of peoples that Europe has not witnessed since World War II.

If there is a slender silver lining in all this, it is that Europe will accelerate its reduction of dependence on fossil fuels and move more rapidly to develop alternative energy sources to fulfill its energy needs. A relatively small but necessary plus.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are so many horribles generated from this unlawful war inflicted on an innocent people seeking simply to live their lives.