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Cars were destroyed in Kyiv by Russian bombardmentHennadii Minchenko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via AP
This story was first published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
For Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, it was meant to be the week where eight years of work culminated in a landmark UN report exposing the havoc the climate crisis is causing the world.
The bombs began to crack into Kyiv.
Krakovska was the leader of a delegation made up of 11 scientists from Ukraine. He struggled to get it done. The vast Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC) ahead of its release on February 28 even as Russian forces launched their invasion. “I told colleagues that as long as we have the internet and no bombs over our heads we will continue,” she said.
But her team, scattered across the country, started to peel away—one had to rush to an air raid shelter in Kharkiv, others decided to flee completely, internet connections spluttered, one close friend of a delegate was killed in the fighting. International colleagues were quick to offer their support and press on with this report.
Krakovska’s four children sheltered with her in their Kyiv home as a missile struck a nearby building, emitting an ear-splitting roar. A separate fire from another strike sent up a plume smoke that blotted out the sky. “This blitzkrieg by [Vladimir] Putin is unbelievable, it is terrorism against the Ukrainian people,” she said.
The invasion and the IPCC report exemplified for Krakovska the human economic and geopolitical disaster of fossil fuels. About half of the world’s population is now acutely vulnerable to disasters stemming from the burning of fossil fuels, the IPCC report found, while Russia’s military might is underpinned by wealth garnered from the country’s vast oil and gas reserves.
“I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and it’s clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels,” said Krakovska. “Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. Russia also sells these resources to pay for weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they don’t make themselves free of them. This is a war on fossil fuels. It’s clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization.”
The IPCC report, described by António Guterres, the UN secretary general, as an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” is the most comprehensive catalogue yet of the consequences of global heating. The spread of diseases and extreme heat are killing people all over the globe. Each year, 12 million people are forced to flee from floods and droughts.
However, it is the conflict in Ukraine which has caused western governments to rush to get out of a dependence on Russian oil and gas. The EU Russia supplies about 40% of the country’s gas needs, is currently working on a plan that will rapidly increase renewable energy, boost energy efficiency measures, and build liquified gas terminals to receive natural gas from other countries.
Joe Biden has reacted to US lawmakers’ demands to ban Russian oil imports. The ban, he said on Tuesday, will deliver a “powerful blow to Putin’s war machine. We will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war.” Biden said the US will work with Europe on a long-term plan to phase out Russian oil and gas.
Volodymyr Zienskyy, Ukraine’s president, urged Congressmen to stop imports. He was supported by a bipartisan majority. “It’s basically foolish for us to keep buying products and giving money to Putin to be able to use against the Ukrainian people,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat.
Others see the ban to be a moment to completely abandon fossil fuels. “This moment is a clarion call for the urgent need to transition to domestic clean energy so that we are never again complicit in fossil-fueled conflict,” said Ed Markey, a progressive Democratic senator who was a driving force behind the Green New Deal agenda.
But in a stark demonstration of how deeply embedded fossil fuels remain in decision making, Biden’s administration has awkwardly attempted to extol its efforts to confront the climate crisis While boasting that the US is now drilling more oil than even under Donald Trump to show it is cognizant of public anguish over rising gasoline prices, a perennial political headache for presidents.
“We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said last week. “That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world, because it would reduce the supply available.”
While the US takes a relatively small amount of oil from Russia—only about 3 percent of all oil imports—experts say it is telling that an administration vocal about the need to reduce fossil fuels has found it difficult to cut itself from its dependency on oil and gas.
“It’s a crude oversimplification to call this a fossil fuel war, that’s a little too glib,” said Jonathan Elkind, an expert in energy policy at Columbia University and a former energy adviser to Barack Obama’s administration. “But it’s an undeniable reality that Russia gets a significant share of its revenues from oil and gas and that America’s gasoline habitat contributes towards the global demand for 100m barrels of oil each day.
“Do we want to find ourselves 10 years from now where we’ve bent the curve on oil consumption and emissions towards decarbonization, or do we want to sit there and think ‘where did the last 10 years go?’ If the US isn’t a part of the solution we will put in peril our influence on the world stage and the fate of everyone, both here and around the globe.”
While Europe has been trying to wean off Russian gas late, US efforts to phase out fossil fuels have failed. Biden’s legislative plan to drastically ramp up renewable energy is moribund in Congress, Manchin is largely responsible for this., while the conservative-leaning supreme Court Is mulling whether to weaken the administration’s ability to regulate coal-fired power plants.
The invasion in Ukraine has also been a trigger The US oil and gas industry is pushing for this. and its allies in Congress to loosen regulations to allow more domestic drilling. Manchin, chair of the Senate energy committee, Has said that delaying new gas pipelines when “Putin is actively and effectively using energy as an economic and political weapon against our allies is just beyond the pale.” Even Elon Musk, founder of Telsa, has said that “we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”
The White House has pointed out that the industry is already sitting on a huge number of idle drilling leases—a total of 9,000 unused permits covering 26m acres of American public land—while environmentalists argue the crisis highlights the dangers of being at the mercy of a volatile global oil price, Nearing an all-time highInstead of shifting towards solar, wind and other sources,
“The fossil fuel industry’s so-called solution to this crisis is nothing more than a recipe to enable fossil-fueled fascists like Vladimir Putin for years to come,” said Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action. “As long as our economy is dependent on fossil fuels, we will be at the mercy of petro-dictators who wield their influence on global energy prices like a weapon. “American-made clean energy is affordable, reliable and free from the volatility of oil and gas markets. The best way to weaken Putin’s grip on the global energy market is to get America off of fossil fuels.”
Krakovska stated that she will remain in Kyiv as the Russian army advances. She declined offers to relocate to other research institutions. “I know that’s what Putin wants, for us to flee Ukraine so they can have our beautiful country,” she said. “I have told scientists in other countries I will collaborate with them, but from an independent and free Ukraine. I couldn’t be in another place knowing that Kyiv was in the hands of those barbarians.”
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