On the one hand, it seems undisputed to point out that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a war made possible and exacerbated by the world’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. It can’t not be: Russia is a petrostate — its economy and global influence relies heavily on its vast oil and natural gas reserves — and Vladimir Putin is its petro monarch, another in a line of unsavory characters liberal democracies continue to do business with because they have something we can’t live without.
The way out of this bond also seems obvious and urgent. By accelerating our transition to cheap and abundant renewable fuels, we can tackle two serious threats to the planet at once: the climate-warming, air-polluting threat of hydrocarbons and the dictators controlling their supply.
And yet American politicians on the left certainly seem incapable of making this connection, do they? In his State of the Union address shortly after the Russian invasion, President Biden yearned for a big chance to reinvigorate his stalled climate change agenda by underlining the geopolitical dangers of fossil fuels. His references to climate change — what he previously termed an “existential threat” to the planet — were buried under, rather than connected with, his comments about the war. Concerned about the effects disruptions could have on fuel supplies, gas prices and inflation in general, he also announced the release, along with 30 other countries, of 60 million barrels of oil.
Meanwhile, right-wing pundits have had a field day with the idea that the Russian invasion is somehow demonstrating the folly of focusing on climate change. The Wall Street Journal editorial board blamed “the Biden administration’s obsession with the climate” for making “the US and Europe vulnerable to Mr Putin’s energy blackmail” and wrote that “the climate lobby Mr Putin made it more powerful.”
I feel like I’m upside down. If the ‘climate lobby’ was really that powerful, it might have prevented Europe long ago from building its society on a diabolical deal with Russian energy. For all their “climate obsession,” Democrats in the United States Senate have failed to pass legislation to tackle climate-warming emissions. Instead, their bill has been thwarted by a coal-friendly senator. Now the issue of climate change has been almost overshadowed by the war. Some Democrats seem to have forgotten about the planet altogether — California governor Gavin Newsom wants to give every car owner in his state up to $800 in rebates to offset the high gas price. This could have been a moment for moral clarity about the dangers of fossil fuels — but so far Democrats have messed up that message.
“There hasn’t been this story — that this war is why we need to move away from fossil fuels,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies environmental politics. “More groups need to connect the dots, claiming that true energy independence is about sunshine, because sunshine is free and abundant and cannot be controlled by dictators.”
Stokes points out that such a message is likely to resonate with people. A study she and a co-author published online in 2017 examined the political factors driving clean energy policies. “What we found was that these policies were overwhelmingly adopted during energy crises,” she told me. The moment energy is expensive or hard to come by, Americans begin to realize that they need to find a new way.
The good news is that the Democrats have all set up that new way. Build Back Better, the massive social and environmental policy bill that fell apart in the Senate late last year, contains a series of excellent ideas for tackling the current crisis. That effort isn’t quite dead; Democrats are still negotiating with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who backs the bill, and they can still unite and approve some parts of it.
But I’m stunned why Biden and the Democrats have yet to aggressively defend their proposals in the new context of war—to point out that climate policy is not separate from foreign policy, and that ridding ourselves of other people’s fuels is the best long-term solution to skyrocketing energy prices. .
I spoke to several climate policy advocates who complained about the White House’s apparent reluctance to sharpen this message. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the climate policy director at the Roosevelt Institute, told me that “the ways fossil fuels make energy prices much more volatile and push us to inflict powers and leaders who are dangerous and unjust” has rarely been clearer. I haven’t seen that more visibly in my life,” she said.
But it was an interview that Svitlana Krakovska, a Ukrainian climate scientist who is a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave that put the argument forward for me.
Krakovska recently told The Guardian that when Russian bombs began to fall on Ukraine, she thought about the interconnected nature of her study area and the danger posed by her country.
I will give her the last words: “I started thinking about the parallels between climate change and this war and it is clear that the roots of both threats to humanity are in fossil fuels,” Krakovska said in the interview. “The burning of oil, gas and coal causes warming and effects to which we have to adapt. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries depend on these fossil fuels; they do not free themselves from it. This is a war with fossil fuels. Obviously we cannot live this way; it will destroy our civilization.”
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