COMMENTS
Hardly anyone is a bigger energy waster than Russia. And in few places are the consequences of climate change more dramatic. But slow, slow, the country wakes up to new realization, writes Morten Strand.
ALSO FRIEND OF NATURE: Vladimir Putin in September this year, at his annual photo session in nature. Photo: AP / NTB
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Internal comments: This is a comment. The commentary expresses the writer’s attitude.
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No country in the world is at the same time a major polluter and a giant victim of precisely the same pollution as Russia. As the world’s third largest producer of greenhouse gases – after China and the USA – only the USA emits more greenhouse gases per capita. capita. This is despite the fact that Russia has much less car density and far lower prosperity than the United States. Put another way; no one shit more intensely in their own nest when it comes to climate than our great neighbor to the east. Russia is arguably the world champion in energy waste.
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And – until very recently – world champion in denying that climate change is man-made. Some leading Russian climate researchers have until recent years insisted that climate change is part of a natural cycle. How much of this has been politically motivated is speculation. But the alleged scientific climate denial has coincided with an absent political will to ring the bell on the cat, acknowledging that climate change is man-made.
An asshole on behalf of the boss
Until – that is – now. Because even if President Vladimir Putin does not attend the climate summit in Glasgow that opened on Sunday, it is expected that he will address the meeting in a video speech. There, he will certainly repeat the commitment from just a few weeks ago that Russia should be emission-neutral by 2060. The goal is far from ambitious – and absolutely necessary to avoid the very worst consequences of climate change – but it is a quantum leap when it comes to cognition. The leap from denial to cognition is also a prerequisite for action.
And Russia needs action. One thing is the car fleet, which has three roughly equal categories of cars. The first is giant, diesel-sucking superchargers, to the tune of millions, even without Norwegian taxes. The other is similar to a normal European car fleet. While the third consists of cars that spew out black exhaust, and would have been separated a long time ago elsewhere in Europe. Then there is the heating of homes, schools and office buildings, from thermal power plants that pump water to radiators through poorly insulated pipes, and almost free gas that people who can not afford expensive electricity bills let burn on the stove around the clock to keep the heat in their drafts. apartments.
The luxury cost
Another thing are the shocking experiences with fires, floods, and thawing of the permafrost that have characterized the news picture in Russia in recent years. For many years in a row, there have been huge fires in Siberia, and for the first time this year, smoke has been registered from the fires at the North Pole. The small town of Verkhoyansk in Eastern Siberia had a heat record a year ago with an insane 38 degrees. But the city has also measured the coldest measured on the planet, except in Antarctica, with minus 67, 8 degrees Celsius. The distance between the warmest and coldest is thus 106 degrees. It’s no wonder people get naughty by nature, because it has obviously run wild.
You know that well in large parts of the vast belt of permafrost that extends through the east and west of Russia, embracing half the globe. There, the temperature changes cause apartment blocks to suddenly stand on a slope, and become uninhabitable, and oil pipelines to crack, and leak an insane amount of spillage into already polluted watercourses. The earth trembles under the people. Yes, more than that, because it is often the soil itself that burns, or the peat in the bogs that until now have stored enormous amounts of CO2. Now these gases are released, and in themselves help to heat the atmosphere.
The pandemic is not over
And the third thing which contributes to new realization is an increased awareness of the natural crises in the Russian leadership. It is, of course, driven by the dramatic news picture in Russia and in the rest of the world. But it is also driven by two of Putin’s most modernist zealots. Former Finance Minister German Gref and Anatoly Chubais, who was the privatization general in the 1990s and has worked to modernize Putin’s economy, are worried that Russian business will be left behind if the green shift is missed.
The process of cognition in climate issues is thus also driven by the fear of being parked in a fossil reality, while the rest of the world is carrying out its green shift. It’s an approach to the Glasgow summit that is gratifying anyway. Although Putin – who until now has been an extreme climate cynic – is not the one who wants to take the first or biggest steps towards the green shift. The good news is that he does not seem to want a brake pad either.
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