Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 25 – Because Russia
does not benefit from the moderating effects of oceans, climate change on
Russian territory is occurring faster and in more severe forms than in almost any
other country in the world, Yevgeniya Chirikova says. But the Kremlin, because
of its dependence on the sale fossil fuels remains in almost complete denial.
The leader of the Ecological Defense
of Moscow Oblast movement says that many Russians, encouraged by the regime,
have comforted themselves with the idea that climate change, and especially
human-induced climate change, is something other countries suffer from but that
Russia does not (mnews.world/ru/rossiyu-zatopit-pervoj/).
As
a result of such attitudes, the activist continues, “attitudes toward climate
change and the solution of problems connected with their consequences among Russian
officials are so strange” – such as cutting back on the capacity to fight
forest fires – “that one wants to ask whether what they are doing is idiotism
or a diversion.”
This
year alone, “more than 12 million hectares of forest” in Russia burned, an area
equivalent to “three Switzerlands” or “four and a half Belgiums.” And 2019 was not an anomaly: the amount of
forest lost has been rising for more than a decade and by significant amounts.
But
the Kremlin is responding “in the best traditions of Kafka: Putin proposed
reducing the zone of control by 50 percent and allowing fires to burn out on
their own.” Fortunately, the entire country hasn’t gone insane, and for the
last 15 years, climatologists including those employed by the government have
been warning about the consequences of climate change.
In
2005, the Russian Hydro-Meteorological Service issued a report warning that “climate
change in our country is taking place much more quickly than in the planet as a
whole” and that what might appear to be slight changes in average temperature
are leading to more floods and fires. Now, the Service says Russia’s rate of
warming is 2.5 times the world average.
The
reason Russia is in a worse position than other countries is rooted in
geography, Chirikova says. A continental
country, it does not benefit from the moderating effects of the deep oceans on climate.
And instead of fighting the human behaviors that produce climate change, the Kremlin
is encouraging the use of oil, gas and coal.
The
powers that be don’t listen to their own experts: they listen only to Gazprom
and the gas and coal concerns. And that
is putting Russia on the path to disaster especially since the Kremlin has been
unwilling to invest in the development of renewable forms of energy despite the
many possibilities Russia has to do so.
And
this year, the Kremlin’s opposition to steps that might slow global warming
took on a new and dangerous shape. According to Moscow’s energy security doctrine,
those countries which want to fight global warming are part of a conspiracy to
deny Russia its rightful place as an energy superpower.
“The
climate in Russia is changing with catastrophic speed, and each year we are
experiencing the consequences ever more strongly even as the powers that be
promote a worsening of the situation” with their misguided policies, the
environmental activist continues.
But,
she insists, there is good news: “Russian civil society has begun to wake up”
and there are now hundreds of environmental groups across the Russian
Federation, groups that have arisen because “the people understand that one can
and must say ‘no’ to the powers that be.
Alas,
Chirikova concludes, “the impression exists that the Russian authorities have
their own reserve planet to which they will fly off in the case of a global climatic
catastrophe. There are no hopes that the Russian authorities will grow up, but
there is the hope that citizens will force them to solve questions about the
consequences of climate change.”
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