Ukrainian scientist Svitlana Krakovska says war is ‘closing the window of opportunity’ for the world to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. And now fossil fuel firms are using Russia’s invasion as a convenient opportunity to keep investing in fossil fuels.
Photo: Svitlana Krakovska at the Ukrainian Akademik Vernadsky station on Galindez Island in 1997 (Photo: Svitlana Krakovska )
09 March 2022 | James Porteous | Clipper Media News
Svitlana Krakovska is Head of Applied Climatology Laboratory, Senior Scientist – Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute
- ‘This is a fossil fuel war’: Ukraine’s top climate scientist speaks out
- Big Oil Firms Use War in Ukraine to Expand Fossil Fuel Production
- Under attack: the Ukrainian climate scientist fighting for survival
- Whatever His Motives, Putin’s War in Ukraine Is Fueled by Oil and Gas
- Biden says the Nord Stream 2 pipeline won’t move ahead if Russia invades Ukraine
As western governments untangle themselves from Russian oil and gas, Svitlana Krakovska notes that the roots of the climate crisis and invasion are in fossil fuels
09 March 2022 | Oliver Milman | The Guardian
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.
But then the bombs started to crunch into Kyiv.
Krakovska, the head of a delegation of 11 Ukrainian scientists, struggled to help finalize the vast Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report ahead of its release on 28 February 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 had to express their sympathies and press on with the 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 fire from a separate strike sent up a plume of smoke that blotted the sky. “This blitzkrieg by [Vladimir] Putin is unbelievable, it is terrorism against the Ukrainian people,” she said.
Both the invasion and IPCC report crystallized for Krakovska the human, economic and geopolitical catastrophe 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. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they don’t make themselves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war. 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. Extreme heat and the spread of disease is killing people around the world, about 12 million people are being displaced by floods and droughts each year and the viability of food-producing land is shrinking.
But it is the conflict in Ukraine that has caused western governments to hastily attempt to untangle themselves from a reliance upon Russian oil and gas. The EU, which gets about 40% of its gas supply from Russia, is working on a plan to rapidly upscale renewable energy, bolster energy efficiency measures and build liquified natural gas terminals to receive gas from other countries.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, has relented to pressure from US lawmakers to ban imports of Russian oil. The ban, the US president 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.
The halting of imports was urged in an emotional appeal to members of Congress by Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, and is backed by a bipartisan majority of lawmakers. “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 Joe Manchin, the centrist Democratic senator.
Others see the ban as a moment to decisively break from fossil fuels altogether. “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 also 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% 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 belatedly attempts to wean itself off Russian gas, efforts to phase down fossil fuels in the US have faltered. Biden’s legislative plan to drastically ramp up renewable energy is moribund in Congress, largely thanks to Manchin, while the conservative-leaning supreme court is mulling whether to weaken the administration’s ability to regulate coal-fired power plants.
The invasion of Ukraine has also triggered a push by the US oil and gas industry 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 the electric vehicle company 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, now near an all-time high, rather than shifting towards solar, wind and other sources of clean energy.
“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.”
In Kyiv, Krakovska has said that she will stay in her home city as the Russian army advances, having declined offers to relocate to foreign 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.”
2. Big Oil Firms Use War in Ukraine to Expand Fossil Fuel Production
Fossil fuel firms have found Russia’s invasion a convenient opportunity to undermine efforts to decarbonise the economy, reports Thomas Perrett
08 March 2022 | Thomas Perrett | Byline Times
Speaking at a recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) session, Ukrainian representative Svitlana Krakovska connected the findings of the panel’s recent report to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels, and our dependence on them,” she said. “We will not surrender in Ukraine… And we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate-resilient future.”
The war in Ukraine has sparked widespread attempts to divest from Russian oil and gas, which currently makes up 40% of the EU’s imports.
Germany recently announced the closure of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which imported oil from Russia, aiming to speed up the ratification of legislation which would double onshore wind energy volumes by 2028, ensuring that renewables constituted 80% of the nation’s energy supply.
However, the American fossil fuel industry has advocated for the expansion of domestic oil and gas as a solution to evading energy dependence on Russia. The American Petroleum Institute (API), a prominent trade association notorious for lobbying on behalf of heavily polluting industries, recently sent a letter to US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm which emphasised “the clear and present need for continued responsible investment in oil and natural gas development”.
Exploiting a Crisis
Aiming to capitalise on the crisis in Ukraine to expand the power and influence of the oil and gas industry, the API’s letter criticised President Joe Biden’s administration for offering “a series of false solutions that fail to recognise the significant value of America’s abundant oil and natural gas as a strategic asset to strengthen energy security, economic growth, and environmental progress”.
It proposed a series of policies including expanding oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, ramping up sales of onshore drilling leases, and issuing more permits for oil and gas infrastructure.
These proposals would involve rolling-back some of Biden’s notable accomplishments – such as his executive order which prevented the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which had been expected to carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to Nebraska.
The API – which according to data from OpenSecrets, has spent more than $98 million on lobbying activities since 1998 – has a long history of undermining renewable energy efforts and publicly disputing the veracity of climate science, despite having been privately aware of the environmental implications of burning oil and gas since 1982.
That year, the API commissioned a Colombia University report which acknowledged that climate change could have “serious consequences for man’s comfort and survival”.
The report recognised the destructive implications of fossil fuel extraction, acknowledging that atmospheric CO2 levels were “expected to double some time in the next century”.
“Just when depends on the particular estimate of the level of increasing energy use per year and the mix of carbon-based fuels,” it added.
Yet 16 years later, a Greenpeace investigation discovered a ‘communications action plan’ published by the API, which opposed US involvement in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – a UN climate convention designed to incentivise participants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – on the grounds that it would place the US at a “competitive disadvantage”.
Arguing that “the climate change theory being advanced by the treaty supporters is based primarily on forecasting models with a very high degree of uncertainty”, the API’s plan disputed that “so-called greenhouse gases” were caused by burning fossil fuels, stating that they had “many sources”.
A New Shock Doctrine
Following the COP26 conference last November – during which US President Biden made a number of rhetorical commitments to reducing America’s carbon emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030 – the API has found in the Ukraine war a convenient opportunity to undermine efforts to decarbonise the economy.
The API arguably sees the war as an opportunity to promote a new ‘shock doctrine’ – described by academic Naomi Klein as a mechanism whereby powerful political and economic interest groups cynically weaponise public disorientation following cataclysmic events such as wars and humanitarian crises to impose control via exploitative, free-market policies.
Moreover, the API’s policy recommendations have led directly to high-profile Republican politicians demanding that President Biden use the war to resume domestic oil and gas extraction.
Just over a week after the API’s letter was sent, another letter addressing the ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was delivered to President Biden – signed by several prominent Republican members of the US Senate. It advocated for many of the same policies as the API’s letter, arguing that Biden’s attempts to scale-back fossil fuel production had “left the US and our allies vulnerable to the malicious manoeuvrings of Vladimir Putin”.
The letter, which implored the President to withdraw his executive order cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline, called on him to approve new oil and gas leases on federal lands, by removing restrictions on the financing of natural gas and coal power plants.
Accusing Putin of “financing anti-fracking campaigns throughout Europe”, the letter argued that only the development of domestic shale gas, coal and oil could stave-off inflation and counteract Russian and Chinese geopolitical dominance.
David Armiak, research director at the Centre for Media and Democracy, an organisation which tracks the influence of money in politics and has extensively documented the actions of fossil fuel lobbyists, told Byline Times that he was unsurprised by the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to use the invasion of Ukraine as an excuse to promote dirty energy.
“API has consistently been the fossil fuel industry’s greatest advocate saying restrictions on oil production are bad for business,” he said.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the consequent restrictions which many countries have placed on Russian energy, could present an opportunity to develop reliable, sustainable domestic energy sources.
The expansion of solar and wind power could also protect domestic energy supplies, from rapid price fluctuations resulting from shocks to international markets.
Indeed, at a time when climate-induced extreme weather has pushed up gas prices causing a crisis in the cost of living, solar and wind power – both increasingly attractive investment prospects – could form the basis of a robust and self-sufficient economy.
The cost of solar PV modules has declined by 99.6% since 1976, and the cost per megawatt hour for both wind and solar stood at just $36 in 2021, compared to $60 for natural gas.
As a recent IPCC report has elucidated, “any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future”. It is therefore imperative that oil and gas firms and their lobbyists are not given the opportunity to use geopolitical tensions as a pretext to roll-back crucial environmental protections, convincing elected officials that only domestic fossil fuel production can provide a counterweight to Russian oil and gas imports.
For David Armiak, the ability of Western nations to end their dependency on Russian energy imports “depends on how long and drawn out the Ukraine War is”.
“The longer it continues, the greater chance those Western countries that depend on Russian fossil fuels will need to look elsewhere,” he told Byline Times.
But Armiak recognises that transitioning to renewables will not be an immediately viable prospect for some nations. “Not all Western countries have focused on developing their renewable energy sector, so, in those cases, they will have to turn to domestic oil and gas, or will have to purchase oil and gas from another country,” he added.
The worldwide revulsion at Vladimir Putin’s invasion could entail a shift towards sustainable, reliable energy sources, which will enable us to both alleviate the impending climate crisis, and to curtail the mendacious influence of fossil fuel-powered tyrants.
3. Under attack: the Ukrainian climate scientist fighting for survival
Svitlana Krakovska had to withdraw from the approval session of the IPCC report as bombs hit Kyiv. She fears for the future of climate science in Ukraine
Published on 01/03/2022 | Chloé Farand | Climate Change News
Svitlana Krakovska had hoped that a major scientific report showing that climate change is causing “increasingly irreversible losses” to nature and humanity would dominate headlines across the world this week. Not the existential threat her country is facing.
As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and explosions of military artillery resonated across the capital Kyiv on Thursday, “we woke up in a different world,” she told Climate Home News from her flat in the south of the city.
A senior scientist of applied climatology who introduced climate models to Ukraine, Krakovska was leading an 11-strong delegation in the negotiations to approve the “summary for policymakers” that accompanies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate impacts.
This was the first time Ukraine was represented by such a large delegation, allowing experts to bring their regional perspective from Europe’s largest country (aside from Asia-straddling Russia). “Before, I was alone,” Krakovska said.
As Russian troops advanced towards the capital, the survival of Ukraine as a sovereign state and the completion of the IPCC report both became critical for Krakovska.
“As long as we have internet and no bombs over our head, we will continue to work,” she recalled telling the plenary of the IPCC meeting on Thursday. But the fighting intensified, and when rockets hit the city, the delegation was forced to withdraw from the discussions.
“It is not possible to make science when you are under attack,” she said. “I’m sad that instead of presenting key findings of this report in Ukraine, we need to fight for the existence of our country.”
IPCC: Five takeaways from the UN’s 2022 climate impacts report
A mother of four, Krakovska was born in Kyiv and has decided to stay in the city with her family.
A war in Europe in 2022 “is not acceptable” but “we don’t panic, we stay strong,” she said, visibly moved during a Zoom interview.
Krakovska says there is “a very direct connection” between climate change and the war. “Russia has a lot of money from fossil fuels and these fossil fuels make this war possible.”
Issues of water scarcity in eastern and southern Ukraine are also likely to have played a role, she said. Access to water supplies in the Russian-occupied Crimea became a major issue and led to increased concerns of Russian military threats following widespread drought in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Krakovska said that 10 of the last 12 years had seen below normal precipitation levels. In 2020, water levels in Ukraine’s rivers and reservoirs hit their lowest levels since record began in 1885.
In the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian-backed separatist forces have been in conflict with the Ukrainian military since 2014, water woes were exacerbated by shelling and damage to infrastructure.
The IPCC report published Monday states that droughts induced by higher levels of global warming, “by increasing vulnerability, will increasingly affect violent intrastate conflict”.
For Krakovska, Russia’s war on Ukraine shows this can become a cross-border issue.
Revealed: How rich and at-risk nations fought over science of climate impacts
Krakovska knows Russia well. She was born under the Soviet Union, studied meteorology in Saint Petersburg and went on several expeditions to study cloud modelling across Russia.
She joined the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, where she now heads the applied climatology laboratory, in September 1991, days after Ukraine’s declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
Krakovska first experienced signs of climate change on a trip to the Arctic in October 1991, when mild temperatures meant that the sea still hadn’t frozen as was usual for the time of year.
In the late 1990s, she was one of the first Ukrainian women to travel to Antarctica on a scientific expedition.
A visit to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, took her research in a new direction. There, she met with a group of scientists working on regional climate modelling.
She soon started to work on projections for Ukraine, which have since been used to plan adaptation measures across the country.
Since the invasion started, Krakovska has received dozens of messages of support from the scientific community across the world.
Russian delegate Oleg Anisimov apologised for his country’s invasion of Ukraine during the IPCC approval session’s closing plenary on Sunday – at risk of incurring the wrath of his government.
“The courage of the delegation of Ukraine, which continued to contribute to our deliberations [on Thursday] is remarkable. Science has no borders,” tweeted Climatologist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, of the Belgian delegation.
But the future of Ukraine and its scientific community are uncertain. Last month, on the anniversary of the 2014 revolution that severed Ukraine’s ties to Russia, Ukrainian scientists wrote in Nature that national science spending remained low, government funding was used inefficiently and low salaries discouraged students from embarking on research careers.
Even that small budget is likely to be redirected to defence – and Krakovska is not complaining.
“We are the poorest country in Europe and we’re really poor scientists if I’m honest,” said Krakovska. “But now I’m really happy that they use this finance to make our army stronger.”
The war is a direct threat to Ukrainian research institutions. In Crimea, those that were previously run by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine were transferred to Russian control. Since 2014, the conflict in the east has led 18 universities to relocate to other parts of the country, with many researchers losing their homes and laboratories.
“I hope that we survive and continue to do science as Ukrainian scientists in an independent Ukraine,” Krakovska said.
As our conversation came to a close, she realised she hadn’t checked her phone for warnings to get to a shelter. “I hope that my voice will make a difference,” she added.
4. Whatever His Motives, Putin’s War in Ukraine Is Fueled by Oil and Gas
The U.S. oil industry is hoping to fill the immediate void with increased oil and gas exports, while the EU moves in the longer term to replace Russian gas with renewable energy.
06 March 2022 | Marianne Lavelle | Inside Climate News
With a Russian military convoy advancing on her city of Kyiv, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist made an emotional plea at last week’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots, fossil fuels, and our dependence on them,” said Svitlana Krakovska of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, as the IPCC unveiled its report on climate impacts.
Certainly, fossil fuels are not the direct cause of a war clearly driven by the singular will of President Vladimir Putin. The world has struggled to comprehend his motives, which analysts have suggested include expansionism, grievance toward the neighboring Soviet state and a desire to reassemble what he has described as “historical Russia.”
But on a deeper level, Krakovska is right, say those who have studied fossil fuel-dependent states and aggression: Whatever is driving Putin, his war machine is fueled by oil and gas.
“Putin is able to use the oil money to get rid of any domestic political constraints and to build a military and a war chest to allow these kinds of foreign policy adventures,” said Jeff Colgan, director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University. “In that way, Putin’s Russia falls into a category of states that would include Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya.”
And let’s not forget Nord Stream 2 in all of this
The US had already essentially stopped the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline meant to bring oil to Germany long before the threatend invasion.
A few signatures were said to be the only thing left do to get it up-and-running.
But the US said they were afraid that Russia would use the new pipeline to blackmail Europe, and in particular Germany, to meet whatever demands they hoped to implement.
So instead of Russia blackmailing Germany, the US is essentially blackmailing Germany and the rest of the EU. And the quasi-EU countries.
So, will it now be up to the US to ‘supply’ the fossil fuels that are no longer available from Russia?
And will that mean the US will be in charge of striking deals with Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, UEA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or, of course, the US? JP
5. Biden says the Nord Stream 2 pipeline won’t move ahead if Russia invades Ukraine
07 Februrarty 2022 | ALANA WISE | NPR
President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a joint news conference on Monday that they are in complete agreement on sanctions against Moscow if diplomacy fails and Russia invades Ukraine again.
That includes working together to stop the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline — a multibillion-dollar vein that runs from Russia to Germany.
The pipeline is not yet operational but has emerged as a key issue in the standoff.
Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of natural gas; Germany is one of the largest importers of that commodity.
“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”
Asked how the U.S. would ensure that, Biden did not offer specifics: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.” It’s a point Biden administration officials have stressed in recent weeks.
Scholz, who did not speak specifically about the pipeline, emphasized that Germany and the U.S. are united on a package of potential sanctions, saying there would be no measures with a differing approach.
“We will be united. We will act together,” Scholz said, speaking in English to reinforce his point. “We will take all the necessary steps, and they will be done together.”
Cutting off the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could damage Russia’s economy but could also have negative impacts on Europe at large. Moscow supplies nearly 40% of Europe’s natural gas.
In response to sanctions, the Kremlin could be tempted to weaponize its energy reserves and cut supply to its European customers, impacting home heating and natural gas-powered factories.
Asked for his latest assessment of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine, Biden said: “I know that he’s in a position now to be able to invade. … What he’s going to do, I don’t know.”
Biden said a Russian invasion would be a “gigantic mistake,” saying, “We will impose the most severe sanctions ever imposed.”
He said it would be wise for Americans to leave Ukraine in case an invasion happens, though he said he was not recommending that the U.S. diplomatic corps leave.
The meeting between the two global powers on Monday marked the latest strategy session regarding how best to address Russia’s escalating military actions along its border with Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to meet Putin on Monday and then is on to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Last week, the White House authorized the temporary relocation of some 3,000 U.S. troops closer to Ukraine in response to Putin positioning a large military force along the Russia-Ukraine border.
Russia has about 127,000 troops near its border with Ukraine, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told NPR last month.
