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 From article John Kerry: Putin’s Useful Climate Idiot. Rupert Darwall. March 03, 2022

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine marks the end of the West’s Era of Illusions.

It was an era in which Western elites obsessed about solving climate change because the climate crisis was far more dangerous than issues of war and peace and the stability of the international system.

They even convinced themselves climate change causes war, so climate change policy could double as national security policy.

For many years, the annual round of kumbaya UN climate talks was the apogee of international relations.

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In a BBC World Service interview, presidential climate envoy John Kerry expressed concern about the amount of greenhouse gas being emitted from the war in Ukraine.

Kerry was just getting warmed up with a string of platitudes that show him as a deluded climate relic, unable to come to terms with the reality Putin has imposed on the world.

“Equally importantly,” Kerry complained, “you’re going to lose people’s focus,” as if the first invasion of a sovereign European country since the Second World War is an annoying distraction.

Hopefully, Kerry continued, Putin would realize Russia’s land is thawing, and the people of Russia are at risk. 

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Kerry concluded with an expression of pure self-deception, saying he hopes Putin “will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”

Stay on track? Russia has never hidden its intention to avoid cutting its emissions.

Russia’s second Nationally Determined Contribution, submitted in November 2020 under the Paris climate agreement, is to limit its 2030 emissions to “no more than 70% of 1990 levels.”

The document is careful to avoid pledging to cut or reduce emissions.

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The 1990 baseline year was the last one before the collapse of the highly inefficient and heavily polluting centrally planned Soviet economy.

Thus, the 70% limit actually enables Russia to increase its emissions by 34% – and that’s before taking account of any changes in forestry and land use that would allow Russia to claim credit for negative emissions.

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Despite Kerry’s claim about the thawing of their frozen north, Russians’ indifference to climate change predates Putin’s rise to power.

During preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first assessment report in 1990, Soviet scientists argued warming might be beneficial at northern latitudes.

Yuri Izrael, the Soviet academician and chair of the IPCC’s working group examining potential impacts of global warming, emphasized the doubt and uncertainty of climate change and disputed claims it would be harmful.

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At a 2005 conference on avoiding dangerous climate change organized by Britain during its G-8 presidency, Putin’s former economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, challenged the premise of the conference.

“Anyone who is frightened about the prospect of global warming is welcome to come and live in Siberia,” Illarionov told a journalist.

Indeed, a strong case can be made Russian climate scientists have a better understanding of climate science and the likely impact of rising levels of carbon dioxide on global temperatures than their colleagues in the West.

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Two years ago, at a business conference in Moscow, the Russian president denounced fracking as “barbaric,” claiming fracking technologies “destroy the environment.”

A January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian activities in U.S. elections noted that RT, the Russian state-owned news channel, ran anti-fracking programming that highlighted the alleged environmental and public health harms of the practice.

“This is likely reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom’s profitability,” the assessment concluded.

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Putin understands the importance of energy as an essential component of American strategic power. John Kerry does not.

That is why, to borrow from Lenin, Kerry acts as Putin’s useful climate idiot. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine plunges the world into its gravest emergency since the Cuban missile crisis sixty years ago.

The Ukraine crisis puts into perspective the folly of those, like Kerry, who confuse imaginary crises with real ones.

(end of article)

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“The impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom’s profitability.”

Russia funds West European Green groups that fight against fracking and shale oil, forcing governments to hold down oil production in Europe.

Oil prices and Western Europe’s energy dependence on Russia would both be much lower without the Russia/Green partnership.