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The signs are everywhere. If you happen to live in the United States, parts of the Southwest and West are broiling in a megadrought the likes of which hasn't been experienced in at least 1,200 years; water is increasingly scarce; and fires are flaring months early and in a staggering fashion, with acres burned already significantly above the normal yearly average. Consider it nothing short of historic in the grimmest imaginable sense. If you live on the East coast, on the other hand, it's just possible that your house may float away as some are already beginning to do on North Carolina's Outer Banks; while, in case you hadn't noticed, losses of global wetlands are indeed significantly on the rise across the planet.
Should you happen to live in Iraq, however, it's probably the repeated disastrous dust storms that are on your mind. After all, there used to be only a couple a year. Now, there are 20 or so annually. In India and Pakistan, on the other hand, unprecedented spring temperatures, rising repeatedly to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in both countries (and the electricity shortages accompanying them) undoubtedly caught your attention. Meanwhile, in Russian Siberia, the permafrost is thawing more rapidly, releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere at an ever increasing rate. In Australia, on the other hand, marine heat waves have caused widespread mass bleachings of coral reefs, with the fourth of them in the last seven years taking place this spring. In South Africa, it's extreme rainfall and the resulting record spring flooding, now twice as likely to occur as in the past, that's devastating.
Okay, I'll stop there for now. Sadly, all of this (and so much more) is just the beginning on a planet that's overheating all too quickly. Worse yet, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, makes clear today, the war in Ukraine is the last thing on Earth (so to speak) that we need right now. For reasons he explains vividly, it seems to ensure the worst when it comes to climate change on a planet where humanity is already at war with nature and it's starting to strike back in a big way. Tom
The Ukraine War's Collateral Damage
The Health of an Overheating World Is at Stake
The war in Ukraine has already caused massive death and destruction, with more undoubtedly to come as the fighting intensifies in the country's east and south. Many thousands of soldiers and civilians have already been killed or wounded, some 13 million Ukrainians have been forced from their homes, and an estimated one-third of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed. Worse yet, that war's brutal consequences have in no way been limited to Ukraine and Russia: hunger and food insecurity are increasing across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East as grain deliveries from two of the world's leading wheat producers have been severed. People are also suffering globally from another harsh consequence of that war: soaring fuel prices. And yet even those manifestations of the war's "collateral damage" don't come close to encompassing what could be the greatest casualty of all: planet Earth itself.
Any major war will, of course, inflict immense harm on the environment and Ukraine's no exception. Although far from over, the fighting there has already resulted in widespread habitat and farmland destruction, while attacks on fuel-storage facilities (crucial targets for both sides) and the wartime consumption of fossil fuels have already released colossal amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But however detrimental they may be, those should be thought of as relatively minor injuries when compared to the long-term catastrophic damage sure to be caused by the collapse of global efforts to slow the pace of global warming.
Mind you, even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the possibility of preventing the world's temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above its pre-industrial average seemed to be slipping away. After all, as a recent study by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear, without a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, global temperatures are likely to exceed that target long before this century ends with terrifying consequences. "In concrete terms," as U.N. Secretary-General Antà ³nio Guterres pointed out when releasing the report, "this means major cities under water, unprecedented heat waves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of one million species of plants and animals."
Nonetheless, before the Russian invasion, environmental policymakers still believed it might be possible to avoid that ghastly fate. Such success, however, would require significant cooperation among the major powers and now, due to the war in Ukraine, that appears unattainable, possibly for years to come.
Geopolitics Leaves Climate Action in the Dust
Sadly, geopolitical rivalry, not cooperation, is now the order of the day. Thanks to Russia's invasion and the harsh reaction it's provoked in Washington and other Western capitals, "great-power competition" (as the Pentagon calls it) has overtaken all other considerations. Not only has diplomatic engagement between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing essentially ground to a halt, making international cooperation on climate change (or any other global concern) nearly impossible, but an all-too-militarized competition has been launched that's unlikely to abate for years to come.
As President Biden declared in Poland on March 26th: "We [have] emerged anew in the great battle for freedom, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force." This will not be a short-term struggle, he assured his NATO allies. "We must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul. We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after and for the years and decades to come."
Decades to come! And mind you, similar expressions of abiding ideological and geopolitical enmity can be heard from Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. "We are a different country," Putin said in his May 9th Victory Day speech. "Russia has a different character. We will never give up our love for our Motherland, our faith, and traditional values." Similarly, Xi has reaffirmed China's determination to pursue its own path in world affairs and warned Washington against exploiting the Ukraine conflict for its geopolitical advantage.
If asked, Biden, Putin, Xi, and high-ranking officials everywhere would undoubtedly insist that addressing climate change remains an important concern. But let's face it, their number-one priority is now to mobilize their societies for a long-term struggle against their geopolitical rivals. And rest assured, that will prove to be an all-consuming endeavor, with digressions for other matters climate being at the top of any list postponed for the foreseeable future.
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