Putin
changes
course on climate
change
4
October, 2019
Why
Vladimir Putin Suddenly Believes in Global Warming – Julian
Lee
President
Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from
melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the
hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the
permafrost melt.
Even
I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the
conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s
sudden ratification of
the Paris climate accord and from reading the latest
report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Until
now, climate change has been seen as a “good thing” for Russia —
at least in part. Warming waters have opened up the Northern Sea
Route across the top of the country and made it practical, if not
necessarily economic,
to search for and exploit oil and gas resources beneath the Arctic
seas. Who remembers the Shtokman
gas project?
Yet
the warming that is opening up the Arctic seas may be starting to
have a less beneficial effect on the frozen landmass of northern
Russia, the heartland of the country’s oil and gas development and
production.
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