Lambert: I’m not so sure about that “fossil fuel fascists” formulation, which seems a little glib. It should at least includes Dick “Dark Side” Cheney, the man who may have enabled us to replace Europe’s Russian gas with American gas. And then Ukraine gladly took a cut from gas passing through pipelines on its territory on its way to Germany an elsewhere.
By Oliver Milman, Oliver Milman is an environment reporter for Guardian U.S. Originally published at Undark.
For Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, it was meant to be the week where eight years of work culminated in a landmark U.N. 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 report ahead of its release on Feb. 28 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 U.N. secretary general, as an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” is the most comprehensive catalog 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 European Union, which gets about 40 percent 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 U.S. lawmakers to ban imports of Russian oil. The ban, the U.S. president said last week, will deliver a “powerful blow to Putin’s war machine. We will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war.” Biden said the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 two weeks ago. “That would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people, around the world, because it would reduce the supply available.”
While the U.S. takes a relatively small amount of oil from Russia — only about 3 percent 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 habit contributes towards the global demand for 100 million 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 26 million 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.”
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Oil and coal shills have been very fast out of the block to use Ukraine as a reason to overturn various restrictions on exploration and extraction. I can only hope that those advocating rapid energy reductions and renewables can at least block this, although they have vastly fewer resources and access to the right channels.
Promoters of conservation-living can’t and won’t be as fast out of any blocks as the merchants of coal, gas and oil.
What they ( we) can do is to wage a longer-term siege-war of economic-cultural attrition and hopefully somday extermination against the coal, gas and oil industries. Perhaps we can conquer various levels of sub-national government to use them as fortresses and weapons-systems in that war.
But no conserver will fight a war until that conserver sees it as a war. Greenie Meanies should create an oppositional defiant culture of conservation-lifestyling and then conservation policy-forcing with the goal of exterminating the coal, gas and oil industries.
As much as it would make sense to just find alternative technologies to fossil fuels you still have the U.S. dod spending $100b+ on military research not counting the extraordinary costs of then buying the products. The department of energy spends most of its money on nuclear research and other related expenses and has a far smaller budget for renewable energy research in comparison. You get what you pay for…
The Sheik of Canada, Alberta Premier Jason Kenny, announced three weeks ago that he wants to replace Russian gas with “Canadian clean energy,” Alberta tar sands sludge, and coal. He was countered by the national energy minister indicating “we” don’t have the capacity.
Glad someone mentioned nuclear. DOE is spending all that research money on nuclear energy, because that IS Biden’s “clean energy” strategy, following a transition period of reliance on “clean” natural gas. Straight from the horse’s mouth (no offense to horses):
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-nuclear-energy-stories-watch-2022
Gotta love #4. In the mid-80s, I was invited to participate in a dry run of a DOE nuclear waste siting exercise. The whole thing boiled down to getting the short-listed communities to compete with other to see which would accept the lowest
bribescontributions to community welfare and fewestempty promisessafety assurances. I got to play one of the mayors and was the only one of five who refused to accept nuclear waste anywhere near my town, under any circumstances.In a half-hearted defense of DOE, eyeballing the FY 2022 budget, it looks like a 60% (~$28B) /40% (~$18B) split between the nuclear weapons complex and the overall R&D budget, respectively. Some agency has to deal with the material legacy of nuclear weapons, DOE just drew the historical short straw.
Within R&D (the “applied energy programs” and Office of Science), it’s only plausibly about 20-30% nuclear, part of which (fusion/ignition) is still wink- weapons complex-related. Obviously our national priorities are upside down, but it’s not like nuclear energy research is stealing funding from other technologies so much.
I assume based on the infrastructure bill link that “clean” natural gas = hydrogen. I have my doubts about hydrogen specifically, but any significant decarbonization scenario needs energy storage, and a tremendous amount of it. Batteries alone won’t be the answer.
I don’t think Ukraine has as much to do with petroleum as it does with Russia’s national security. We’ve (the West) been nipping at Russia’s heels since 1917. And Russia has had oil all along. Now suddenly they are the price gougers? The soup nazi? I think this is hysteria because we haven’t replaced our own dependence on oil and gas, like we should have. The thing about petroleum is that it is not a renewable resource. So it needs to be conserved. We will need it for another century at least – while we find viable replacements. Speaking of which, I can think of no better shills than the oil-and-gassers to procrastinate our efforts to find new sources of energy – and conveniently use up all our reserves fighting an absurd war. Where the hell is our military? They’ve got their head up a barrel of oil. Global warming was named as the number-one national security issue years ago. They’ve been messing around in Yellowstone trying to find a way to tap into that lovely caldera and make steam. Sounds like a good idea. Kill two birds by preventing (maybe) an extinction eruption and creating a good use of the energy by letting off the steam slowly. Why doesn’t somebody like Elon Musk – that superficial genius – engineer a river from the high Sierras down to Nevada, diverting the floodwaters into a reservoir – a mill pond – for tapping into the magma dome and creating electricity for almost ever. “The Saudi Arabia of renewable energy” (according to Harry Reid). Where is the engineering? I haven’t heard one single thing on the subject. We might have to hire some from Russia?
The reality is that the world runs on oil. Remove oil and the world stops. There is no substitute for oil. Nobody, even the most passionate environmentalists, wants to make the lifestyle changes that will be required to sharply reduce oil consumption. Collectively, humankind has built a world entirely dependent on fossil fuels. Eliminating it would be akin to removing blood from our bodies. Can’t be done. Won’t be done.
Any US bleating about reducing fossil fuel consumption is nothing but window dressing without adressing one of the big elephants in the room: the environmental impact of the US military or any modern military.
https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-greenhouse-gases-140-countries-1445674
https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-140-countries-combined/
It’s really macabre how the Western propaganda has whipped their population into a frenzy, manufacturing consent for a ramp-up of the military – Germany’s 100 billion in ‘defense’ spending comes to mind – while blotting out the glaring contradiction of how this would negatively impact their carbon footprint. This makes the EU’s claim of weening themselves off fossil fuels utterly preposterous. I mean, what are the shiny weapons Lookheed Martin, Raytheon & Co selling Europa supposed to run on? Solar panels on tanks? Wind turbines on fighter jets?
So wait, Russia is to blame for climate change now? That means we can bomb our way to reduced gg emissions right? So great
I share your skepticism about this post. I may have to read it again — perhaps a couple of times. I am surprised to see it on NakedCapitalism — but I am inclined to believe it was posted as an exercise in critical thinking. The heart tugging anecdotal lede relating the trials of the Ukrainian climate scientist and her “four children sheltered with her in their Kyiv home as a missile struck a nearby building” caught my immediate attention. From there the post suggests Russia’s police action in the Ukraine instigated the rush by “Western governments” to escape reliance on Russian oil and gas. Are we supposed to believe “Western governments” were not influenced by pressure from U.S. lawmakers, much as they pressured poor old Joe to ban imports of Russian oil? “While the U.S. takes a relatively small amount of oil from Russia — only about 3 percent of all oil imports —” that has not stopped gasoline prices at the u.s. service station pumps to climb at a rapid rate. Is “Joe Manchin, the centrist Democratic senator” a centrist?
This is a war about geopolitics, not fossil fuels. Why not take Putin at his word? Putin claims security concerns are a primary motivation for the invasion. Western media notwithstanding, Putin has been saying the same thing at least since the US/EU-backed 2014 Maiden coup that deposed a democratically elected) Ukraine government – if there is such a thing in today’s world. Security guarantees by both Russia and NATO for a NEUTRAL Ukraine are in everyone’s interest, including Ukraine’s.
The first step out of this mess for the US and the West is for Biden to stop listening to incompetent geopolitical players like Victoria Nuland. Russia holds too many cards. The US and other Western governments have overplayed the one card they hold – the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of furnishing the global economy with reserve currencies – the money it needs to function. However you feel about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, preserving good relations is essential in transitioning to electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. In addition to oil, Russia has the world’s:
• largest reserves of magnesium
• 2nd largest reserves of vanadium.
• 4th largest reserves of nickel
• 5th largest reserves of cobalt
Vicky Nuland is one of Biden’s (and Hillary’s) key advisers, plus she adds diversity to the foreign policy team. Of course they’re going to listen to her. She’s the key reason I didn’t vote for Joe B or for Hillary – because I thought she would get us into a war in Eastern Europe. How silly of me.
Instead of wondering why Russia is pursuing its police action in the Ukraine, I think speculation should focus on why the u.s. worked so hard to compel the Russian police action in the Ukraine. It’s not as if Russia has failed to clearly state and restate its — in my opinion valid — concerns and national interests.
Thanks for posting this article … although it actually was originally published in The Guardian and republished on Undark — which explains why a story ostensibly about climate change starts and ends with “Putin bad.” Milman wrote a second article, published two days later, which should have been the first and maybe the only one, with a sidebar on Krakovskva’s observations.
‘Defining moment’: how can the US end its dependency on fossil fuels?
Excerpt:
There’s no contradiction once you understand that Biden is a shill for the oil&gas industry, which pitches natural gas as cleaner than new-fallen Siberian snow. As it so happens, U.S. tankers of LNG have been clogging the Atlantic for months already, and U.S. LNG exports recently pivoted away from Asia in anticipation that Putin would cut off Europe’s gas supply. Well, he didn’t. Something had to be done!
Meanwhile, Germany, which abandoned plans in April 2021 to build an LNG terminal in favor of a more environmentally acceptable alternative, suddenly changed its mind, following a decision to cancel (delay?) opening the spigot on Nordstream II. Or who knows, maybe it was the other way around …
And then there’s the whole thing with Venezuela. More in following comment, and then some links.
While searching for something else, I stumbled on a background briefing for media ahead of Biden’s trip to Colombia — which, incidentally, was preceded by an advance party that included none other than “Toria” Nuland. The first post-backgrounder question was about rumored U.S. attempts to negotiate with Venezuela for oil and why, if we banned imports from Enemy-of-Freedom Putin would we buy it from Enemy-of-Freedom Maduro? Part 2 of the question was whether Guaido would be invited to the Summit of the Americas. Answer by the “senior administration official”:
Regarding Guaido, the “senior administration official” said they’ve made it clear they’re inviting “democratically elected leaders,” but that they’re still working on the guest list, with input from the State Department, and essentially, “we’ll let you know after the invitations go out.”
So they’ll hold their noses for Maduro’s oil but don’t want to sit next to him for dinner? Or maybe they do, but first need a convenient way to ditch Guaido. Pandora Papers? Epstein files? Whadya think?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/03/10/background-press-call-by-senior-administration-officials-previewing-the-visit-of-president-duque-of-colombia/
More links:
If we can develop an oppositional defiant betterculture, then perhaps the members of that betterculture can decide what our national interests are so far as the betterculture is concerned.
“National” interests being the interests of Betterculture Nation.
Finally, the promised links:
U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia as White House explores drastic plans to buffer economy from energy shock [Wapo, March 8]
Europe Remains Top Destination for US LNG [World Energy News, Feb 2]
Germany Goes Ahead With First LNG Terminal to Cut Dependence on Russian Gas [WSJ, March 5]
Novatek’s planned LNG terminal in port of Rostock stopped [FleetMon, Oct 12, 2021]
While it may not be “all about the oil,” there’s no question that energy is a huge part of the equation.
The essential function of the U.S. State Department is to clear obstacles for U.S. multinationals to exploit the resources and consumer markets of other countries. Did you never see the infamous video of “Toria” giving a talk with the Chevron logo in the background? Russia has megatons of resources, especially energy, plus all the other resources you point out. In Ukraine, it’s the energy resourcesn and all that rich farmland. Monsanto, Chevron and others were progressing on that front until Yanukovych made the fatal mistake of trying to remain on good terms with both NATO and Russia.
Here’s a story from 2014 by Nat Parry, son of the late Bob Parry of Consortium News (with a bonus still from the Nuland video):
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/24/beneath-the-ukraine-crisis-shale-gas/
I have a couple of comments in the queue with more info on this subject, and am preparing a list of source links I used.
This comment was meant to be a reply to steven, 4:04 p.m. Had a bit of difficulty posting earlier (apologies if any comments show up twice). Still compiling the links file.
Thanks. Not saying he is wrong but the thrust of Parry’s argument runs counter to what I have heard about both Putin’s Russia and Ukraine. Periodic news about arrested or exiled oligarchs suggests Putin is in charge in Russia, not its billionaires. As for Ukraine, the persecution of its Russian population appears to be the real thing, not just made up Putin propaganda.
We may never know what motivated his decision to invade but my money is on the progressive encroachments by the US and NATO on Russia’s national security perimeters, starting with the farce of ABM bases in countries bordering Russia and continuing with the aggressive enlargement of NATO. Ukraine may have been a bridge too far.
Anyhow, where better to ask than Naked Capitalism readers for sources about what is really going on in Ukraine and the world? Certainly not the Western press which appears willing to peddle war propaganda even if it may lead to nuclear Armageddon?
Should have been: “.lead to nuclear Armageddon!”
My point in linking to Nat Parry was to emphasize that geopolitics in Ukraine and Russia are inextricably tied to fossil fuels, whether in relations between the two countries or in relations between each of them and the rest of the world, notably the US and NATO.
Even the civil war within Ukraine has much to do with fossil fuels. Not sure what you’re getting at re: very real persecution of Russian-speaking people, as neither I nor Parry claimed otherwise (likewise with Russian oligarchs); however, it’s a fact that Ukraine’s hydrocarbons lie predominantly in Eastern Ukraine. This is where the country’s coal mines are located, as well as most of its oil and gas reserves. The USGS estimates there are 1.6 billion barrels of oil and 59 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Dneiper-Donets Basin — essentially, the Donbas. That may or may not factor into the animosity between East and West, but it’s clearly a consideration in the refusal to allow Luhansk and Donetsk to break away from the rest of Ukraine.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/2201/E/
The oil and gas reserves also are why U.S. and European energy conglomerates want a piece of the pie — and why they want a government friendly to the West that will guarantee them free access to those reserves. As I wrote before, that’s how the State Department sees its job. Burisma, the oil and gas company that hired Hunter Biden, had leases in the Donets Basin and was owned by the thug behind the current president of Ukraine (see Lambert’s excellent intro, “Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky,” posted on 3/8).
There’s been a lot written about the role of the U.S. and NATO in provoking Putin, but you have to ask why we would do that. John Mearsheimer asserts that we have no reason whatsoever to be there, that Russia poses no security threat to the U.S. Yet, how often do we hear political leaders speak of oil supply interruptions or price hikes as being a “threat to national security?” Whether that’s a valid concern isn’t my point. My point is that there’s no such thing as pure geopolitics, detached from the land (“geo”) and what’s on/under it.
There can be no question that since WWI the possession or control of oil and national/imperial power have been inextricably linked. What changed everything, however, was nuclear weapons, not global warming. Russian foreign policymakers at least know they are not really usable. Seems like I read somewhere all that would be required to precipitate nuclear winter is blowing up 25 larger cities – doesn’t matter where, on the ‘enemy’s’ turf or your own. (Kind of a sick joke the PTB would decide to live with a half-million deaths a year while they continue to pump trillions of dollars into ‘national defense’)
Anyhow the issue is whether Russian national security interests have been threatened by US and European policies not whether or not the invasion was the product of purely geopolitical calculations. As for getting off oil and fossil fuels I don’t know whether Europe could do it, at least not without nuclear energy. But I am quite sure the US could if only it could free itself from the grasp of rent-seekers like its electrical utilities. There are all kinds of gravity storage technologies available that are not being explored because they can’t be packaged and sold by the likes of Elon Musk or purchased by the nations utilitiy industries.
The US won’t do anything about fossil fuel pollution if it follows its track record since the Nixon Administration. As I recall after the oil embargo by OPEC Arab nations the US was supposed to energy independent by 1980. Carter installed solar panels on the WH roof and proffered energy independence as well. Every succeeding president has been an abject failure at implementing independence and offering renewables as a replacement.
The clutches of the API dig too deep into the halls of Congress and the presidency.
IMHO the last chance this country had re curtailing fossil fuels would’ve been a Gore presidency.
In a nutshell what is going on in Europe is. The USA is bound and determined to destroy Russia. It is doing this by ordering Germany to stop importing fuel from Russia. This is a death sentence for German manufacturing. Two birds with one stone Germany and Russia. The USA feels threatened by a prosperous China which is growing at a healthy rate. The USD is under serious threat from Russia, China, India, Iran. Germany would just about fill out the EurAsian economic juggernaut whicht would dominate the USA economically and militarily. The hegemon is likely to cause serious problems for the world as it weakens further. The biggest blunder of this century is likely to be US and UK mistreatment of Russia which caused Russia to get together with China to become an economic and military powerful bloc.