The Ukraine-Russia Conflict through the Lens of Climate Crisis An Op-Ed By Enya Laumbach
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n its face, and in the current state of news coverage, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict seems like a resurgence of the Cold War politics of old. East clashing with West anew, but with lines being drawn along democracy and authoritarianism rather than capitalism and communism this time around. However, this twodimensional perspective of the ongoing conflict, one that treats it as just an ideological struggle between superpowers, fails to address that there are added dimensions to this conflict, mainly climate change, and additional players, like a Europe asserting its independence. How is climate change motivating this conflict? For one, Russia has everything to gain from global warming and little to lose. In fact, it is in Russia’s geopolitical interests to maintain the current trend of global warming and promote continued use of fossil fuels and climate change skepticism by any means necessary. Russia mainly produces and exports oil and natural gas, and wishes to sustain a market for these products. Its massive military- industrial complex needs wars to supply fighting nations with weapons, and an increasingly climate insecure world means increasingly likely wars over resources, especially water. Melting ice will likely open a passage for shipping through the Arctic, cheaper than the current route from Asia to Europe through the Suez,
which Russia will control most of and profit off of enormously. Warming temperatures means more
of Russia will be habitable while the rest of the world becomes uninhabitable, meaning that they will control a large part of where people can even live; as in a world just 4 degrees warmer, the area around the equator will become inhabitable (Wallace-Wells, 2020). With that, Russia will also begin to control most of the world’s arable land and food, as it will become one of the few places not struck by desertification. All of this points to a future dominated by Russia if present trends continue and inaction on climate change continues, and that is exactly what Putin is banking on. However, Russia is not content to just sit back and let it play out; renewable energies, rising gas prices, even cordial diplomacy, all pose too great a risk for Putin and threaten his ideal possible future; so Russia’s geopolitical goals are to ensure that the Europe and the world remain divided, especially on the issue of climate change. How does Ukraine factor into these geopolitical goals? Ukraine is part of Russia’s larger strategy to divide and conquer. It seeks to secure its eastern border, shifting the balance of power in Europe back to the Warsaw Pact era. A Russia that controls Ukraine has a defensive line along the
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