The record heat wave and nationwide blaze of forest fires that are engulfing Russia, one of the world?s coldest countries, have dramatically pitchforked climate change and its destructive potential back to the centre of international attention. With average temperatures soaring to a 130-year-besting 38 degrees Celsius, more than 50 deaths directly owed to the wildfires, smoke blanketing urban areas and halting transportation, and drought compelling export restrictions on wheat, Russia?s cup of woes are full to the brim.
Climate change-induced disasters need no better apocalyptic advertisement than Moscow city, where face masks are out and suffocation is killing. The forest and peat bog fires have spread across 1.8 million acres of land, raging close to densely populated suburbs and rural communities. Climate sceptics, who have often dismissed the ?alarmism? of environmentalists, do not even have the benefit of air to breathe and advocate their fuzzy science if they were to set foot in Russia now.
While neglectful administration and lack of precautions in Russia?s moribund forest conservation system partly account for the calamity, there is hardly any doubt that exacerbating anthropogenic climate change generated extreme fluctuations in weather patterns and caused the tragedy in the first place. President Dmitry Medvedev said as much in a speech that ?what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.?
How did a country run by a national security hawk and a vigilant ex-spy, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, allow itself to become a prostrate victim of a climate change attack of such proportion? Though the Kremlin is passing the buck to sloppy local governments and trying to absolve itself of blame for the forest fires, it bears the burden of making fundamental policy miscalculations about the severity of climate change as a problem and the links between green cover, economic growth, and responsibility to curb carbon emissions.
Last December, Russia came to the negotiating table at the Copenhagen summit with the typical lackadaisical position of top polluting industrialised countries that climate change was not a high national priority, and that the contribution of Russia?s vast forest cover to reducing global carbon dioxide concentration must be counted before determining its emissions ceiling. Putin?s grouse against the Kyoto Protocol was that it underestimated the capacity of Russia?s forests to absorb greenhouse gases, thereby placing a heavier green adaptation burden on its industries than was merited. Essentially, he disputed figures about Russia?s carbon footprint to chicken out of significant emission cut commitments, which were deemed too costly for an economy undergoing sharp convulsions of the global financial crisis.
But it turns out in hindsight that by shielding Russian heavy industry, especially the wantonly polluting state-owned energy sector, Putin helped add to the already dangerous pollution levels that engendered the current heat wave. It is supremely ironic that the same forests that Russia proudly displayed to escape carbon emission cuts are now being devastated by climate change?s demons. Even worse, ecologists told RIA Novosti that the ongoing Russian fires will speed up global warming since ?burnt forests can release more carbon dioxide than they absorb for up to 30 years?.
Russia is not unique in positing a zero-sum game between shifting to greener technologies and economic growth, but its present predicament illustrates the falsity of such antinomies. The main reasoning behind Russia?s unwillingness to commit deeply to cleaning up its industries is that it would entail higher costs of production and render Russian products less competitive in world markets.
But what about the economic costs of unmitigated climate change? For Russia, these are visible and not confined to imaginative oracles of pessimistic climatologists. The BBC has collected opinions of economists in Russia to the effect that the current heat wave and wildfires will ?cut $15 billion from economic output?, especially by hampering agricultural output and exports. This climate change-propelled shock is expected to slow down Russia?s recovery from the depths of the global economic crisis.
There is a vicious cycle in which Russia, and many other prime polluting countries, have boxed themselves in. They avoid reducing the carbon intensity of their industries out of fear for its economic fallout on ?development?, but end up paying dearly through their own pockets for ecological mishaps.
China, the world?s number one carbon emitter in absolute terms, is realising belatedly that it too has fallen into this trap. In February, it released excerpts of its first ever environmental census, acknowledging that water pollution in the country was twice as bad as had been hitherto stated. This week?s emergency measures announced in Beijing to shut down 2,087 steel mills, cement plants, paper and leather works for gross energy inefficiency come on the heels of new government studies pointing to a losing battle to preserve air quality in urban settings. For once, the costs of clean-ups and healthcare related to pollution and environmental accidents outweighed the benefits of keeping these selected smoke-happy factories open.
But do world leaders and publics, which opinion polls suggest to have downgraded climate change as a concern due to the pressing exigencies of joblessness and wobbly economic forecasts, need rude jolts like Russian wildfires to wake up and arrest the slide in the environment?
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the forest fire epidemic has forced the long-prevaricating Kremlin to ?abruptly embrace climate change?. One hopes that other states convert quickly to play a positive role at the year-end Cancun climate change summit without first subjecting their own societies to ecological horrors like the one scalding Russia.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University