It may not have been on most people’s radar in the first shocking days of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, but the repercussions for the fight against climate change have quickly become clear, a critical ancillary aspect of the crisis. Russia’s role as a major supplier of oil and gas, and the objective of denying Russia the revenue and power that flow from this, have created a host of urgent questions. A central dilemma the world faces, and the one with the biggest impact on climate change, is the degree to which the response will spur investments — not only in Europe, but here in the U.S. — in fossil fuel technologies that will only contribute to immense long-term damage to our environment.
In the U.S., the Republican Party has jumped on the conjunction of this question and high gas prices (coupled with overall high inflation) to demand a huge expansion of domestic oil and gas production, while also claiming that any high prices right now are actually due to the Biden administration’s aggressive green energy policies. In other words, the GOP sees this crisis as an opportunity to renew its war in favor of big oil and against the stability of the planet’s ecosystems.
Such Republican pressure, coupled with the very real economic impact of the Russian invasion, in turn means that this crisis has created a crucial test for the Biden administration’s commitment to the fight against climate change. Though it’s far too early to know how things will play out, there are a few pieces of tentative good news on this front. First, there seems to be pretty broad understanding of the stakes, certainly among those involved with climate issues, but also within the Biden administration itself. According to The Washington Post,
Biden has personally expressed support for recasting the administration’s clean energy proposals as part of an attempt to move America away from its dependence on authoritarian petrostates, according to two people aware of the president’s thinking on the matter.
“That’ll mean tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations, and it will make America the world leader in manufacturing and exporting clean energy technologies of the future to countries all around the world,” Biden said Tuesday as he made a renewed push for investments in renewable energy. “This is the goal we should be racing toward.”
Let us hope this is more than just lip service to a good cause. I don’t think we can overstate how essential it is for the Biden administration to use this crisis to double down on the importance of a green energy revolution, not least because the near-term solutions do inevitably involve, at least in part, ensuring a steady supply of oil and gas for Europe, the U.S., and other nations around the globe. The reality is that fossil fuel price hikes and supply constraints have the potential to have real-world impacts on millions of people around the globe, who not only will pay higher prices for heating and transportation, but who will also be adversely affected by any resulting economic slowdowns. This is to say nothing of the suffering that would ensue if European households were unable to heat themselves during the cold weather of late winter and spring. Particularly after the battering the world’s economies have suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic, this is a very big deal. Yet the Biden administration must balance these short-term needs with the longer-term, existential goal of weaning the U.S., and the world, off of fossil fuels. Demonstrating this commitment at a time of crisis, and emphasizing the urgency of fighting climate change even in the face of immediate needs to keep fossil fuel supplies steady, is a balance that the Biden administration must get right if it wants to maintain public support for green energy policies and actually move the U.S. towards those goals. In fact, successfully navigating this moment will arguably strengthen the case for green energy in the long term, if the U.S. can demonstrate that climate goals need not be abandoned due to short-term demands.
Clearly the GOP and fossil fuel companies see a golden opportunity to blunt the momentum towards clean energy, bolstered as they are by the actual ongoing effects on fossil fuel supplies and prices due to the Russian invasion. But the critical flaw in their reasoning is that they’ve reverted to the discredited notion that climate change isn’t a serious threat to the world economy, political stability, and civilizational survival. It would be one thing if they presented the current moment as a one-time need to expand fossil fuel production — but as others have pointed out, that’s not how fossil fuel infrastructure works. New investments will require years of operation to pay for themselves, locking the U.S. and other countries into additional decades of planet-fouling energy production. Instead, the GOP betrays its anti-environmental animus by using the current crisis to argue that it somehow discredits the fight against climate change as a general proposition. This is a crazy, nihilistic position, rooted in the same anti-science, exploitative economic practices that have gotten us to this perilous climate moment to begin with. (It’s also worth pointing out that the world economy’s continued reliance on fossil fuels is a prime reason why Russia has been able to afford the weaponry and financial insulation that enabled its invasion of Ukraine in the first place.)
If anything, this is an opportunity for the Biden administration and others to play offense at promoting a green energy economy. For instance, a great idea floated by climate activist Bill McKibben has now been echoed by White House advisors: the United States could mass produce heat pumps, perhaps under the auspices of the Defense Production Act, and export them to Europe to compensate for any gas supply constraints or shut-offs. This sort of two-in-one move is exactly the sort of policy the White House should be pursuing as part of the solution to the current energy conundrum — it advances climate protection while also helping mitigate the immediate energy crisis.
McKibben also suggests that individual Americans can do their part to both help Ukraine and fight climate change by instituting ride-share and limited-driving practices to reduce oil use and the indirect flow of dollars to fund the Russian war machine. Whether or not this particular idea catches on, it’s a reminder that we need to keep building society-wide pressure in favor of climate action, and find ways that people can make an impact even as green energy legislation remains stalled in Congress by Republican and conservative Democratic opposition. The likelihood of forcing political action only increases when people make green choices in their daily lives, exposing pro-fossil fuel politicians as the anti-science extremists that they are.