Ukraine has used the Cop27 climate talks to argue that Russian aggression has caused environmental and humanitarian catastrophe, with fossil fuels being a major catalyst for the country’s destruction.
Ukraine sent 20 senior officials to a summit in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the war Russia started in February, rising energy costs due to Russia’s position as a major gas supplier, and I explained my relationship with the earth. A heating emission emitted by an attack.
Ukraine’s Deputy Environment Minister Svitlana Grinchuk said heavy shelling and the movement of troops and tanks polluted the air, water and land, killed thousands and destroyed the country’s economy. She added that one-fifth of her protected areas in Ukraine had been destroyed by the war, costing her €11.4 billion (£10 billion) in damages from contamination of previously fertile soil alone. .
“This is not just war, it is state terrorism and ecocide,” Grinchuk said. “Invasions have killed wildlife, caused pollution, and destabilized society. Terrorist states continue to send missiles to our power plants. It has been.”
War causes emissions, and so does its aftermath. Ukraine estimates that rebuilding shattered towns, cities and industries will emit nearly 50 million tons of carbon dioxide. “Military emissions in peacetime and wartime are related and material,” said climate economist Axel Michelova, who studies wartime pollution. “The emissions are comparable to the emissions of the entire country.”
The Ukrainian government’s priority is to mobilize international support to expel Russia from its territory. There can be no effective climate policy.”
But Ukraine is also touting its enthusiasm for a rapid transition to renewable energy, ditching the yoke of Russia’s fossil fuel dominance, where President Vladimir Putin has used gas as a pressure point against Ukraine’s European allies. This stance was endorsed at Cop27 by US special envoy for climate John Kerry, who said US and European leaders were “absolutely committed to accelerating the transition to clean energy.” I am confident in the
The sombre pavilion Ukraine has set up in Sharm el-Sheikh looks more like a gray war memorial than the colorful displays other countries have put up for their 30,000 delegates at the conference.
The walls are adorned with various soil samples that were thrown into the air when Russian bombs hit the ground. The exhibit shows a chunk of bullet-riddled oak tree from Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, where a Russian military offensive caused a dam to burst, flooding houses, forests and meadows. It is said that
Svitlana Krakowska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, said not only did fossil fuels help fund Putin’s weapons of war, but reliance on oil and gas is at the mercy of nations’ soaring energy and food costs. He said that there is a growing understanding that
Krakowska, who was working on the United Nations’ important climate report when the war broke out, now has to endure power outages of about 12 hours a day. In Kyiv, the cause is a relentless barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks targeting civilian infrastructure such as power and water.
In October, a missile landed near her house and shattered the windows of nearby buildings. I warned you that you might have to.
“My children have to go to school in the basement. It is not fun to spend time there. There is no heating, no lighting. I was.
“It’s hard to be in Kyiv in this situation. It’s a lot of pressure and stress. I was worried about
Krakowska said it would be difficult to leave Kyiv and go to Egypt. While she is with her daughter, she is terrified of planes flying over her head, but is determined to emphasize the message that Ukraine is a victim of the fossil fuel war.
“It’s hard to talk about the transition to an environment now that winter is coming and people have nothing to warm themselves with,” she said. , we all need to be aware of our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to think about energy independence from fossil fuels, not only in Russia, the most reliable source of energy is the sun, and we must be used.”
Krakowska said the forests she studied for climate impacts were torn apart by bombs, and farmlands are now riddled with landmines. This damage, she argues, is similar to the destruction inflicted on developing countries by hurricanes, floods, and other climate impacts caused by global warming.
“Of course, the types of destruction are different, but fossil fuels have caused climate change, which has caused this war,” she said. “Russia has destroyed our way of life and destroyed our environment.
“But there is no doubt that fossil fuels will find a way to become a thing of the past. Fossil fuels will become real fossils. Left in the ground where they belong.”
