Russia and the U.S. Could Be Partners in Climate Change Inaction

Russian President Vladimir Putin, shaking hands with then
 Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson during a 2013
 ceremony awarding oil company heads and employees,
 now finds himself aligned philosophically with the U.S.
on a lack of enthusiasm for the Paris climate agreement.

As Donald Trump pushes the United States toward inaction on climate change, he is likely to find an ally in Russia.

Russia is the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Yet the plan it submitted under the Paris agreement to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is one of the weakest of any government and actually permits Russia to increase carbon pollution over time. 

The Paris agreement went into effect last November, but Russia is the only major emitter that has not ratified it. Instead, it has laid out a timetable that would delay ratification for almost three years.

"Russia will not artificially accelerate the process of ratification of the Paris climate agreement," Russia's special presidential representative on climate, Alexander Bedritsky, said last September.

A new alignment between Russia and a friendlier United States under Trump could slow climate action even more.  Trump denies global warming more nakedly than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pivoted from years of downplaying climate change to calling it a grave threat in 2015, but has done little to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. 

Russia's sluggishness on climate could bolster the Trump team's plans to abandon climate action, and vice versa.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Russia and the U.S. Could Be Partners in Climate Change Inaction.”

Donald Trump picks Rex Tillerson, Exxon CEO, as Secretary of State

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has close
 ties with Russia and is believed to be
the Trump's pick for US Secretary of State.

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump on Monday settled on Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be his secretary of state, dismissing bipartisan concerns that the globe-trotting leader of the energy giant had forged a with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, transition officials said.

Trump planned to announce the selection on Tuesday morning, finally bringing to an end his public and chaotic deliberations over choosing the nation's top diplomat - a process that at times veered from rewarding Rudy Giuliani, one of his most loyal supporters, to musing about whether Mitt Romney, one of his most vicious critics, might be forgiven.

Read the story by Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman in the Melbourne Age -  “Donald Trump picks Rex Tillerson, Exxon CEO, as Secretary of State."

(It seems this is like putting a drunk in charge of the liquor store – Robert McLean)

'Global warming is a fraud'- Vladimir Putin

R

ussian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a “fraud” — a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.

Putin believes “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia,” Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and Putin critic, told The New York Times.

“That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general,” Belkovsky said.

Putin has been casting doubt on man-made global warming since the early 2000s, according to the Times. In 2003, Putin told an international climate conference that warming would allow Russians to “spend less on fur coats,” adding that “agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that.”

Read Michael Bastasch’s story in the Cairns News - “Putin says global warming is a fraud”.

The obvious officially ignored, but unofficially it was everywhere

University of Melbourne’s
Associate Professor
Peter Christoff

What was obvious for most was officially ignored at Brisbane’s recent G20 Summit.

The world’s twenty most influential economies gathered at Brisbane to talk about growth when even those not paying attention must have realised that such discussions were intimately dependent upon a benign climate.

Save just one small paragraph, the final communique focussed almost entirely on growth, apparently blind to the complications inherent in driving for infinite growth on a finite planet.

Worsening this pointless rush for growth was the apparent ignorance, wilful or otherwise, that the much cherished growth is wholly dependent on the state of earth’s climate.

University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Peter Christoff wrote on “G20 Watch” about the “Dangerous separation of economics and climate persists”.

Dr Christoff, who teaches and researches climate politics and policy in the Department of Resource Management and Geography, said, “Attempts by Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott to keep climate change off the G20 agenda fizzed - like his much-hyped 'shirt-fronting' of Vladimir Putin, who ended up only wearing a docile koala”.

If a formal sense, climate change was kept well away from discussions, or so it appeared, but informally that appeared to be the focus of a whole event.