WP: Ukraine War Helps with “Communicating the Need for [Climate] Sacrifice”

Essay by Eric Worrall

According to the Washington Post, people who have accepted austerity to defeat Russian aggression are more likely to also accept “sleeping colder in the winters to flying less and paying more when you do” to combat climate change.

Fighting Putin Comes Before Climate Change

By Andreas Kluth | Bloomberg
Today at 3:05 a.m. EDT

On the day Russia launched its all-out attack on Ukraine, Svitlana Krakovska was holed up in her home city of Kyiv, working feverishly to finish a report. As leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she and scientists around the world were dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of their sixth assessment of global warming and its threats to humanity. 

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The IPCC report was released a few days later nonetheless. In normal times, these tomes make headlines all over the world. This one would have set records, because it’s the most dismal read yet in a genre that was plenty dire already. Humanity, it suggests, will probably miss its goals of limiting the rise in global temperatures and enter an age of calamities. But, of course, these aren’t normal times, and the message was muffled in a news cycle dominated by shooting and dying. 

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But even as we manage the acute emergency, we must also prepare to exit from it. Yes, we can talk now about temporary rebates for gasoline or heating oil to the poor. But our goal must be to return as soon as possible to letting carbon become gradually more expensive over time — via cap-and-trade systems and such — so that people get used to consuming less of it. 

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The new reality is that we have to go all the way to universal electrification even faster, powered by 100% renewable energy with green hydrogen filling the gaps. Countries that have so far dabbled in building out photovoltaics, wind farms, smart grids and other parts of the puzzle must double down as though life depended on it. It probably does.

The only glimmer of hope is that Putin may have inadvertently simplified the politics of such a global quest. Convincing voters requires communicating the need for sacrifice — from sleeping colder in the winters to flying less and paying more when you do. But now politicians can make that case in two ways — as necessary to fight both Russian aggression and climate change. Those on the front lines of both struggles, like Svitlana Krakovska, remind us that they’re equally urgent.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/fighting-putin-comesbefore-climate-change/2022/03/28/1d1f89cc-ae5d-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html

Naturally the proposed austerity measures will only apply to the peasants. The climate elite will continue to enjoy a life of taxpayer funded trips to exotic holiday destinations, like this year’s “conference of the parties” in Sharm el-Sheik.