“If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal?” Greta Thunberg raised these questions during a TED talk speech in 2018.
Greta could send Vladimir Putin a thank-you card for supplying one of the answers.
Putin’s Ukraine invasion was unprovoked and unjust. However, it was neither sudden nor clandestine but marinated over the years in the open because nothing detrimental had happened to Russia or Putin after the Crimea annexation eight years ago. Ironically, the next American president was extra-nice and respectful to Putin, as if the Russian had done America a big favor.
Rex Tillerson, as ExxonMobil CEO, had made Russia and its president richer by betting billions on Russia’s vast but notoriously elusive fossil fuels. A pleased Putin in 2013 conferred on him the Order of Friendship, one of the highest honors Russia gives to foreigners. Trump made Tillerson his secretary of state.
After his days in office, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder continued to be a lobbyist for Russia’s fossil fuels.
Today, the Russian military is killing innocent Ukrainians in their homes because Putin’s aggression over the years has not cost him dearly, instead earning him powerful admirers and kowtowers.
What happened as a result of the assault on Ukraine? Gas prices soared, and oil hit $105 a barrel — the average price in 2020 was $42 and $70 in 2021 — in the aftermath of the full-blown, predawn attack Feb. 24. Was this cost escalation a surprise to Putin or the 90 corporations responsible for an estimated two-thirds of all heat-trapping gas emissions since 1880?
“Unsurprisingly, the companies most responsible for climate change include Saudi Aramco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Gazprom and National Iranian Oil Co. — companies spread across the Middle East, Europe, Russia and the United States,” as Atula Gupta recently wrote in Stacker. “Coal, oil, and natural gas are produced by 83 of these companies. … The top emitter was China’s state-owned coal and cement production company.”
Why did the world and the institutions put in place after World War II fail to check the rise of another Adolf Hitler in Putin? Especially the West, which has enough reasons to watch this beast with care. Russia’s pretext for attacking Ukraine is the same as was Germany’s in 1939. “The Nazi leader used similar tactics to dismember and devour Czechoslovakia before World War II,” opines Michael E. Ruane in The Washington Post.
Why has he gone unchecked for so long? Think fossil fuels.
“In recent years, the European Union has received nearly 40 percent of its gas and more than a quarter of its oil from Russia,” wrote Patricia Cohen and Stanley Reed in The New York Times. “That energy heats Europe’s homes, powers its factories and fuels its vehicles, while pumping enormous sums of money into the Russian economy. European leaders are caught between wanting to punish Russia for its aggression and to protect their own economies.”
Putin, “the new tsar,” as former Estonian President Toomas Ilves calls him, flagrantly threatened the whole world: “Whoever tries to interfere (in Ukraine) should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history.” That’s how a tyrant addresses the world.
Ukraine’s functioning democracy is a threat to Putin’s style of autocratic administration. Also, Ukraine is one of the major routes for Russian gas flowing to Europe. Putin wouldn’t like to rely on anyone he can’t completely control and manipulate, as he does a few other erstwhile Soviet republics.
Conflicts over fossil fuels aren’t privy to any geography. The fighting for access to these climate-changing greenhouse gases has set the whole planet aflame. Ukraine is the most recent addition to the existing list of countries like Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan and those in the East and South China Seas.
If you think that fossil fuels and the big oil companies have outsized influence only in these developing countries, think again. Remember the lone coal state Democratic senator repeatedly defeating the current U.S. administration’s environmentally friendly initiatives? Is he not imperiling the futures of millions and pushing America towards more pain and suffering?
Those in this country who remain under the control of the fossil fuel industry may not be invading another nation, but they certainly are not doing much to save their own.
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This column was published online by https://baytobaynews.com/ on March 05, 2022.
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