Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a military and an environmental disaster. A team of researchers has made an effort to measure the climate impacts of the first two years of the war initiated by Russia (Michael LePage, “Russia Faces a $32 Billion Climate Bill”, New Scientist, June 22, 2024). Vladimir Putin’s failed “special military operation” has now stretched into a protracted conflict, with horrendous consequences not only for the planet’s ecology but for the global community of nations. The latter should be briefly noted, for it, too, is sobering.
February 24, 2022, marked the first invasion of a sovereign country in Europe since the ambitions of Nazi Germany initiated World War II. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended the political ethic that had lasted for more than three-quarters of a century. It has also alienated Russia from its European neighbours and moved its economic and diplomatic loyalties eastwards towards a rogue North Korea and an ascendent China. This shift will change the geopolitical structure of the world for decades. Furthermore, Russia’s veto power on the Security Council of the United Nations has essentially disabled any semblance of a functioning international government that once arbitrated global agreements and principles.
With a rogue state in possession of such power, the world has become a more unruly place without the moderating influence of an international forum such as a credible United Nations. Russia has essentially said, by invading Ukraine, that it is no longer a member of the order that was so painfully earned by two world wars. Consequently, in most of the modern countries of the world, Russia has become a pariah state with a growing list of its leaders declared as criminals. And this list doesn’t mention the immeasurable suffering imposed on the 40 million Ukrainian people, 78% of whose families have been inflicted with some kind of profound trauma or loss.
This is exactly the time in human history when we least needed such a war. Global attention, now more than ever, requires a focus on an unfolding environmental crisis that will envelop every country on the planet, and may even threaten the structure of civilization as we know it. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only an outrageous affront to Ukraine, but a contemptuous gesture to the rest of the world that is trying to rescue the planet from an ecological catastrophe. Russia’s flagrant disregard for this process means that it is not only subverting this critically important process, but revealing its disregard for even these fundamental norms—precisely the kind of behaviour that it has been demonstrating with its bombing and shelling of civilian apartments, restaurants, malls, schools and hospitals. At this time in history, its actions are nothing less than barbarous.
Meanwhile, a group of Ukrainians, researching for an organization called the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War, have been trying to measure the actual climate impact of this war for the two year period since it began. They have calculated that the Russians are directly responsible for 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission equivalents valued at $32 billion—an amount calculated at the 2022 price of CO2 at $182 per tonne. Ukrainians hope to reclaim this amount as an element in the calculation of reparations for damage to buildings, roads and other infrastructure, but also for damage inflicted on the rest of the world. This $32 billion only accounts for carbon dioxide emissions.
The 175 MtCO2e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), according to the Ukrainian study, breaks down into six categories: 29% for the warfare itself: 13% for landscape fires; 10% for energy infrastructure; 2% for refugee travel; 14% for civil aviation (rerouted flights from Tokyo to London, for example, now have to travel over Canada rather than Russia, increasing travel time from 11 to 15 hours); and 32% for the production of carbon dioxide required in the reconstruction of damaged or destroyed buildings.
At a deeper level, however, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine creates a profound psychological and philosophical uncertainty about who we are as a species, about what blind ambition can do to upset social order, and about whether or not we human beings have ever learned anything from our turbulent history of rancour, bloodshed and wars. Clearly, some Russians are appalled and disgusted by this war, while others seem to have acquiesced to it with a disquieting passivity, ready to welcome the fiction of propaganda, eager to embrace differences rather than similarities, and willing to invent enemies where there were none. But many Russians are just too afraid to voice any opposition to the “special military operation”.
But fear can function at many levels. The more pervasive one is that we, as a species, cannot be trusted to behave with civility. And that is a fear that should haunt each and every one of us when we wake up each morning and venture into the affairs of the day.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should be a sobering experience for anyone who thinks and wonders and hopes, and who possesses a shred of optimism for the future of ourselves and our planet because, if this outrage can happen in the 21st century, then what else awaits us?
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Links of Interest:
- Other articles from the Quadra Project
- Other articles about, or mentioning, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine
Top image credit: Ukraine – Photo by Howard Duncan via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)