Bizarrely Russia may yet slow the trainwreck in Paris. The irony — the former communist state may be the one to thwart the ambitions of the freeloading global bureaucracy. We can’t relax though, because like the Chinese, Putin will have a price and if the equation changes so that Russia gains an advantage over the West (through generous exemptions or credits or some other trade deal) he’ll pay lip-service to the Climate extremists.
Putin calls climate change a “fraud” :
[NY Times (Reuters)] Russia’s official view appears to have changed little since 2003, when Putin told an international climate conference that warmer temperatures would mean Russians “spend less on fur coats” while “agricultural specialists say our grain production will increase, and thank God for that”.
The president believes that “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia,” says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and critic of Putin. “That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general.”
Putin’s scepticism dates from the early 2000s, when his staff “did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate”, said Andrey Illarionov, Putin’s senior economic adviser at the time and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington.
“We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited,” he said. “It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”
Who wants more cooling in Russia anyway:
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 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.” — Michael Bastach, Newsbusters
The gullible journalists at the New York Times wrote this up thinking they are highlighting the poor state of journalism in Russia and how it largely ignores the Western fetish for invoking Industrial factors as Weather Gods. Instead, on some topics the Russian media is just telling it like it is. The economic screws are tight in Russia, and there is no time for frivolous fantasies about controlling the weather. Russians know that fires are caused by fuel loads and arsonists, not by car exhaust and air conditioners.
Galina Timchenko, former editor-in-chief of news site Lenta.ru, lays it out: “Unfortunately climate change is not very interesting to the public,” she says.
Note that the Russians are offering “Media-Ready” targets which are as meaningless as the Chinese.
In suggesting a reduction in its emissions to “70 to 75 percent” of 1990 levels by 2030, Moscow is actually proposing an increase from 2012 levels. Russian emissions are currently far below the levels produced by obsolescent ex-Soviet smokestack industries in 1990.
Even that offer is hedged. Russia has said reaching the target will require generous accounting for the role Russia’s forests play in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
So when the Russian targets get rewritten as “helping” to prevent climate change remember that, like China, Russia is still increasing CO2 emissions and they have no intention of winding them back.
h/t Albert, Daily Caller