Russian fires prompt Kremlin to make u-turn and embrace climate change

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Fred Weir | The Christian Science Monitor

MOSCOW — Russia's heat wave, along with its disastrous fallout, finally may have persuaded the Kremlin to combat climate change.

Russian officials, who until now have resisted dramatic action out of fears it would dampen economic growth, lately have issued strong statements linking global warming to the emergency Russia is facing. Some hope the abrupt change of tune will result in more effective environmental policies, even after the smog dies down.

"There is no question that we need to get ahead of climate change," said Vladimir Slivyak, a co-chair of Ecodefense, a grassroots Russian environmental group. "This is a wake-up call."

The crisis, which seems to have taken the Kremlin by surprise, features a fierce and unremitting heat wave that's now well into its second month, a drought that's ruined as much as a third of the vitally important grain crop and a wave of seemingly uncontrollable wildfires that have blanketed half of European Russia, including the capital Moscow, in a cloud of smoke.

Russia's state meteorological service said smog conditions in Moscow have eased from a Saturday peak, but the Ministry of Emergency Services warned that Moscow-region fires have tripled size in the past week, spreading from 65 to 210 hectares. Meanwhile, an average of 700 people are dying per day in Moscow, double the average rate, which health officials blamed on the smog.

"Our country has not experienced such a heat wave in the last 50 or even 100 years," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last week in a speech published in English on the Kremlin's website. "We need to learn our lessons from what has happened, and from the unprecedented heat wave that we have faced this summer.

"Everyone is talking about climate change now," he continued. "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past."

Those are arguably the strongest words about climate change that a Kremlin leader has ever delivered to a domestic audience.

Moscow has taken a strong rhetorical stand at international meetings since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin threw Russia's support behind the Kyoto climate change treaty six years ago, when he was president.

At home last year, however, Medvedev said Russia probably would be generating 30 percent more carbon dioxide by 2020, in line with the country's rapid industrial "modernization" program, and added that, "We will not let anyone cut our development potential."

Kremlin leaders also have suggested that climate change might turn out to Russia's benefit, for example in the race for natural resources previously trapped beneath the melting Arctic icecap, or by opening a new northeast navigation channel from Asia to Europe across the top of Siberia.

"This same president (Medvedev) recently told an audience in Siberia that Russia didn't need to restrict its carbon emissions, that it hampered our development and was a scheme that favored Western countries," said Slivyak, who noted that the Kremlin's official Climate Doctrine, prepared for the Russian delegation to last December's Copenhagen conference on climate change, had no practical guide to action.

"Until this crisis, the official view of climate change was ambivalent," he said. "Now we hear many officials talking about it as the cause of what's happening, and that's progress. But I fear that once the emergency has passed, they will forget all about it."

Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Center in Moscow agreed that the traditional laxity of Russian officialdom is likely to squelch the impulse to take long-term measures once the present crisis has abated.

One painfully relevant precedent, he says, is what happened after the peat bogs surrounding Moscow caught fire in 1972, suffocating the city under a similar blanket of smog for many days. In the wake of that disaster, Soviet authorities acknowledged that their policy of draining marshes in order to harvest peat for fuel was to blame, and they pledged to take steps to avoid any repetition.

"Those same peat bogs are burning today, with the same terrible consequences, because Soviet leaders let it go," Petrov said. "Although the problem in 1972 was relatively simple and easily solvable, they set it aside as soon as the immediate trouble passed. Today the threat is long-term and complex, and it will require major policy and behavioral changes. I wouldn't bet that this change of official mood will last long."

Weir is a Christian Science Monitor correspondent.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Just more proof this is nothing but a commie plot to rule the world.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Just more proof this is nothing but a commie plot to rule the world.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Someone has to pick up where Al Gore (the rapist) left off. Why not a former KGB agent? Seems like an appropo choice to run the "Global warming hoax" and the legislation to "prevent global warming".

Have you ever been to the FSU? They are ecologically a disaster and have been for decades. Flying into Donetsk is like descending into Dante's inferno...on a good day.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Someone has to pick up where Al Gore (the rapist) left off. Why not a former KGB agent? Seems like an appropo choice to run the "Global warming hoax" and the legislation to "prevent global warming".

Have you ever been to the FSU? They are ecologically a disaster and have been for decades. Flying into Donetsk is like descending into Dante's inferno...on a good day.

Yep. It is interesting to watch the Progressives so easily embrace the FSU struggling to regain their former glory.

[slim 1,528]

"I wouldn't bet that this change of official mood will last long."

Me neither. In Russia, if something happens, they deal with it and move on. Moving on doesn't mean preventing it from happening again... it means moving on.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[lostinblue 1,989]

Monsanto to Make Drought-Resistant WheatBy Chad Garrison, Thu., Jul. 8 2010

America: For amber shades of (genetically modified, drought-resistant) grain.

St. Louis-based Monsanto announced this week that it is teaming with German-based BASF to create a drought-resistant wheat.

The two biotech firms already partner together on similar seed strains for corn, soy, cotton and canola. The first of those products -- drought-resistant corn -- is scheduled to hit farms in 2012, pending regulatory approval.

Monsanto says the need for greater wheat supplies is likely to increase as developing countries such as China and India become more affluent and increasingly add bread to their traditional rice-based diets.

The drought-resistant wheat will be first introduced on North American and Australian markets in 2020. As their name implies, drought-resistant crops are able to thrive during periods of little rain. Monsanto says that in tests its drought-resistant corn increased yields of by roughly 7 to 10 bushels per acre.

Looks like Monsanto will have a customer in russia next year.

Edited August 10, 2010 by lostinblue

[slim 1,528]

Looks like Monsanto will have a customer in russia next year.

Russians aren't real big on corn. They grow it, but not a lot. More like a garden variety vegetable. Says they'll have to wait till 2020 for wheat. I don't know if they have that long.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Russians aren't real big on corn. They grow it, but not a lot. More like a garden variety vegetable. Says they'll have to wait till 2020 for wheat. I don't know if they have that long.

From a 2005 report

As of May 11, 0.48 million hectares of corn had been planted against 0.64 million by the same date last year. Planting typically continues into early June. The Ministry of Agriculture forecasts that approximately 1.0 million hectares of corn will be planted for 2005/06, up about 10 percent from last year. Local agricultural officials in southern Russia indicate that demand for corn is high and that neither the current low prices nor the spring planting delays will affect planted area; farmers will plant shorter-season varieties to compensate for possible late planting. Some commodity analysts in Moscow, however, think that area is unlikely to reach the million-hectare target, citing weak demand and last year's huge Ukrainian corn harvest. The USDA May 2005/06 estimates place corn production at 2.2 million tons (down from last year's harvest of 3.5 million, the highest corn crop since 1989/90) from harvested area of 0.8 (0.9) million hectares. Russian corn production is marked by wild year-to-year swings, due in part to the fact that southern Russia, where most of the corn is grown, is subject to frequent drought. In extremely dry years, up to 35 percent of the corn planted for grain (as opposed to corn planted specifically for silage) is not harvested, but instead is either cut for silage in August or simply left standing in the field due to low potential yield.

[lostinblue 1,989]

[slim 1,528]

The USDA May 2005/06 estimates place corn production at 2.2 million tons

The USDA May 2005/06 estimates place Russian wheat production at 45.0 million tons. Like I said... they're not that big on corn.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

yay, more liberal idiocy on 'greenhouse gases' causing climate change.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

yay, more liberal idiocy on 'greenhouse gases' causing climate change.

Why werent these fires predicted by science?

[slim 1,528]

These fires happen every year. What they didn't expect was for them to get so out of hand. It seems like they've had HUGE fires before but they just didn't record the ferocity of them. A "big" fire in 1045 doesn't bode the same as a big fire in 1965.