The Economist UK - 21.09.2019

The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019 41

1

F

irstcamefiresthatturnedtheSiberian

skiesintoa wallofsolidsmokestretch-

ing for thousands of kilometres. Then

camea droughtthatsuckedtheLenariver

nearlydry,leavingboatsmaroonedinthe

mud.It hasbeenanarduoussummerinYa-

kutia,anicyrepublicinRussia’sfareast.

Addtothatthefactthattheregionalcapi-

tal,Yakutsk,standsuponthawingperma-

frostthatwarpsroadsandbuildings,and

climateinactionbecomeshardtodefend.

“I’velivedheremywholelife,I remember

whatthewinterusedtobelike,andwhat

it’slikenow,”saysSardanaAvksenteva,Ya-

kutsk’smayor.“Icanconfirmthatglobal

warming is a problem.”

Some 1,000km (600 miles) to the north,

on the republic’s Arctic coast, the dying

town of Tiksi would beg to differ. From its

frozen vantage-point, warming has been a

boon.Arcticseaiceisnowrecedingatan

alarming rate. In 1980 it covered 7.9m

squarekilometres(3msquaremiles)atits

summer minimum,whereaslast year it

dippedtoonly4.6m.SotheNorthernSea

Route(nsr) throughonce-impassablewa-

tershasemergedasa potentialglobalship-

pingartery.TheRussiangovernmenthas

pledged to direct some 735bn roubles

($11bn)overthenextsixyearstowardsits

development.Therouteholdsthepromise

of cutting delivery times between Asia and

Europe by weeks, compared with going by

the much longer Suez Canal route—with

Russia poised to take a healthy cut for help-

ing the cargo through. Tiksi has seen a new

military base go up. It is in the running for a

2.5bn-rouble port project.

This tension between catastrophe and

opportunity has shaped the contours of the

climate-change debate in the world’s

fourth-largest carbon-emitter. Russia has

signed but has not ratified the Paris agree-

ment, making it the only large emitter out-

side the pact (though President Donald

Trump has said he intends to withdraw

America from its strictures). It is not only

the world’s second-largest producer of oil

and gas combined, it also possesses ice-

locked coasts and a vast, underpopulated

hinterland which, some argue, could use

the boost brought by a few degrees of

warming. At an Arctic forum in 2017, Vladi-

mir Putin called climate change “a factor

that bolsters optimism”, adding that it

“provides more favourable conditions for

economic activity in this region”. He once

quipped that climate change would enable

Russians to spend less money on fur coats.

Yet the downsides are proving harder to

ignore, as Mr Putin himself acknowledged

at a g20 summit this summer. Russia is

warming more than twice as rapidly as the

Climatechange

A warmerRussia

MOSCOWANDYAKUTSK

Nobadthing,reckonsomeRussians,especiallyinfrozenSiberia

Europe

42 AnotherSpanishelectionbeckons

43 Italy’sDemocratssplit

43 Albania’snewNATO airbase

44 Germancoal

45 Charlemagne: The plight of the olive

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