If you’re worried about Russia, embrace net zero
By Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, former UN climate envoy
This weekend security experts and political leaders will gather for the annual Munich Security Conference. It is a moment of heightened insecurity with Putin’s strategy to instigate chaos intensifying its focus on Ukraine.
This security crisis comes at a time of rising tension between China and the US, the EU and the UK continuing to sort out the details of their divorce, energy price volatility, economic dislocation and a halting global response to a pandemic.
“I fear the emergence of what I would call the twilight of shared values,” António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said earlier this year, echoing fears on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2007 Vladimir Putin used the Munich meeting to warn against what Nato expansion and — perhaps ironically given recent events — an “uncontained hyperuse of force”. In recent years world leaders from Joe Biden to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, have used the meeting to make their case for a new world order.
“Traditional certainties are crumbling, threats and vulnerabilities are multiplying,” writes Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany’s former ambassador to the UK and US, now chairman of the security conference. This weekend the focus will, undoubtedly, be on the Russia-Ukraine crisis. But we can also expect a deepening conversation about energy supplies, which have in part brought us to this moment of vulnerability.
European leaders have long known that reliance on gas pumped from Russia leaves the continent, including the UK, vulnerable to pressure from Moscow, which as a leading gas exporter through the state-owned gas firm Gazprom, has its finger on global prices. Gas prices are set in international markets, so even if fracking in the UK were feasible or desirable, which it is not, it would have done little to help now.
Our vulnerability stems not from a lack of domestic gas, but rather from our gas habit: Fatih Birol, of the International Energy Agency, is blunt on the causes and solutions to the energy crisis we face. “Well managed clean energy transitions can help manage market volatility,” he argued last month. Hence this weekend we’re likely to see a sustained and co-ordinated push for countries to accelerate the green transition, diversify energy supply and cut reliance on Russia and other kleptocratic oil regimes.
In recent days, a small group of Tory MPs, with ties to the oil and gas industry funded climate sceptic think tanks, have tried to set off a panic about commitments to net zero. Far from being risky, net zero is the EU and UK’s best bet to regain control of their energy security.
As new analysis from Carbon Brief illustrates, the costs of wind and solar have collapsed in the past decade, as has the price of storage, and continue to fall, undercutting coal and gas. Renewables are the ladder out of this mess: they are cheaper, can drive jobs, cut the costs of living and they remove dependence on Putin.
Other security headaches, exacerbated and intensified by climate change, will also be on the agenda in Munich. Analysts tracking global food prices and migration flows are increasingly concerned at the scale of climate impacts and implications for countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Migration flows swelling cities which are dealing with compound impacts of extreme heat, water and food price increases and shortages will become an increasing feature of potential instability. Famine in Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan defy a proportionate response from the international community.
Against this backdrop, the UN’s IPCC climate science panel is due to report at the end of this month detailing its findings on the climate-linked droughts, heatwaves and storms disrupting lives. It’s a bleak scenario that has engaged security analysts at the UN, US, Nato and beyond for some time — yet many fear tipping points are edging closer.
To quote the late Margaret Thatcher, “reason is humanity’s special gift.” As storm clouds gather over Europe, there is still reason to believe leaders understand that net zero is, quite simply, the most secure growth strategy we have in the 2020s. Affordable energy bills, greater energy security, cleaner air, a stable planet for billions to thrive on. This is no time for turning.
This piece is re-published from The Times.