Some mornings over the past few weeks I have looked out the window to see cloud-thick mist spread across the landscape. It is impossible to see the hills across the river. The earth is trying to adjust to the vagaries of approaching spring — though confirmed by the calendar, the new season is still subject to days and nights tangled up in snowy rain and thaw and chill and soils waiting to exhale.
I look through the windows of my mind and see clouds of dust and debris being blown into the air by missiles and weapons of mass despair in Ukraine and our hearts. These clouds do not presage spring but the possibility of nuclear winter. If we are honest, our own democracy is showing signs of freezer burn from Congress to local legislatures and school committees to the Supreme Court. It is difficult to see signs of new growth and vigor.
But wait. Way off in the distance there is a flickering light. Could it be that Putin has become an unlikely ally in the urgent effort to roll back climate change? Perhaps Putin’s unconscionable acts of aggression can break the petroleum choke hold that Russia has held over Europe. Perhaps the sheer starkness of this naked contempt for democratic nations will hasten the transition that has been only halfheartedly engaged until now. Never in my lifetime have so many nations taken such wide-ranging financial action for a common political purpose so swiftly. Sanctions have been far-reaching, multi-layered and even bold. The first round has been followed by additional decisions. Some countries have gone farther, like Poland, declaring a plan to eliminate their need for Russian oil by the end of this year. With bombs threatening the Ukraine electric grid, the planned connection of Ukraine and Moldova to the European grid, which had been expected to take two years, was accomplished in two weeks. Biden has just announced significant new funding to insulate tens of thousands of homes. He has also announced new fuel standards to stretch each gallon of gas.
Some actions, of course, cut both ways. The decision to release significant amounts of oil from the strategic reserves held by the U.S. and other nations is meant to stymie Russian gas and oil sales and reduce costs at the gas station; it could also blunt urgency about the need to transition away from combustion engines altogether. Similarly, use of federal power to increase production of rare minerals for batteries and electric vehicles could cause undesired effects from mining even as we attempt to gain greater independence and greater control of timelines to implement an electrical transition. Caution is required.
With vigilance, these strategies could hasten the shift from our reliance on gas and oil in a major way. Watching the leaders of NATO countries and allies these past few weeks, there is no doubt that we have the capability to launch a forceful world-wide push to replace oil with renewables and halt the trajectory of the climate crisis that threatens the earth just as surely as Russian tanks and missiles are demolishing Ukrainian cities and towns. If we applied that same coordinated and urgent action to building wind and solar, implementing conservation widely, replanting forests, electrifying everything with higher efficiency systems, and adopting climate-safe methods for transportation, housing, agriculture, manufacturing and communication, the transition could come far more quickly than current pledges have imagined, as we urgently need to do. The United Nations has just issued another alarming report on our climate condition. “The science has been evermore consistent and evermore clear,” says Inger Anderson, Director of the UN Environment Program.” What’s needed now, she asserts, is “political courage.” “This is what it will take — the ability to look beyond current interests.”
There are plenty of other fires burning — on Capitol Hill, at the Supreme Court, in the forests of Colorado, in the Amazon. They all bear watching. The smoke and mists from all these conflicts make it hard to see where we are going, much less to navigate a bold and trailblazing path. But hope could be flickering ahead, if only we are as brave and determined as the Ukrainian people and seize the moment that strife and tragedy are offering.
Judy Wagner lives in Northfield.