The example of a boiling frog is often used to explain how we ignore the impact of climate change until it is too late to solve the problem. Climate change goals always seem to have a 20 to 30-year time frame. The war in Ukraine and the danger of being dependent on Russian oil have made countries speed up the transition in a much shorter time frame. Giving Russia 20 or 30 more years to sell the world its oil and gas now means supporting their efforts to control other countries through invasion. Climate change now has an urgency that goes beyond cleaning up the environment. Putin's miscalculation might be the best thing for the climate change effort. Talk about unintended consequences. Thank you Putin?
P.S.
Unfortunately, the fact that the United States, a fossil fuels producer, doesn't have the same urgency as European countries in making this rapid adjustment. Advocates for the fossil fuel industry in the States have even been using the war in Ukraine as a way to try and increase our drilling of oil and gas. Those advocates always point to the need to use fossil fuels during an extended transition time to other energy sources. They want us to ignore the consequences of extending the transition timeframe so that they can squeeze out their profits from their valuable oil and gas reserves. Thanks to the development of low-cost solar panels developed by China and other countries the panels are now more cost-effective than other sources of power. I hate to think what a current Trump administration would be doing now to increase the drilling of more polluting energy sources.
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