Or that everything is for the strategic security of Russia, when it would be much safer without a president with enough power without counterweights to drag it to exponential impoverishment in a military adventure. Meanwhile, she blocks Facebook and Twitter and threatens with 15 years in prison those who deviate from the state narrative of her, not war, but “special military operation.”
However, due to so many calamities, war conflicts also tend to bring out the best in people and peoples: acts of union, heroism, compassion, nobility, generosity and also ingenuity. They can activate or accelerate innovations and changes that ultimately drive revolutionary advances. Not only technological, but even political. Now it shouldn’t be any different either, especially since there are urgent changes and innovations, beyond the tragedy in Ukraine.
In World War II, in the effort to crack German encryption with the work of mathematicians such as Alan Turing, fundamental advances were made for what would become computing and now artificial intelligence. The cataclysm gave rise to the atomic bomb, but also to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Now we have seen the dignity of a people that resists the power with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. To a former comedian who as president of an invaded country grows in value with an inspiring leadership for the people of him and the world. The civil courage of so many Russians who are protesting despite the repression. These are attitudes that, as the editors of The Economistleave perplexed dictators and abusers who make calculations from arrogance.
It is tragic that the world has not yet come out of a pandemic of millions of deaths and a terrible economic recession and now this is coming. Worse yet, with climate change on top. However, the situation could be an incentive to advance faster in key areas such as the transition to clean energy, as well as renewed citizen activism to contain abuses of power or technological entrepreneurship against manipulation and disinformation.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, unfortunately overshadowed in its warnings by the Russian invasion, documents that the damage takes shape faster than the ability to adapt. They are happening right now: the effects of droughts, storms, and floods are already generating millions of displaced people and leaving many others at risk of hunger, malnutrition, and disease.
Scientists estimate that, as we go, we will reach a 2-3 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial levels, crossing the 1.5 red line soon, even before 2030. At 2 degrees, up to 3 billion would face chronic water shortages; with 3 degrees, about 30% of plant and animal species will be on the verge of extinction. As that ticking time bomb ticks, Putin intimidates with a nuclear showdown if other powers meddle in his plans.
Not for nothing, the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, described the IPCC report as a sentence condemning a failed leadership in the face of the climate challenge.
However, the conflict can reinvigorate that fight. Input, to green deal European, due to the need to reduce dependence on Russian gas, with a recovered unity as a result of the threat. The energy transition to clean sources, investment in green hydrogen infrastructure, and efficiency policies and innovation could be accelerated.
Added to the climate urgency is that of energy security. For now, it was revealed that Germany is preparing a plan for 100% of its electricity to come from renewable sources by 2035 and its finance minister refers to them as “the energy of freedom”.