Kerry: Ukraine invasion underscores links between regional security and climate stability

Russia’s “illegal, unprovoked” and “cruel” war against Ukraine is underscoring the many different ways in which peace, security and a stable climate are linked, US climate envoy John Kerry says.

Kerry told an informal UN Security Council meeting on Climate Finance for Sustaining Peace that “the crisis in Ukraine really does underscore the risks that we face in the current volatile and uncertain energy markets.”

The US special presidential envoy for climate says in a virtual speech that “Russia has attacked a nuclear facility in Ukraine, dangerous in and of itself, risky.”

There is increasing concern over the safety of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant, which Russian troops seized early in the invasion and which lost power and had to revert to backup generators. And there is also concern about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe, which Russia seized last week.

The United States is responding by banning the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal, “and many other nations are now rethinking their reliance on Russian energy sources,” Kerry says. The “instability, conflict, death destruction” in Ukraine is happening in the context of “a global existential crisis” of global warming that scientists have warned about for decades, he says.

“We are actually living through the consequences of that crisis,” Kerry says.