It is a meteorologist who finds herself in spite of herself struck by a double news. She is a member of the IPCC, the group of UN climate experts, which released its latest report on Monday, but she is also Ukrainian, and still in Kiev.
Monday, February 28, during the last video meeting of the group of scientists, Svitlana Krakovska, 53, spoke from her apartment in the Ukrainian capital, with the sound of sirens in the background. Impossible not to hear, impossible to act as if nothing had happened. So, even if the IPCC regulations prohibit political comments, she broached the subject, in front of her colleagues, to explain that war and global warming are linked.
“The money that finances this aggression is directly linked to climate changeshe launched, since this money comes from fossil fuels, oil and gas. If we did not depend on these energies, Russia would not have the means to undertake this war”. Svitlana Krakovska specifies that reducing our consumption of oil and gas is therefore good for the planet and for reducing the omnipotence of the oil and gas companies which finance the war.
“If we didn’t depend on fossil fuels, [Russia] would not have money to make this aggression,” said Svitlana Krakovska, a Ukrainian meteorologist.
The link between climate change and the Russian invasion: https://t.co/6Ao9RV2dnT
—TIME (@TIME) March 1, 2022
Like her colleagues from 195 countries, Svitlana Krakovska, a scientific figure in her country, decorated by President Zelensky for her Arctic expeditions, fought to ensure that this new report from the IPCC was uncompromising and undiluted. She tells Bloomberg that she is sorry to see war eclipsing the message of science on the climate threat, because there is no more time to lose, the window of action is closing, global warming is going faster than expected, leading to repeated droughts, floods everywhere, including here in Europe.
Humanity is facing the greatest challenge in its history, “and we know that as a result, conflicts will increase, conflicts to appropriate water, forests, the last fertile soils, but if any large country today can seize his neighbor just because he decided to, well in the age of climate change we will have lost“Svitlana Krakovska said all this against the backdrop of a howling siren.”But there is still a positive pointshe confided to Time Magazine, what we are experiencing here in Ukraine proves is that people can unite, mobilize, and therefore it is possible to do so also for the climate and our planet.”