Thread by @_ppmv

Ukraine may turn out to be the first climate-driven war in Europe. This IS climate statecraft. thread. 1/n

2/n The notion that it is only climate policy when 100+ nations sit in a circle and decide *by consensus* is profoundly strange. Always has been.

A serious failure of imagination in climate analysts and scientists.

3/ Rather, climate is at the heart of world affairs. Great thread on the climatization of security and the UNSC.

4/ @StefanAykut @LucileMaertens and many others have had a keen focus on these questions over the years. It's long been foreseeable and foreseen.

5/ How can a war for the breadbasket of Europe, which controls food security worldwide, not by climate driven? 🤷‍♂️

6/ This merits deeper analysis and research. Until we all begin to address these questions in public, we won't get the funding, public awareness and support needed to work on these questions at meaningful scale.

We'd better start fast.

7/ Like Big Oil since the 1970s and the U.S. since the 1980s, Russia and China now are perfectly aware of what's happening. Diplomacy is a tool of climate statecraft, but so is war. It's time to get serious in climate policy analysis. DM open.

good thread

8/ @TOClimates (+ @greenprofgreen) are very on message: understanding the international is key in climate and environmental policy—fields that have been dominated by economist and natural scientists far too long—, while understanding climate is key in IR.

9/ We are starting to lose patience. I'm rather pleased that anonymous went from "Expect us" to "It's too late to expect us" on Putin. For strange reasons, scientists seem to think that simplistic BAU analysis can capture climate change dynamics. Sorry.

10/ It's been troubling me for years that many, in all three circles (@StefanAykut ), have started to believe their own wishful thinking. Slick bullshit politics like "Build Back Better," "net zero" or "momentum" will do nothing against famine & mass death.

11/ In Berlin, @carla_hinrichs_ @AufstandLastGen ask whether the media understand that we face drought, multi-breadbasket failures, and global migration already THIS DECADE (0:30). (They don't.) @MuellerTadzio worries we'll lose climate focus over Ukraine.

@carla_hinrichs_ @AufstandLastGen @MuellerTadzio 12/ All of this is heart-breaking. Let me make a simple observation. Current protest forms may not build enough pressure to change climate policy. I expect sooner or later new actors will enter the game, and peaceful sabotage will escalate both cyber and critical infrastructures.

@carla_hinrichs_ @AufstandLastGen @MuellerTadzio 13/ As @xr_cambridge hints, historical luck has it that at least in recent history, most people who care about intergenerational and climate justice have been kind progressives who tend to stick themselves to windows and bridges rather than blow them up.

14/ If we have now entered an age of climate wars, how much longer will this historical luck hold?

15/ Beyond rational analysis, we need arts and empathy to rethink what holds us together and to rebuild the legal, socioeconomic and biophysical foundations of our lives. Time to build systems that don't self-combust within decades.

#BelmarshTribunal

16/ Climate and renewable energy pundits were quick to use Putin's war and Germany's embarrassing role (#NordStream2, #SWIFT) for shallow talking points that show no engagement with real-world events. Insist on deep analysis. By the way, 🤣👇

17/ These questions are not abstract. As @ProfSteveKeen says, capital without energy is a sculpture. Whether physical (in Ukraine/Russia) or online, disrupt logistics or blow up Russian fuel supplies. To save lives, tanks to sculptures. 🥳

18/ On strategy. Keen observers will have smiled, as I didn't even argue *that* Putin's war is climate-driven, aside a rhetorical question (#5). But I think it's too early to tell—also this is twitter shitposting, no report or op-ed. Why it matters though:

19/ There is a spectrum of views on climate risk in national security. I'm leaning more to one side (dense thread: ). But wherever on the spectrum decisionmakers are, this will be *upstream* of tactics & strategy, influencing how they interpret information.

20/ Why I share this with some urgency, even though these climate-security questions would deserve a team, years or real scholarship. We may face extreme risks in the coming weeks if Putin sees no way out, as @PaulArbair lays out in this meticulous thread.

@PaulArbair 21/ If the Russian government is privy to information on Arctic climate change that we are not, which drive their strategic objectives, or timeline, in ways we don't anticipate with the current Putin focus - we may be miscalculating.

22/ I will gladly eat my words when future historians figure out current perceptions were different. But public information known to anyone in the field paint a more urgent picture than I see reflected in most analysis. I wonder why. Hence, my 2 cents.

23/ Russian attack on RWD Radon near Kyiv: "Works & installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes & nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack," —@ICRC IHL rule 42 @TRodenhaeuser

ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/…

@ICRC @TRodenhaeuser 24/ As things escalate in space & cyberspace: I'm not sure what the status under ihl of hacktivists is. Non-military cyber combatants as unlawful combatants may be largely unprotected. @xxNB65 and #anonymous will know what risk to take; many others won't.

@ICRC @TRodenhaeuser @xxNB65 25/ Risk of 'wormhole escalation' (@rebeccahersman) between nuclear powers will increase as climate change enters calculations. This isn't Mr. Robot; hacktivists must act responsibly.

See this issue of IRRC.
international-review.icrc.org/articles/twent…
blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy…
tnsr.org/2020/07/wormho…