Ukraine War ‘Absolutely Accelerating’ End of Fossil Fuels
Frances Martel
Far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the audience at a climate change event on Tuesday that he believed the escalation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “accelerating” the “energy transition” away from fossil fuels and towards a zero-carbon electric grid.
Trudeau asserted that Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and natural gas clearly endangered the continent and positions countries like Canada, with its own abundant natural resources, to usurp the dominance that tyrannies like Russia and China have taken in both fossil fuels and industries such as rare-earth metals, used for many of the products necessary for a “green” economy.
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a year before Trudeau became prime minister, and colonized its Crimean peninsula. The world reacted to the first eight years of war in Ukraine with marked apathy before this February, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced a “special operation” to “liberate” the entire country from “Nazism.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has vehemently denied that he and his government, once derided as “pro-Russian,” was “Nazi” and regularly urges the world to fund and arm Kyiv.
After the Ukraine war became a popular conversation topic in February, Trudeau became one of Zelensky’s most vocal supporters, visiting Ukraine himself in May.
Elsewhere in the climate conversation on Tuesday – held at the Canadian Climate Institute – Trudeau insisted that the idea that climate change is both real and a matter to be dealt with through heavy-handed government intervention was “no longer a political debate” in Canada and lamented that climate believers spent “a lot of time talking about … the challenge of fighting climate change” without highlighting “the opportunities.”
Trudeau made the remarks in a discussion hosted by Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi, host of the “Zero” podcast.