Latest news on the Russian-Ukrainian war
The US president’s scathing remark about climate change came as about 2 million people have already fled Ukraine amid two weeks of intense Russian bombardment and artillery attacks on civilian targets.
A UN climate envoy, John Kerry, said Wednesday that US support to the Ukraine was the result of the “illegal, unprovoked” and “cruel” war between the United Nations and Russia.
“If you think migration has been a problem in Europe from the Syrian war — or even from what we see now [in Ukraine]— wait until you see 100 million people for whom the entire food production capacity has collapsed,” Kerry said Monday when addressing a Houston energy conference.
The United States is responding by banning imports of Russian oil, liquefied petroleum gas and coal, because many other nations are now reassessing their dependence on Russia’ s sources of energy, Kerry said.
In the days before last month’s invasion of Moscow, Kerry also said that he feared that the war would distract “big country attention” from the climate issue and that he hoped that an invasion by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, would share his concerns about the thawing SiBerian tundra.
“We favor production increases and will be encouraging OPEC to consider higher production levels,” the United Arab Emirates “ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba said in a statement released on his website.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Kerry said he were worried for the “people of Ukraine,” adding that the war “could have a profound negative impact on the climate, obviously.”
