How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... risis.html

A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia. For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, including around Dimitrovo, have been temperate enough to offer workable soil. But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. Twenty years ago, Dima says, the spring thaw came in May, but now the ground is bare by April; rainstorms now come stronger and wetter. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.

[BritDownUnder]

Someone will win but with declining birth rates of ethnic Russians and the proximity of China with a huge population and Turkic Central Asian countries with high birth rates it may not be Russia itself. I hear the population of Moscow is already half Muslim. Tatars and Chechens outbreed Russians by two to one. Good article though and shows that Global warming will bring a few winners as well as many losers.

Link

Moscow has the largest Muslim community in Europe: about one million Muslim residents and up to 1.5 million Muslim migrant workers. Given demographic changes, Muslims will represent between one third (the most conservative estimate) and one half (the most generous estimate) of the Russian population by around 2050.

I am sure you like Russia, and I do too, to a degree having studied Russian language at school, but I get the impression they are alienating the West and making enemies of countries that should be their friends and trying to make friends with countries that are their enemies. They seem oblivious to the problem growing in their midst.

[RenewableCandy]

There is a vociferous far-right in Russia, and sadly this situation is grist to their mill.

[BritDownUnder]

There is a vociferous far-right in Russia, and sadly this situation is grist to their mill.

I don't really see a lot of far-right wing activity in Russia these days other than the Kremlin. From what I can find on the internet the main opposition to Putin is a Liberal-Democratic Alliance whose members are gradually being murdered off or imprisoned, and the Communist Party. Their (in)famous National Bolshevik Party was banned a long time ago.

As for the current situation in Russia there is a lot of history behind it, Mongol Yoke, Ivan the Terrible etc. I think few Russians want to live under Tatars in the 21 century any more than they did in the 14th century. Those sentiments not limited to far-right people.

Back on subject I read that Russia and Ukraine are now becoming large grain exporters to rival the US and Canada. Maybe global warming does has something to do with it?