Portside

Spike in fossil fuel use a result of global gas crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

If we can’t even imagine and articulate methods of settling border disputes that don’t involve tanks and drones we’re in even more trouble than we thought.

The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with enforcing international peace and security, bears the lion’s share of the responsibility for this weakness.

Leftists in Ukraine are simultaneously resisting Russian imperialism and the domestic imposition of neoliberalism.

Given the Russian government’s brutal repression of dissent, the level of Russian resistance to the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine is quite remarkable.

Democrats ask ‘what’s the endgame,’ then withdraw the question (which nonetheless persists).

Russia’s economy ministry, as reported by Reuters citing government documents, says that expected Russian energy export revenues will reach $338bn in 2022 which is nearly $100bn or a third more than the $244bn figure for last year. This is in large part because Russia was able to reroute two-thirds of its lost sales to the West to countries such as India and China through which it entered the world oil market.

Fortunately, there is another way―one that major thinkers and even, at times, national governments have promoted. And that is strengthened global governance.

To avoid the energy catastrophe and reverse the huge loss in living standards already under way, we need to take over the fossil fuel companies and phase out their production with increased investment in renewables, to reduce fuel prices for households and small businesses.

For those who say negotiations are impossible, we have only to look at the talks that took place during the first month after the Russian invasion, when Russia and Ukraine tentatively agreed to a fifteen-point peace plan in talks mediated by Turkey.