For most individuals on either side of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the biggest travesty is clearly the loss of life and widespread destruction that has been taking place for well over a year.
There are also serious concerns about issues including national sovereignty and the massive amounts of money and equipment being sent to Ukraine by the United States and allies around the world.
But for the Biden administration’s top climate czar, the key takeaway from this military dispute is the supposed impact it is having on climate change. U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was in England on Monday when he weighed in on the alleged environmental toll of the war.
“Lots of parts of the world are exacerbating the problem right now,” he said during an interview on MSNBC. “But when you have bombs going off, and you have damage to septic tanks or to power centers, etc., you have an enormous release of greenhouse gas, of methane, you know, all of the family of greenhouse gases.”
.@JohnKerry argues problem w/ the war in Ukraine is not the hundreds of thousands of lives lost but the impact on "climate change"; "when you have bombs going off & you have damage to septic tanks or power centers, etc., you have an enormous release of greenhouse gas & methane" pic.twitter.com/jQf62woXAu
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 10, 2023
Although he asserted that “the fight in Ukraine is a fight that we have to make, that the world has to make,” he lamented that “it’s adding to the problem” of climate change.
“The values at stake are enormously important to all of us,” Kerry said. “So I’m not suggesting by any fashion that this is not a fight we shouldn’t be involved in. But I am saying that there are ancillary impacts as a result of it.”
Along with Kerry, President Joe Biden was also in the United Kingdom this week where they met with King Charles to discuss climate-related issues.
Back home in the United States, critics took aim at Kerry’s preoccupation with climate in his discussion of the war in Ukraine.
As 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley tweeted: “John Kerry tells us the problem with the war in Ukraine is the increase in greenhouse gases? You can’t make this stuff up. The end of the Biden (Harris) administration can’t come fast enough.”
Conservative commentator Gerry Callahan offered a similarly critical response.
“The problem with the war in Ukraine, says decrepit con man John Kerry, is that bombs are damaging septic tanks and exacerbating the made-up climate crisis,” he wrote. “Wait till he hears about all the dead women and children.”
