According to Gustafson, Russia's agricultural exports and revenues will increase until the end of this decade, with global warming improving Russian agricultural productivity. The rate of increase will decrease in the next two decades because of the harm to Russian crops caused by heat waves and rains. Climate change will affect the world's food supply, but it will also affect Russia's arable land supply, which will be hit by the end of the century. Europe's most fertile agricultural area is already too dry. It is infertile and sandy and will not make good farmland. Russia will need more resources to make the same amount of food. Acidification and erosion will be caused by more aggressive tactics to increase production.
[T]he long-term future of the Russian oil industry, like that of the Russian economy, looked dismal even before the new sanctions. West Siberia, long the country's primary source of oil, is running low. The extraction of Arctic oil is already well underway, but it is expensive and relies in part on foreign technology that was sanctioned even before the invasion of Ukraine.... As time goes on, Gustafson argues, the Russian oil industry will be more and more dependent on government tax breaks. A dwindling supply will lose value in a global market that is shifting to renewable energy. In Gustafson's account, most of the factors that will determine the future of Russia's oil exports lie outside its control: exhaustion of its most accessible oilfields, increasing difficulty and expense in reaching remaining sources, damage to oil infrastructure caused by climate change, and reduction in demand from the EU and later from Asia. But Russia's choices have had some effect. Its invasion of Ukraine has vastly accelerated the timeline for this squeeze by prompting new sanctions and informal boycotts... As Russia's income declines, so will its ability to placate its population with cheap household gas and generous welfare policies. This will likely lead to social destabilization, exacerbated by the disruption and suffering caused by climate change and a weakening economy. The Russian war on Ukraine, meanwhile, has resulted in the emigration not only of opposition politicians and journalists but also of professionals, especially younger ones, who have skills marketable elsewhere in the world — for instance, IT specialists, who find it easy to work from safer, freer cities like Bishkek or Tbilisi. The scientists, activists, and businesspeople who might help Russia cope with climate change are also among those likely to emigrate.Putin is almost seventy years old and his time horizon is less than that of Klimat. The disasters will come after him.
"Russia will be one of the countries most affected by climate change..." according to the book's description on the Harvard University Press website."Lucid and thought- provoking, Klimat shows how climate change is poised to alter the global order and potentially topple great powers from their perches."
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