As War Rages, a Struggle to Balance Energy Crunch and Climate Crisis

and As the world reels from , the fallout from Russias invasion of Ukraine has laid bare a dilemma: Nations remain extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels and are struggling to shore up supplies precisely at a moment when scientists say the world must slash its use of oil, gas and coal to avert irrevocable damage to the planet. While countries to wild swings in the oil and gas markets by shifting to cleaner sources of energy such as wind or solar power and electric vehicles which is also the playbook for fighting climate change that transition will take years. So, for now, many governments are more urgently focused on alleviating near-term energy shocks, aiming to boost global oil production to replace the millions of barrels per day that Russia has historically exported but which is now being shunned by Western nations. The two goals arent necessarily at odds, officials in the United States and Europe say. Yet some fear that countries could become so consumed by the immediate energy crisis that they neglect longer-term policies to cut reliance on fossil fuels a shortsightedness that could set the world up for more oil and gas shocks in the future as well as a dangerously overheated planet. In the short term we have to try to prevent this crisis from creating an economic catastrophe, said Sarah Ladislaw, a managing director at RMI, a nonprofit that works on clean energy issues. But there are also longer-term steps we need to take to reduce our underlying energy vulnerabilities. Otherwise, she said, well end up right back in this situation several years down the road. Oil prices were already high even before war broke out in Ukraine, as the global economy rebounded from the pandemic and demand outstripped supply. But Russias invasion in late February caused the price of crude to skyrocket, . On Tuesday President Biden said the United States would ban oil imports from Russia, which before the war , a move that further roiled markets. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and your Times account, or for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? . Want all of The Times? .