Scores of people are still missing and feared dead after the strongest storm to strike the Philippines this year dumped heavy rain over several days
Scores of people are still missing and feared dead after the strongest storm to strike the Philippines this year dumped heavy rain over several days AFP / BOBBIE ALOTA

In November last year at Glasgow in Scotland, global leaders predicted apocalypse now and the transition from fossil fuel to clean energies seemed within the reach by 2050. But with the Ukraine crisis, the days of tall green talks are over. The immediate priority of the U.S.-led allies is to put in place a global security order centered around them, and let the climate change continue wreaking havoc from Brazil to the Philippines at will.

With the Ukraine crisis, the West has decided to put its green commitments on the backburner and jumped on the bandwagon of the war economy. All resources are channelized to convert NATO into a global security organization so that a weaker Russia exerts less pressure on Europe and thus rendered less useful to China, the more powerful of the two rivals of the U.S. regime and its European allies.

The move is to expand the geographical reach of the military alliance to make it force capable of directly waging wars with Russia and China, if possible simultaneously. NATO General-Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has made it clear that China is as much a target as Russia.

We are finalizing the work on the new strategic concept and I expect China to be an important part, he said

China, according to Stoltenberg, possesses modern nuclear capabilities and long-range missiles that can reach all NATO nations. Besides, Russia and China are working more and more closely which makes them suitable candidates to be weakened at one go if possible.

The attention of the US is already focused on Ukraine and the subsequent new world order. To prevent the east European nation's fall, the U.S. and NATO are investing heavily and are sending in military help which the invading Russians are finding difficult to crack.

With their tacit support, Ukraine now possesses "the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century," as claimed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to take on Russia.

The military alliance has already beefed up its presence with multinational battalions in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. Their presence in Lithuania has been increased from 1,200 to roughly 1,600 soldiers who are armed with new hardware like the German-made Ozelot anti-aircraft system.

Already, the new candidates for absorption near Russia's borders have been identified as Finland and Sweden are poised to join NATO within months. Finland is expected to apply in June, and Sweden to follow shortly.

The new Anglo-American project has rendered delusional the hypothesis that the Ukraine crisis is all about East European security. The tremors are felt worldwide in different ways. From South Africa to Myanmar, from the Solomon Islands to India, and from Japan to Cambodia, the talk of the town is the new global order, not the green energy transition which was supposed to spearhead the much-talked fourth industrial revolution by 2030.

Nations like Canada, instead of green commitments, are focusing on the old economy of fossil fuel and have pledged to boost oil and gas production this year to help ease the impact of sanctions on Russian oil.

The U.S. had hoped to get its decades-old ally Saudi Arabia to churn out more oil to make up for the U.S. ban on the import of Russian oil. But failed miserably to woo it from Russian influence.

After the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, including Russia, often referred to as OPEC+, resisted calls by the U.S. and the IEA, which was set up in 1974 to help industrialized nations to deal with the oil crisis after the Arab embargo, to pump more oil to cool prices, energy security has become the current mantra of nations, bringing fossil fuel back to limelight of national security.

Because the priorities of the world have changed with the Ukraine crisis, the global efforts to curb climate change have weakened with no point of return in the near future as the U.S.-led theater of war expands in scope and natural disasters, easily blamed on climate change, occur frequently in scale.

Torrential rain lashed on the east coast of Australia, a key member of U.S.-led QUAD also called Asian NATO, April 7 with Sydney receiving nearly a month's rain overnight. Sydney got 1,226.8 mm of rain so far this year, compared with the average annual rainfall of 1,213 mm

In South Africa, which played pro-Russia in the Ukraine crisis, heavy rains are flooding have thrown normal life out of gear, killing at least 306 people, damaging roads, and destroying homes on its eastern coast this week.

"One of the darkest moments in the history" of the KwaZulu-Natal province, the regional government said in a tweet.

In Brazil, another pro-Russian nation in Latin America, whose President Jair Bolsonaro appeared on camera along with Russian President Vladimir Putin a week before the invasion during an official visit, at least 14 people died April 3 in mudslides, caused by torrential rains in Rio de Janeiro state and the coastal towns along the state were inundated.

Expressing Brazil's solidarity with Russia, Bolsonaro said the two countries are collaborating on agriculture, oil, and gas.

Caused by tropical storms, at least 123 people have been killed in heavy rains and landslides in the Southeast Asian archipelago of the Philippines, which has expressed willingness to open the country's military facilities to the U.S.-led NATO offices should the Ukraine standoff spread into Asia.

Apocalypse Now?