The Cold Calculus Behind Putin’s Lukewarm Embrace of Paris Pact

For most of his two decades in power, Vladimir Putin has challenged the assertion, now held by the vast majority of climate scientists, that global warming is due almost exclusively to human activity.

As late as 2017, long after agreeing in principle to the Paris pact on curbing carbon emissions, the president of Russia was asserting that the current warming trend actually started before the 1930s, when “anthropological factors” were negligible.