Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the global average, and temperatures in the Russian Arctic are rising even faster. A cliche avidly promoted by Moscow is that the country will be a relative winner in climate change, benefiting from melting and an accessible Arctic shipping route, longer growing seasons and expanding farmland in recently thawed areas, according to a New York Review of Books review..

However, reviewer Sophie Pinkham counters with dry but compelling facts that in the redistribution of wealth and power that will result from climate change, Russia is doomed..

“After reading Climate, Russia’s attack on Ukraine starts to look like the convulsion of a dying state,” she wrote..

“This is not an optimistic book.. Russia is between a rock and a hard place, as perhaps most of the rest of the world is, but Russia has less political space than the US to, say, cope with and mitigate the environmental and economic impacts of climate change,” wrote Peter Gordon in Asian Review of.