The Black Sea has lost more than a third of its habitable volume

First of all, no one cares about "a lot more land becomes arable", because even existing arable land is not fully used - there's already a lot of it, which allowed after transition to market economy after collapse of Soviet Union to increase agricultural production significantly and there are still unused thousands of square kilometers on Far East.

60% of Russian territory is a permafrost zone. Global warming dramatically changes the geology of this area, which has a lot of complications for construction and may severely damage existing infrastructure (including oil and gas pipes). This is well-known and recognized danger here.

Then, immigration. There's already water crisis in Middle Asia, which with population growth and rising Islamism in countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is a huge problem for Russian security. Remember, we have open borders and visa-free travel with them. Plus millions of Chinese guest workers on Far East (and that's even bigger security issue, because on Chinese side of the border situation with ecology is much worse). Immigration is a real concern for Russia itself and any global factors that affect everything are not really useful.

To start, I said we don't see links here at HN about renewable energy in Russia because nothing is going on. You replied that lots is, and the reason we don't see stories is because the US and UK media is biased against Russia.

But HN also publishes many links on renewable energy from scientific and technology industry sources. Are you saying that they are likewise biased?

And how did that come about, like did the Obama administration send out a letter ordering all of them to never publish any such stories, and they all agreed? and none of the writers every published a complaint about this on the internet, even anonymously?

And how did the government get them to agree, did it tell them if they didn't go along, they would get a bullet in the head from a CIA agent?

And is this ban just for the US, or is it world wide? And when the many experts who are well aware these innumerable Russian renewable energy projects you claim exist complained, what did the editors say? "I'm sorry, but I can't comment on that issue?" And how did the government keep these experts from complaining online, like on their blogs? Did they threaten them too?

For those who would like to counter outrageous comments like ivan_gammel's, note what I am doing, namely working out in some detail the practicalities of what would be needed for the claim to be true. It usually then becomes clear it makes no sense.

Now for the questions, ivan_gammel.

First, when you made your claim, did you first work out the practicalities to see if it made any sense?

Second, now that I have done that, do you see how it sounds like a wacky conspiracy theory?

Finally, do you now agree that the claim doesn't make sense, and that the real reason we see no links at HN about Russian renewable energy projects is there aren't any, or at least very few? or do you still claim there are lots of these projects, and we don't see them here because of media bias?

Oh, and one more thing. The US media claims Putin is pretty awful, and you agree. So how did it come out they got it right on that, but get it all wrong on Russian renewable energy projects?

As to codified policy, Putin is an authoritarian ruler in a country with little rule of law, and so he does what he wants, no matter what the laws happen to say.

ivan_gammel, I strongly suspect that you are quite aware of all of this, and are attempting to mislead readers as to what Putin is up to and why.

Let me make one more comment. Putin believes that the road to becoming an advance industrial power is first spend a half a century focused on natural resource extraction, and only then turn to developing advanced industry. I think he is here trying to emulate his interpretation of the economic history of the UK and the US.

But this mistaken, and in two ways. First, in the US and the UK mineral extraction and industrial development proceeded in parallel, not sequentially. Secondly, more recently countries have industrialized by focusing on industry directly, and especially exports, as in the cases of Japan, China, and South Korea.

I think part of the problem here is that Putin greatly mistrusts industrialization that is successful enough to compete on global markets, because it requires independent commercial enterprises, and he is an authoritarian who wants to retain control of the economy, and this is much easier when you are focused on natural resource commodities.

In any case, the whole matter of Putin and his economic views just illustrates the general problem that Russians have never figured out how things work in the modern world, and are always trying to do things in ways that are still half back in the authoritarian, agrarian ways of their past. As a result they get off on paths that succeed for a few decades, but eventually stall out.

It's so sad, Russia could be such an amazing nation if it could just get on the right track.