In prepared remarks before a meeting wtih several ministers and senior aides on February 18, 2010, President Dmitri Medvedev delivered a highly unusual speech on climate change for a senior Russian official. Just two months earlier, the Copenhagen climate talks had produced a document far less ambitious than had been hoped, and many observers had consigned the subject of climate change to the back-burner of international politics. It seemed Russia would have done the same, since its leadership’s attitude toward global warming had ranged from denying its existence to seeing it purely as a means of augmenting Russia’s role in international affairs.
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