A Russian city nestled in the vast Siberian forest — 2,000 miles and four times zones east of Moscow — has air so bad that the authorities regularly warn people to stay inside. During frequent “black sky” events, caused by Soviet-era factories and coal-fired power plants, Krasnoyarsk has clocked the dirtiest air on the planet, beating out Mumbai and Guangzhou. The record temperatures in Siberia this year mean the city may not get any respite this summer, with the forest fire season forecast to start in late June, a month ahead of usual.
“Black skies are common in Krasnoyarsk,” said Yulia Moiseeva, a resident who kept a supply of N95 masks well before the coronavirus pandemic made them ubiquitous. “The smog sometimes is so bad that it’s hard to see the next building.” Krasnoyarsk’s 1 million residents find themselves on the front lines of climate change, facing toxic levels of smog in winter, when coal-powered emissions peak, and in summer smoke from wildfires. The city is emblematic of the wider environmental catastrophe in Siberia, a region bigger than the U.S., where global warming is melting the permafrost and burning one of the world’s biggest forests — known as the Taiga in Russian.
Last month, softening ground probably helped cause a fuel dump in the remote northern city of Norilsk to leak 20,000 tons of diesel into an ecologically fragile river system, perhaps the worst spill in the Arctic since Alaska’s Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. President Vladimir Putin, long seen as skeptical on environmental protection, is starting to acknowledge the challenge, scolding the giant mining company responsible for the spill and considering pushing ahead with a stalled environment law.
The Covid-19 pandemic brings additional challenges. The health crisis will aggravate pollution as the economic fallout forces locals to rely on cheaper, dirtier fuels for heat, according to United Co. Rusal, the world’s biggest aluminum producer outside China and one of the city’s biggest employers.