By David Callaway, Callaway Climate Insights

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Is it more important to end the war in Ukraine or to mitigate climate change?

It’s an impossible question, isn’t it? On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine anything more urgent than addressing the existential crisis posed by climate change. We’re told that we quickly are approaching the point of no return beyond which it will be next to impossible to reverse dangerous warming trends.

Yet, on the other hand, the war in Ukraine may pose an even more immediate existential crisis. Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons, risking an escalation into World War III. Even absent such an escalation, the World Food Programme is warning of mass starvation if Russia continues to block the export of Ukrainian grain: “Some 276 million people around the globe were already facing acute hunger at the beginning of the year… [and] “that number could rise by 47 million if the war continues.”

Welcome to the quandary that climate-friendly investors face right now. . . .

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