Fish kill in Oder river - blame the climate change

The temperature measured in Oder river was exceptionally high, when the mass mortality of fish occurred. Although other factors certainly also had a role, this was the primary reason for the fish kills. This is because the difference between the tolerated upper temperature and the temperature causing death is small regardless of fish species. There are cold water species, species which have very small temperature range where they live, warm water species, and species which live in a wide range of temperatures. However, regardless of their temperature preference or tolerance, when fish are close to their upper critical temperature, the difference between tolerable and lethal temperature is small.

Thus, Oder river fish kill is something we are going to see with increasing frequency, if urgent actions are not carried out to combat climate change. They cannot wait until energy price comes down. And, actually the huge increase in energy price as a result of Russian energy war shows that Europe has been too slow in green conversion. If it had been rapid enough, the stop of Russian gas export to Europe would not have affected energy price at all. Now we are suffering from the slow replacement of fossil fuels by green energy. The Oder fish kill shows that we must tolerate the high energy price and speed up the transfer to green energy.