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8. The Strategic Implications of Climate Change Alan Dupont
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
8 The STRATegIC ImPlICATIonS of ClImATe ChAnge Alan Dupont On 17 April 2007, the United Nations Security Council deliberated on the political and security implications of climate change, a geophysical phenomenon far removed from the traditional preoccupations of international security. Sceptics branded the debate an unwarranted diversion from more urgent matters and argued that climate change ought to remain the preserve of environmental agencies.1 But this view is not shared by an increasing number of influential policymakers and practitioners, who accept that unmitigated climate change will have profound consequences for global security. They include Nobel Prize winner and former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and the former and current British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. While still in office, Blair observed that “there will be no genuine security if the planet is ravaged by climate change”. His chief climate change adviser, Sir John Houghton, believes that climate change is “a weapon of mass destruction” and, at least, as dangerous as international terrorism,2 a view shared by Rudd’s Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, who sees climate change as “the security issue of the 21st century”.3 Underlining this shift in sentiment, the European Union’s Commissioner for External Affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, declared that global warming has moved to the heart of Europe’s foreign policy, while Steinmeier characterized climate change as “a threat to world-wide peace and 131 132 Alan Dupont security”, warning that as the polar ice melts rival territorial claims in the Arctic could turn into a “cold war”.4 Hard-headed military and intelligence analysts around the world are also beginning to focus on climate change as a serious strategic issue. In 2002, Andrew Marshall, the long-time head of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessments and arguably the most influential thinker in the Pentagon over the past three decades, commissioned a report by two consultants to explore the security implications of an abrupt climate change event.5 Although shelved by climate change sceptics in the George W. Bush White House, this path-breaking analysis was followed by a 2007 study reflecting the views of a dozen retired senior U.S. military officers which found that climate change is both a “threat multiplier” and “a serious threat to America’s national security”.6 Both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Australia’s main intelligence assessment agency, the Office of National Assessments, completed classified reviews of the climate change threat to national and international security in 2008. Why has climate change suddenly metamorphosed from a boutique environmental concern to a first-order foreign policy and national security problem that is now being ranked alongside terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? The answer is that sceptics have lost the argument about the significance and consequences of global warming. Policymakers around the world now accept there is sufficient scientific data to conclude that the speed and magnitude of climate change in the twentyfirst century will be unprecedented in human experience, posing daunting challenges of adaptation and mitigation for all life forms on the planet. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the world’s glaciers and northern ice cap are melting at accelerating rates and that sea level rise will threaten many coastal and low-lying areas. And they regard as virtually certain that there will be a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations over preindustrial levels this century regardless of what we do to contain or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.7 As a result, sea levels are projected to rise by between 0.18 and 0.59 metres this century and the earth’s surface will almost certainly warm by more than two degrees Celsius, which is widely accepted as the threshold above which managing the risks becomes progressively more difficult and the consequences more dangerous.8 The central problem is the rate at which temperatures are increasing rather than the absolute size of differential warming. Spread over several centuries, or a millennium, temperature rises of several degrees could probably be managed without political instability or major threats to commerce, agriculture, and infrastructure. Compressed within the space of a single century, [54.144.233.198] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:09 GMT) Strategic Implications of Climate Change 133 global warming will present formidable problems of human and biological adaptation, especially for natural ecosystems which typically evolve over hundreds of...