Can we think in new ways about the existential human security risks driven by the climate crisis?

Note: This post is the foreword to a policy paper on existential climate and security risks released today by Breakthrough. It is written by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie, who was Chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2002.

by Admiral Chris Barrie, AC RAN Retired

In 2017-18, the Australian Senate inquired into the implications of climate change for Australia’s national security. The Inquiry found that climate change is “a current and existential national security risk”, one that “threatens the premature extinction of Earth- originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development”.

I told the Inquiry that, after nuclear war, human- induced global warming is the greatest threat to human life on the planet. Today’s 7.5 billion human beings are already the most predatory species that ever existed, yet the global population has yet to peak and may reach 10 billion people, with dire implications absent a fundamental change in human behaviour.

This policy paper looks at the existential climate-related security risk through a scenario set thirty years into the future. David Spratt and Ian Dunlop have laid bare the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on earth may be on the way to extinction, in the most horrible way.

Unexpected surge in global methane levels

From Climatenexus.org 

An unexpected surge in global atmospheric methane is threatening to erase the anticipated gains of the Paris Climate Agreement.  This past April NOAA posted preliminary data documenting an historic leap in the global level of atmospheric methane in 2018,[1] underscoring a recent wave of science and data reporting that previously stable global methane levels have unexpectedly surged in recent years.

The scientific community recently responded to the surge into two high profile publications by calling for a reduction in methane emissions from the natural gas system, framing it as the most practical response to the global increase.[2]

“Climate emergency”: Evolution of a global campaign

Rally, Parliament House, Canberra, 3 February 2009

 by David Spratt

In a matter of months, the language of climate emergency has exploded into public space in a spectacular way, with national, regional and governments adopting the term.

Last Friday The Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner issued new language guidelines to her staff:

Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned. “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity”... The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, talked of the “climate crisis” in September, adding: “We face a direct existential threat.”

Just a year ago, such language was rarely, if ever, heard in the media, among politicians and policymakers, or from professional climate advocates. So how did we get to here?