While other militaries around the world have taken notice of climate change and are now acting, defence planners and policy elite in Australia are pre-occupied by global power shifts. In confining climate change as a third order issue, they are overlooking major risks.
The United States is officially reorienting its security and defense strategy to the Asia-Pacific region, but the United States needs a complementary investment agenda for building the region’s resilience to climate change.
In popular and political debate climate change is increasingly referred to as a security issue. But thus far climate change does not constitute an objective existential threat, and as such, a securitization of climate change – at least here in the West – is morally unjustifiable.
It seems that there is an inverse relationship between water and energy security, but is this scenario real or imagined? Although it is only one step, the incorporation of the water-energy nexus into the Rio+20 agenda would help to improve our understanding of sustainability.
With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. manages to emit nearly 20% of greenhouse gases. While Barack Obama’s election seemed promising to many environmentalists, it seems clear nearly 3 years into his term that the real U.S. position on climate matters is not all that much better.
The lay reader may be forgiven if geoengineering- the use of technology to manipulate the planetary climate system in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming- sounds like science fiction. The science of such interventions remains uncertain, but assessments are proliferating – and the implications for climate governance and policy could be huge.
The UN Security Council recently met to debate the risks of climate change to global peace and security. Yet, practical measures to address these goals remain superficial, off-target & isolated. Now is the time to shift our focus from direct environmental impacts to broader threats at a local level.
The ‘free marketeers’ continue to take irresponsible risks, plunder the land, poison the seas, sicken whole communities, lay waste to entire regions, and pocket obscene profits.
The world is facing a sea of troubles, and is increasingly struggling to see a route through them. Indefinite growth was never going to be possible in a finite world. Pollution is increasing, whether of noise, light, plastic, chemicals or a range of other by-products. Amenity and quality of life is being degraded, as wild spaces are encroached upon and we live ever more congested and crowded lives
At Copenhagen in December 2009, during the much-hyped leaders’ summit to negotiate a climate change deal, American hypocrisy met Chinese obstructionism. Americans demanded emissions reductions without a credible plan at home. According to most reports, the Chinese stripped the Copenhagen Accord of much of its early ambition, including seemingly distant commitments to 2050. The West plans carbon conditionality. The rest expect reciprocity, and some countries will be in a position to demand it.
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