Climatic Security and the Tipping Point Conception of the Earth System

Abstract

Now it is time for us to rise to our newest and biggest challenge: to fight the first great war of interdependence, the struggle for climate security.1 And I think that, from this day forward, the words ‘climate change’ and ‘international security’ will be forever linked.2 Abrupt and dangerous climate change is now a significant concern for many people, and the recent and very rapid reconfiguration of some mainstream scientific, environmental, regulatory and security discourses by claims of increasing climatic instability deserves close attention. Perhaps not surprisingly, the notion of an insecure or unstable climate system is itself a shifting and ambiguous construct, one assembled from diverse cultural and scientific elements, and invested with multiple meanings depending on the context and purposes for which it is invoked. These elements are sometimes of ancient origins, and marked by different histories and debates, as suggested by Mike Hulme, Simon Dalby, Jon Barnett, Max Boykoff, Paul Edwards and others.3 Nothing is gained in over-simplifying this point. Yet, the current discourse on climatic instability is quite new in many respects, at least in the form that underpins the surge of interest in ‘climate security’ shown by Western intelligence, security and military planning agencies. It is the relationship between recent efforts to reconfigure popular notions of climate change — as abrupt, as tipping point laden, as dangerous, as a security issue — and the national security interests of the US and UK governments that are explored here.4