Climate Code Red

 by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Australia’s defence and foreign policy settings are focused on geopolitical rivalry, while far greater systemic risks – especially climate disruption – receive little strategic attention.

Blinded to the greater risks, the Albanese Government and the security commentariat have spent four, unrelenting years making the case that China is the biggest threat to Australia’s future.

Defence and foreign policy, encapsulated in the AUKUS agreement, tie Australia to a nation currently engaged in what the historian Timothy Snyder calls “Superpower Suicide”: “a systematic undoing of American power by Americans” in which “fighting a war for no reason we can name, losing it, and covering our defeat with genocidal and apocalyptic propaganda” had led to ”rapid and catastrophic decline as the result of specific choices in the last year”.

The AUKUS cargo cult – with Labor, the LNP and One Nation marching arm in arm – means the Parliament and the nation have spent little time even considering what may be the greatest threats to our future.

In risk management, there are potential events so destructive that they are termed catastrophic because of their capacity for human death or suffering on a massive scale, such that societies may never fully recover. This may be called existential risk or in actuarial terms, the “risk of ruin”, which colloquially in financial and gambling circles is the risk of “losing everything”. Catastrophic events include nuclear war, climate change, biosecurity threats including pandemics, and disruptive digital technologies.

Every year the World Economic Forum surveys private and public sector global leaders on the big risks. The 2025 WEF Global Risk Report lists the ten most severe risks on a 10-year horizon. The top four, and five of the ten, are related to climate-change and nature degradation: extreme weather, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems, natural resource shortages, and pollution.

Of the other five, three are digital disruption: misinformation and disinformation, adverse outcomes of AI technologies, and cyber espionage and warfare. Rounding out the top ten are inequality and social polarisation. State-based armed conflict and geoeconomic confrontation don’t make the top ten, though they are in short-term (two-year) listing.

So is China or climate disruption the biggest threat? Global leaders understand what the Australian Government denies.

What would climate-disruption look like on a geo-political scale, given the warming is accelerating and is likely to exceed 3 degrees Celsius? Two decades ago, American security analysts noted that  “nonlinear climate change will produce nonlinear political events… beyond a certain level climate change becomes a profound challenge to the foundations of the global industrial civilisation that is the mark of our species”.

They produced a 3-degree scenario, in which “the internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. The flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China, has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible.”

In Chatham House’s Climate change risk assessment 2021, the security think-tank found that impacts likely to be locked in for the period 2040–50 unless emissions rapidly decline – which they are not – include a global average 30 per cent drop in crop yields by 2050, and the average proportion of global cropland affected by severe drought exceeding 30 per cent a year. They concluded that cascading climate impacts will “drive political instability and greater national insecurity, fuelling regional and international conflict”.

The consequences of climate disruption will strike everywhere. Last November, Iceland designated the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) a national security concern and an existential threat, so that it could plan for worst-case scenarios and preventative action.

A disturbing new research paper finds it is likely that AMOC will have slowed by half this century, and scientists fear it is close to a tipping point. Peter Ditlevsen of the University of Copenhagen calls AMOC collapse a going-out-of-business scenario for north-west European agriculture. In addition, the monsoons that typically deliver rain to West Africa and South Asia would become unreliable, and huge swaths of Europe and Russia would plunge into drought.

AMOC collapse would challenge European foundations, including the viability of nations and states, and of the EU and NATO, moving climate from the realm of environmental and culture wars to the heart of the matter: human security, social breakdown, mass displacement and death.

And it is not a security threat par excellence in 50 years time, but right now, as the Icelandic Government has recognised, because systemic changes now under way will make such an outcome inevitable unless the world applies strategic focus, resources and collective political will to trying to avert such a catastrophe right now.

Yet a search of Hansard finds no mention of AMOC in either house of Australia’s Parliament, from any MP or Senator, over the term of the Albanese government. That is depressing, but not unexpected. The government ordered a climate and security risk assessment from the Office of National Intelligence when it came to power, and immediately suppressed the report, refusing to articulate ‘frankly terrifying’ security risks.

And of course AMOC is but one in an array of climate-security risks: the northern quarter of Australia – where the government is spending billions upgrading military bases – will become unliveably hot in three or four decades from now. And declining crop yields: researchers estimate that beyond 2°C warming, which is perhaps only 15 years away, “the declines in suitable areas for the 30 crops [analysed] become more pronounced – in some cases approaching and passing 50 per cent”.  That in itself would cause global chaos. There are scores more, including Himalayan water wars, mass people displacement, and drowned states.

A recognition that climate poses an existential – and perhaps the most pressing – risk to Australians’ future would mean that any Australian foreign policy, defence or strategic review would place it at the centre of concern. Instead the government has done the opposite, barely giving climate a token tick in such recent documents.

Epitomised by the tedious performances of the Defence Minister, Australia is doggedly pressing on with its “America first, Earth last” strategy. But this moment requires clarity about the existential nature of the climate threat to humanity’s future; and a collective regional commitment to strategic action.

 by Adm Chris Barrie & Ian Dunlop, first published at The Sydney Morning Herald 

Camels flee a burning oil well during the first Gulf War, Kuwait, 
1991. Photo: Steve McCurry
Just as the war on Iran dents oil production, drives up petrol prices and ricochets around the global economy, Thursday’s fire at the Geelong oil refineries causes even more domestic pain. The disturbing energy vista only heightens the need for a far faster transition to renewables and widespread electrification.

The fragility of fossil fuel supply lines and our reliance on them is now obvious, yet the newly released defence strategy downplays the strategic consequences of Australia’s fossil fuel dependence. The strategy fails to fully recognise how Australia’s expanding coal and gas exports are perpetuating a cycle of fossil fuel addiction, undermining our long-term security and claims to regional leadership.

Australia faces a profoundly altered security environment, shaped by the convergence of climate disruption and risks of nuclear escalation, but the defence strategy by the government flinches from the strategic clarity we urgently need. Focusing on the immediate period and current preoccupations and downplaying bigger threats in the future is poor strategic thinking. In reality, this is not a strategy. Rather, as so often before, it is a short-term tactical response to current events.

Many Pacific and Asian partners have long described climate change as their central security threat. But it has been sidelined by our government, yet again. What is missing is an acceptance that extreme climate impacts, geopolitical tension, authoritarianism and disinformation, along with the existence of large nuclear arsenals, form a single, interconnected security risk environment – and that these elements can reinforce one another in dangerous ways, leading to systemic breakdown.

So, we need a national security strategy to deal with these issues properly. The solutions to this crisis require a big-picture response from our government.

Yes, it is oil, but also the urea and ammonia that come from oil refining, and higher transport and agriculture costs that heighten global food insecurity and inflation. There is helium from Qatar, necessary in chip-making and medical imaging. And sulphuric acid, which is essential in critical minerals extraction. This is a security threat on many levels.

Energy security is inseparable from national security because modern economies and military capability depend on reliable energy supplies. But up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse emissions come from the military sector if war and conflicts are included. Australia imports around 90 per cent of its refined fuel, leaving the whole economy strategically vulnerable. Australia’s fuel reserves remain well below our international commitments, increasing disruption exposure. Australians would be shocked at how quickly our military would run out of fuel, especially in northern Australia, if the north–south transport routes were cut by extreme rain and flooding in a defence emergency.

Global oil supply shocks have historically been triggered by wars and geopolitical crises, demonstrating how quickly energy security can deteriorate. It happened with Suez in 1956, the big oil shock after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and again in wars between Iraq and Iran, two wars on Iraq, and now the war on Iran. If the Middle East was not an oil hub, most of these wars would not have happened.

Geopolitical tensions, driven in part by authoritarian governments, are obviously rising, increasing the likelihood of further oil supply disruptions. And climate change is now a driver of social conflict and war globally.

Food shortages, water stress and extreme heat have already contributed to social breakdown across the Middle East and North Africa, including Syria. As global warming intensifies, competition for water, food and resources, including oil will further increase the risks of insecurity and war. And the conflicts themselves add dramatically to climate change with increased military and reconstruction emissions. These risks are all connected. Continuing fossil fuel dependence, let alone the government’s current support for expansion, intensifies climate change impacts, creating a growing threat to Australia’s economic and national security.

The continuing reliance on imported fossil fuels in these circumstances is a gamble rather than a viable long-term strategy. Securing Australia’s energy system through rapid renewable deployment and electrification is a strategic necessity, not just an environmental goal. As we currently stand, In the event of a major long-term disruption to global oil supply, Australia would struggle to maintain essential services and economic stability. Australia has had decades of warning and opportunity to address fuel vulnerability, but both major political parties failed to act.

The government’s current policies are too slow and contradictory, relying on long-term targets that do not address immediate risks and short-term climate threats to regional stability, such as the forthcoming Super El Niño. The opposition remains in climate denial, undermining progress by promoting misinformation about renewable energy and defending the fossil fuel economy. This has created a bipartisan failure characterised by delay on one side and obstruction on the other.

A rapid transition to domestically produced renewable energy would improve Australia’s energy security. Electrification would significantly reduce reliance on imported oil. Already China with its electric vehicles has become the single biggest source of new cars and utes for Australia.

Australia’s transport system can be electrified. That’s what miners like Fortescue are already doing, as well as building self-reliant renewable energy supplies. Expanding renewable power and strengthening domestic energy systems would increase economic resilience and stability. The economic imperative is clear: renewable electricity is cheaper than coal and gas generators. Electric cars are much cheaper to charge than petrol or diesel vehicles. Australia possesses exceptional renewable energy resources, giving it a natural advantage. Short-term politics and ideology have meant that Australia failed to capitalise on these advantages fast enough, thereby diminishing our security in multiple ways.

We must now embrace the sustainable future we see, rather than defending the unsustainable past.

Chris Barrie is a former chief of the Australian Defence Force. Ian Dunlop is formerly a senior international oil and gas executive and ex-chair of the Australian Coal Association.