Comment: Climate change as a national security threat
This article was originally published in the IPPR Progressive Review
The Biden administration's climate agenda is a watershed moment. The fiscal powerhouse of the American federal government is being mobilised to invest hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars into accelerating the transition to a cleaner economy.1 This represents by far the most significant action on the climate crisis in American history. It is also spurring a more muscular, state-led approach to decarbonisation on the other side of the Atlantic, as the European Union steps up its green investments in response.2
“The Biden administration's climate agenda is a watershed moment”
The sheer financial heft of Biden's legislative programme, especially the flagship Inflation Reduction Act, has understandably attracted the lion's share of attention. Yet it is impossible to understand this programme without recognising another key component. The US government now considers climate change a pre-eminent threat to national security.
Biden operates at the nexus of climate change and national security
Within a week of assuming office, President Biden signed an executive order which declared that climate change is an “essential element of United States … national security”.3 In recognising that climate change had “become a climate crisis” and that “the scale and speed of necessary action is greater than previously believed”, the order directed the federal government to place climate change at the “forefront of … national security planning”.4
Biden's executive order mobilised the highest levels of the US intelligence and security communities to assess and prepare for the threats posed by the climate crisis. Risk assessments were commissioned, including the first national intelligence estimate on climate change5 – the highest level of assessment undertaken by the US intelligence community. Changes were made to the machinery of government, such as the creation of the Climate Security Advisory Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.6 A renewed focus was given to global leadership, including rejoining the Paris Agreement and appointing John Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate with a seat on the US National Security Council.7 This was a reordering of priorities, a deliberate strategy to insert the causes and consequences of the climate crisis into the key strategic decision-making structures of America's federal government.
These developments mark the latest evolution of the ‘climate security’ agenda, a policy programme that has been decades in the making. Early proponents of the climate security agenda framed climate change as a defence and security issue. This was an attempt to use the bi-partisan concern for national security as a lever for overcoming political barriers to tackling climate change. This approach was championed by Sherri Goodman, who became the first deputy undersecretary for environmental security in the US Department of Defence in 1993. Goodman's team developed the term ‘threat multiplier’ to highlight the relationship between climate change and national security.8 The phrase aimed to capture how the emergent effects of climate change have the potential to exacerbate pre-existing drivers of instability, thereby worsening all security risks.9
“the emergent effects of climate change have the potential to exacerbate pre-existing drivers of instability, thereby worsening all security risks”
This early iteration of the climate security agenda developed at a time when ‘stick’ approaches to climate change, like carbon taxes and regulation, set the parameters of climate policy debates in America – and which led to a political dead-end.10 The Biden administration has taken a different approach. Instead of sticks, we have ‘carrots’. This is reflected in the enormous public subsidies provided through the Inflation Reduction Act. They offer a more suitable home for nurturing political support from those who are seeking subsidy and will benefit from its effects.
The carrot approach also provides a natural home for the climate security agenda. ‘Bidenomics’ has been variously framed as a programme to rebuild the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, to capitalise on the economic opportunity of green industry and as a moral imperative to tackle the effects of climate change. Yet at its heart, Bidenomics is also a strategic economic and geopolitical programme, which aims to secure American hegemony in response to the shifting realities of the 21st century.
Historically, global hegemony has been built on pre-eminence in energy sources and technologies that provide a comparative advantage. The British Empire did so with coal in the 19th century, likewise America with oil in the 20th. As the world shifts towards clean energy, it is not America but China that dominates emergent energy sources - and has done so for decades. Already in 1987, Deng Xiaoping was saying that “while the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths”, the materials critical for making everything from clean technologies to fighter jets.11 Three decades later, China accounts for 60 per cent of global production and 85 per cent of the processing capacity of critical minerals.12 It is the largest source of imports for more than half the minerals classified as strategically critical by the US Geological Survey.13 American elites are scrambling to catch up.
“American elites are scrambling to catch up”
Climate security has a mixed political record
Biden's instruction to treat climate change as an “essential element of United States … national security”14 has succeeded in yoking together his administration's more interventionist economic approach with the concerns of America's intelligence and security communities. This fusion of productivist economics, decarbonisation and geopolitical strategy was laid out by Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan: “Clean-energy supply chains are at risk of being weaponized in the same way as oil in the 1970s, or natural gas in Europe in 2022. So through the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we're taking action.”15 This was a speech about ‘renewing American economic leadership’ being delivered by a ranking national security official at the Brookings Institution, a pillar of the US strategic establishment.
These arguments have had some success across party lines. Biden's legislative agenda has three main Acts: the CHIPS and Science Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The first of these provides around $280 billion to boost American semiconductor manufacturing, which will benefit renewables and electric vehicle (EV) rollout. It was framed as an opportunity to “counter China”, passing with support on both sides of the aisle.16 The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the ‘bipartisan infrastructure deal’, received similar cross-party support. Yet the Inflation Reduction Act, which entwined investments in clean energy with restrictions on how much pharmaceutical companies can charge for medicines, was fully partisan, passing the Senate only through a tie-breaking vote from vice president Kamala Harris.
This is a mixed record. On the one hand, elements of the climate security frame have given the administration political cover to make investments that will directly benefit the cause of decarbonisation by couching these as critical to national security and strategic advantage. What's more, by couching the specific causes and impacts of climate change as national security priorities – as opposed to labelling them specifically as climate issues – the climate security agenda might more deeply embed climate action into the US state in a way that will be harder for a future Republican president to unpick. We may find out as early as 2025.
On the other hand, climate action requires far more than the US establishment to buy into a vision of the green industrial revolution as a means to secure American leadership. Instead, it demands a deeper shift in the country's economic settlement, which has anyway failed to build prosperity and security for decades. Biden's attempt to marry action on climate change with a wider range of progressive causes struggled to pass America's political litmus test. The first draft of what became the Inflation Reduction Act – the doomed Build Back Better Act – proposed $2.2 trillion of investment in clean energy, childcare, housing, healthcare and education.17 These were seized upon by recalcitrant Republicans and centrist Democrats. In this way, it seems that climate security provides little ability to boost progressive political ends on climate action.
Only a progressive vision can ensure our security in a climate-changed future
If the Biden administration's approach represents a second iteration of the climate security agenda, a third is coming, whether we like it or not. The historic failure to decarbonise is becoming more apparent and tragic by the week. Climate damages are hitting harder and faster than many scientists expected. Most urgently, it is possible that climate tipping points could soon be triggered.18 This is when parts of the climate system are stressed beyond coping, leading to abrupt and irreversible change. An example is the great overturning circulation of the Atlantic, the collapse of which might eradicate half the global growing area for wheat and maize.19 A collapse may happen in the coming decades.20
“The historic failure to decarbonise is becoming more apparent and tragic by the week”
The ongoing chasm between the warnings of scientists and actual emissions reductions foretells a future plagued by unprecedented insecurity and instability. The problem, as progressives have long foreseen, is that this future becomes ‘securitised’, with less stable conditions exploited to deepen existing trends toward authoritarianism, international competition and conflict. These fears are not unfounded. The shipping lanes and abundant fossil resources emerging from under the melting Arctic have already led global powers to increase their military presence in the region. The increasing militarisation of borders could go into overdrive in reaction to the expected rise in ‘climate refugees’.
Unfortunately, climate change and nature loss will become national security concerns, simply because worsening climate impacts will more severely disrupt the social and economic systems that are responsible for our security. These disruptions will cause disasters and crises that require an emergency response from governments to protect lives and livelihoods. The question for progressives is what type of national security response occurs and how to ensure that a militarised securitisation is avoided. A militarised response would create a destructive spiral, treating only the symptoms and worsening the causes through environmentally destructive and emissions-heavy conflict, and sapping resources needed for mitigation and adaptation.
“climate change and nature loss will become national security concerns”
Of course, this spiral can only be quelled by restoring planetary stability through decarbonisation and nature restoration. Yet our ability to deliver this transition – and to do so equitably – will be frustrated by a warmer, more chaotic world.21 Environmental action could be crowded out, as attention and resources are sucked into responding to relentless disasters, deepening climate change. This is a vicious circle in which the conditions for peace spiral away and militarism rules.
So, the next iteration of climate security must be progressive. In a world of escalating climate and ecological chaos, distractions from the task of delivering an equitable transition can be minimised by having more resilient societies. Better flood barriers, more robust food systems and high-quality public services mean less crisis situations and more energy and focus for delivering the transition. More equal, more democratic societies might also be more cohesive and less susceptible to defensive reactions that come at the cost of sustainability. Better international institutions and fewer global power imbalances can protect cooperation.
This will require progressive green agendas – like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and in the UK the Labour party's proposed Green Prosperity Plan – to create greater synergy between mitigation and adaptation. Their predominant focus on mitigation is understandable; this is the crucial decade of action on climate change, after all. But as the world is made less stable, the differences between adaptation and mitigation will become blurred. Protecting people, places and nature offers a route for transformation toward a more sustainable and equitable future. This is now an urgent priority.
1 Hein J, Andrew Jack W and Duncheon T (2023) ‘The first year of the Inflation Reduction Act’, Inside Energy & Environment, 16 August 2023. https://www.insideenergyandenvironment.com/2023/08/the-first-year-of-the-inflation-reduction-act
2 European Commission (2023) ‘The Green Deal Industrial Plan’, European Commission website. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal/green-deal-industrial-plan_en
3 The White House (2021) ‘Executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad’, briefing, The White House website, 27 January 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad
4 ibid
5 Office of the Director of National Intelligence (2021) Climate Change and International Responses Increasing Challenges to US National Security Through 2040, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/NIE_Climate_Change_and_National_Security.pdf
6 50 U.S.C. § 3060.
7 US Department of State (2021) ‘John Kerry’, US Department of State website. https://www.state.gov/biographies/john-kerry
8 Centre for Climate & Security (2023) ‘Sherri Goodman’, Centre for Climate & Security website. https://climateandsecurity.org/advisory-board/sherri-goodman
9 Goodman S and Baudu P (2023) ‘Climate change as a “threat multiplier”: history, uses and future of the concept’, briefing, Centre for Climate & Security website, 3 January 2023. https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/38-CCThreatMultiplier.pdf
10 Meyer R (2021) ‘Carbon tax, beloved policy to fix climate change, is dead at 47’, The Atlantic, 20 July 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/obituary-carbon-tax-beloved-climate-policy-dies-47/619507
11 Johnston I, Hancock A and Dempsey H (2023) ‘Can Europe go green without China's rare earths?’, Financial Times, 19 September 2023. https://ig.ft.com/rare-earths
12 Glaser BS and Wulf A (2023) ‘China's role in critical mineral supply chains’, GMF, 2 August 2023. https://www.gmfus.org/news/chinas-role-critical-mineral-supply-chains
13 Majkut J, Nakano J, Krol-Sinclair MJ, Hale T and Coste S (2023) Building larger and more diverse supply chains for energy minerals, Centre for Strategic & International Studies. https://www.csis.org/analysis/building-larger-and-more-diverse-supply-chains-energy-minerals
14 The White House (2021) ‘Executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad’, briefing, The White House website, 27 January 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad
15 The White House (2023) ‘Remarks by national security advisor Jake Sullivan on renewing American economic leadership at the Brookings Institution’, speech to the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 27 April 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/27/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-on-renewing-american-economic-leadership-at-the-brookings-institution
16 The White House (2022) ‘Fact sheet: CHIPS and Science Act will lower costs, create jobs, strengthen supply chains, and counter China’, briefing, The White House website, 9 August 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china
17 The White House (2021) ‘President Biden announces the Build Back Better Framework’, briefing, The White House website, 28 October 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/10/28/president-biden-announces-the-build-back-better-framework
18 Armstrong McKay DI, Staal A, Abrams JF, Winkelmann R, Sakschewski B, Loriani S, Fetzer I, Cornell SE, Rockström J and Lenton TM (2022) ‘Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points’, Science, 377: 6611. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950
19 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2021) Managing climate risks, facing up to losses and damages, OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/55ea1cc9-en
20 Ditlevsen P and Ditlevsen S (2023) ‘Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation’, Nature Communications, 14: 4254. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39810-w
21 Laybourn L, Evans J and Dyke JG (2023) ‘Derailment risk: a systems analysis that identifies risks which could derail the sustainability transition’, EGUsphere [preprint]. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1459
