Report – Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, May 2024
Too Hot to Handle
INTRODUCTION – Climate risks remain missing in action
This is a report that the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) wished it did not need to publish.
ASLCG was formed in 2021 by a group of senior former military and intelligence leaders concerned that the security implications of climate change were not understood or addressed by governments. The ASLCG focus is on human security in the broadest sense: the safety of people and communities and the systems they rely upon.
That concern is based upon the science developed over decades which demonstrates climate change is accelerating, is already dangerous, and has become an existential threat to human civilisation as we know it. Together with nuclear war, it is the greatest threat to humanity. Australia, as the hottest and driest continent on Earth, is particularly exposed to that threat.1
The first step in formulating security policy to address any threat is to soundly assess the risks and opportunities it presents, both current and as they are likely to evolve. This requires scientific and analytical expertise, and appropriate intelligence capacity to make such assessments.
The toxic nature of the climate wars in Australia over decades, and the priority given to preserving Australia’s high-carbon fossil fuel industries, has meant that successive governments have never commissioned a comprehensive assessment of climate risk.
The fundamental duty of any government is “to protect the people” and thus fully assessing climate risk in order to avoid or mitigate it must be a priority. But leaders – in business, politics and public administration — have not acknowledged the full measure of the risk, so mitigation is inadequate.
ASLCG was encouraged that, after the 2022 election, the ALP acted on our suggestion that a national climate and security risk assessment should be carried out as a matter of urgency as the basis for formulating policy.
Unfortunately, implementation of that commitment has faltered:
— The assessment of climate risks external to Australia, carried out by the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) and completed in November 2022, has been classified and hidden from politicians overseeing security and climate policy, and from the public;
— Climate was mentioned only in passing in the Defence Security Review;
— The climate analysis in the 2023 Intergenerational Report was only partial;
— A domestically-focused National Climate Risk Assessment is under way, but its approach to assessing risks is in our view seriously deficient.
The government also has in progress a National Adaptation Plan Issues Paper and a Climate Risk and Opportunity Management Program for the public sector 2024–26.
The fundamental failing running through this work is the refusal to accept the size and immediacy of climate risk in 2024, its compounding nature and its future implications, as the basis for mitigation and adaptation policy.
The present report provides an overview of an efficacious climate risk assessment methodology, analyses the current failure, explores four case studies and identifies specific and necessary priority actions for the government.
Read the full report here: https://www.aslcg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ASLCG_TooHotTooHandle_2024R.pdf
