Is the ADF fighting climate change or just adapting?

Analysts from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) have recently published a special report on Climate and the Defence Force. To those concerned about human-caused climate change, this report could be viewed as a welcome turnaround. Thus, the report opens by noting that the 2009 Defence White Paper had, by contrast:

“… dismissed climate change as an issue for future generations, judging that strategic consequences wouldn’t be felt before 2030.”

The reason the ASPI Report gives for this turnaround since 2009 is new evidence about climate change. However, the 2009 Defence White Paper’s central fallacy was more fundamental than this. It ignored the mitigation of climate change, which is clearly a matter for action by the present generation, and undoubtedly also has ‘strategic consequences’.

In reacting to this clear deficiency, the 2013 ASPI Report has still not gone far enough. First, it has not acknowledged the level of climate change mitigation required in order to avoid major consequences, including the possibly overwhelming costs of adaptation. Second, it has not directly and fully acknowledged the possible adverse national security impacts and their consequences in the absence of this mitigation effort.

Understanding the policy responses to climate change and also their strategic consequences, requires a three-way distinction between:

(1) mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions;

(2) adapting to the destructive effects of climate change; and

(3) various ‘geoengineering’ schemes intended to offset the main effects of emissions growth after the fact.

That the ASPI Report gives quite insufficient weight to the mitigation effort is inferred from its final paragraph:

“This isn’t about the military having a ‘green’ view of the world: it’s about the ADF being well placed to deal with the potential disruptive forces of climate change.”

Here, ‘a green view of the world’ seems like code for climate change mitigation, where the required effort has been defined by such prestigious and mainstream international authorities as the IEA, the IPCC and the World Bank. Their acknowledged goal is to reduce global emissions such that the average global temperature increase can be confined to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Given a lack of such sufficient mitigation effort globally, a 4 degree warmer world or worse is conceivable. As one set of consequences a level of ‘climate insecurity’ may be inescapable, though some analysts have downplayed the risk of actual ‘climate wars’ underlined by others. For instance, the spectre of large-scale ‘climate refugees’ should not be dismissed. There could also be conflicts around the arbitrary or unilateral imposition by some foreign states of purported  ‘geoengineering’ solutions that might be deemed security and environmental threats by other states. Clive Hamilton provides a critique of such approaches in his latest book: "Earth Masters: Playing God with the Climate".

One favourable comment on the ASPI Report described it as being about ‘fighting climate change’. However, as the above closing paragraph quite clearly states, the Report is mainly about adaptive responses to climate change itself. Clearly, the Australian Defence Force should indeed be concerned about the emerging actuality of climate change and adaptation thereto.

The ASPI Report accordingly suggests that the ADF expand its role in gathering data about climate change, working with other official agencies in its evaluation. It also provides an over-view of climate-vulnerable regions in Australia’s vicinity such as the Small Island states and the Asian Mega-deltas. However, the Report stops short of considering the ‘climate insecurity’ scenarios in a 4 degree warmer world.

As regards the mitigation effort, he ASPI Report also supports the ADF’s promotion of energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources in its facilities (pp. 23-26). It also notes that the ADF complies with the pricing of emissions. But two major qualifications are not mentioned. First, the existing Australian and global mitigation effort, including emission pricing, still falls far short of the ‘official’ goals noted above. Second, this central obligation to price emissions will disappear altogether under a future Abbott government.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect the ADF to be taking the lead on climate mitigation, which is more properly a responsibility for the ‘whole of government’, along with an overview of adaptive measures. But clearly, it is essential that the political leadership of the ADF, and future Defence White Papers, should not shy away from the principle of mitigation since it is the main determinant of the nature and extent of future climate change, with its possibly catastrophic consequences in the longer term, not least ‘climate insecurity’.

One argument for the urgency and extent of the global mitigation effort is that adaptation costs could be an overwhelming burden on future generations in a 4 degree warmer world consequent on inadequate mitigation. A second argument is about minimising the economic cost over time of not exceeding a certain level of such gas stocks in the atmosphere by a target year such as 2050. A third is about the possible imminence of identified ‘tipping points’ within climate system feedback loops. An example is the albedo effect associated with melting ice caps where specialists have recently suggested that irreversible melting may occur in the next few decades if emission levels are not reduced.

For the mitigation effort to be effective it must involve a high level of international cooperation, with reciprocal and collective ‘leadership by example’. Adaptation and climate engineering may also require international cooperation because they both have collective costs and risks as well as potential collective benefits. Collective benefits could arise from assisting the adaptation effort on the part of those needy states especially vulnerable to climate change. This could be one means of addressing an issue of ‘climate refugees’, though existing experience of foreign aid is not encouraging in this regard.

The safest and most effective course is to strengthen pursuit of a mainstream 'green view of the world' that is inherent in mitigating climate change by sufficiently reducing emissions. Deferring such action and instead relying solely or mainly on future adaptation or climate engineering is a dangerous and irresponsible way to go. 

Barry Naughten is an Energy Economist at Australian National University.