Australia’s National Centre for Climate Restoration, also known as Breakthrough, released a sobering report late last month titled “Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach.” The policy paper, authored by David Spratt & Ian Dunlop, with a foreword by Admiral Chris Barrie, AC RAN (Retired), former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, explores a climate scenario thirty years in the future – a method of risk anticipation often utilized by militaries. The scenario exercise led to a striking conclusion:

Climate change now represents a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilisation.

This conclusion precipitated the authors to make a set of recommendations, two of which are of particular note:

A new approach to climate-related security risk-management is thus required, giving particular attention to the high-end and difficult-to-quantify “fat-tail” possibilities.

And:

Urgently examine the role that the national security sector can play in providing leadership and capacity for a near-term, society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions industrial system and draw down carbon to protect human civilisation.

No nibbling around the edges of the problem for Breakthrough. They cut right to the existential heart of the matter. To read the full paper, click here.