We take it all for granted. Food on the table. A comfortable living room. Transport. The rule of law. But a Melbourne-based research group warns: that’s all about to change - if we don’t act fast.
The world is “on a path to the end of human civilisation and modern society as we have known it,” warns the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration.
“Even for 2C of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated and in high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end,” the report, written by David Spratt and former Royal Dutch Shell senior executive and Australian Coal Association chair Ian Dunlop, reads.
Among its members are former Australian defence department head and Royal Australian Navy Admeral Chris Barrie.
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READ NOWIt’s all because of the loss of arable farm land. The collapse of international trade and communications. Nations warring to secure first-dibs on what remains. A massive migration of refugees.
Which is why the group is calling for a “society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources … akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilisation” to stop it.
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AN END TO ORDER
In the report’s forward, Admiral Chris Barrie said the study tells “the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on Earth may be on the way to extinction, in the most horrible way.”
Titled Existential climate-related security risk, report breaks down the political and economic consequences of the current rate of climate change, and what that could mean.
“Climate-change impacts on food and water systems, declining crop yields and rising food prices driven by drought, wildfire and harvest failures have already become catalysts for social breakdown and conflict across the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Sahel, contributing to the European migration crisis,” the report reads.
The reports authors say there is a general tendency to downplay the potential impact of unrestricted climate change and dismiss its plausibility.
And that rate of change, it argues, will likely result in a 3C average heating of the planet within just decades - triggering a feedback loop that will further accelerate the collapse of the planet’s ecosystems and raise the increase to 5C.
“Scientists warn that warming of 4C is incompatible with an organised global community, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable. The World Bank says it may be ‘beyond adaptation’,” the report reads.
But even a 2C spike in average temperatures will have “extremely serious outcomes” for international security.
“Planetary and human systems (are) reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order,” it says.
ONE BILLION REFUGEES
As soil dries out, daytime temperatures spike above levels of human endurance and sea levels rise, we’re facing a flood of refugees to cooler climes.
The report states: “Even for 2°C of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated and in high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.”
The scenario it presents is stark.
“Some poorer nations and regions, which lack capacity to provide artificially-cooled environments for their populations, become unviable. Deadly heat conditions persist for more than 100 days per year in West Africa, tropical South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia, contributing to more than a billion people being displaced from the tropical zone.
“Water availability decreases sharply in the most affected regions at lower latitudes (dry tropics and subtropics), affecting about two billion people worldwide. Agriculture becomes non-viable in the dry subtropics.”
Almost the whole world suffers a significant drop in food production through extreme weather events and droughts.
“Food production is inadequate to feed the global population and food prices skyrocket, as a
consequence of a one-fifth decline in crop yields, a decline in the nutrition content of food crops, a catastrophic decline in insect populations, desertification, monsoon failure and chronic water shortages, and conditions too hot for human habitation in significant food-growing regions.”
And with hunger comes discontent.
“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 report warns.
“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.”
HERCULEAN EFFORT
The window of opportunity to prevent the above scenario unfolding is rapidly closing, the report warns.
“To reduce such risks and to sustain human civilisation, it is essential to build a zeroemissions industrial system very quickly. This requires the global mobilisation of resources on
an emergency basis, akin to a wartime level of response.”
The authors warn the world is completely unprepared to even imagine, yet alone address the consequences of climate change. Which is why bold, drastic action is needed.
Governments must “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.”
It’s a bleak picture. But not one without hope.
“A doomsday future is not inevitable!” Admiral Barrie, who is a member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, says. “But without immediate drastic action our prospects are poor. We must act collectively. We need strong, determined leadership in government, in business and in our communities to ensure a sustainable future for humankind.”