War Rhetoric and Climate Change

Comparing the battle against climate change to the war, especially the Second World War, has become an elite meme as of late.

Al Gore channelled his Winston Churchill in the UK this summer:

Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

Also from the mother country, Prince Charles, talked of war and climate change:

“If military policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case, should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long term future?”

He warned that if such an approach was not embarked upon, “the result will be catastrophe for all of us but with the poorest in our world hit hardest of all. In this sense it is surely comparable to war… Climate change is the biggest threat the planet faces; urgent action, similar to being on a war-footing, is now required to tackle it.”

Richard Branson offered to set up an “environmental war room,” a quasi-independent UN-linked best-practices community.

Nicholas Stern, director of the Stern Review, used the phrase “extended world war” in discussing worst-case outcomes of climate change. (More on this by Dan Smith.)

The head of the UK government’s Environment Agency, called the climate change effort “World War Three”:

This is World War Three – this is the biggest challenge to face the globe for many, many years. We need the sorts of concerted, fast, integrated and above all huge efforts that went into many actions in times of war.

We’re dealing with this as if it is peacetime, but the time for peace on climate change is gone – we need to be seeing this as a crisis and emergency

Moving from the UK to civilization’s current imperial power, climate change is continuing to gain traction as a “national security threat.”

In August, the New York Times highlighted the chatter. Of course, this included prepping folks for US interventionism:

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

Joel Makower and Sam Black remind us that US interest in climate change security implications is nothing new.

Every man must do his part

This rhetoric, of climate change as a call to war, is worth looking at more closely.

I’m only beginning to think about this — prompted by a recent conversation about the impact of personal action on climate change.

Much is different about war, especially the Second World War, and current approaches to climate change. Notably, of the former:

• Mandatory participation.
• The militarization of society.
• Rank and command.

Is this how we want to address climate change? How we want to re-orient civilization?

Civilization has a cultural familiarity with war-making and violence. This perhaps makes the metaphorical connection worthwhile, but my hope is that it stops there. The attitudes and approaches used to organize and conduct war in the twentieth-century are inseparable from the rise of climate change itself. Civilization must be completely reoriented.

In the early twentieth century, one was told how to defeat “evil” in clear language, and you would be imprisoned if you didn’t participate.

There are no orders this time, no commanding officer, no conscription. We must choose to take action as individuals and we must invite others to join us as free people. No state power will arrive with propaganda posters, a kit bag, and a forced mission to save the world from tyranny. We will not receive orders from a uniformed man about how to proceed.

Yet, green consumerism isn’t helping us out of this mess. A bit of green legislation won’t either. This is the biggest challenge civilization has faced — it might be the end of us — and we haven’t found the right way to talk about it yet.

Until we do, the war rhetoric might do more harm than good.